Epictetus Had One Rule and It Was Not Complicated

Epictetus was born a slave in what is now Turkey, around 50 CE. His owner broke his leg, apparently to make a point. Epictetus reportedly warned him that the leg would break, then observed, when it broke, that it had broken. He was eventually freed and became one of the most influential philosophers in Rome.

His entire philosophy fits on one napkin. He went ahead and wrote several books anyway.

The napkin version: there are things within your control, and things that are not. Within your control — your judgments, your desires, your responses, your attention. Outside your control — everything else. Other people’s opinions of you. What the weather does. Whether you get the job. Whether the meeting starts on time. Whether the person you are in love with loves you back.

This sounds obvious. It is not practiced.

What we actually spend most of our time doing is applying enormous effort to the second list while treating the first as if it runs itself. We craft detailed strategies for controlling other people’s opinions. We rehearse conversations in our heads for outcomes that depend on a second person with their own entirely separate opinions. We work ourselves into anxiety over external results and meanwhile our actual responses, judgments, and attention just sort of happen.

Epictetus does not say the outside world doesn’t matter. He says directing your whole inner life at it is the basic error, and everything else follows from there.

A man who has had his leg deliberately broken by someone who owns him has less room to maintain the illusion of control. He arrives at the distinction faster because the evidence is right there. For people with more comfortable circumstances, the illusion is more affordable and therefore it persists much longer.

Draw the circle. Everything inside it is yours. Everything outside it is weather.

Notice how much of your current anxiety lives outside the circle. That noticing is, unfortunately, where the real work starts.