The Stoic HANDBOOK - College of Stoic Philosophers

There is a remedy, or there is none;
If there be one, try to find it;
If there be none, never mind it.
This is the essence of the Control exercise. In every decision you make
everyday, the first question to ask yourself is how much control do I have
over this situation. Every time you are confronted with a problem, a
crisis, a physical or psychological assault, the degree of control should
influence your approach to its resolution. Epictetus was probably the
most extreme in teaching his students that we have no control over
anything except the will. The right use of will, he would say, is
completely under our control. No one, not even a god, can take that away
from you. The choice to build a noble character is yours and yours alone.
All else is left to fate.
We know that there are some things over which we do exercise some
control. If you are looking for a wife or husband, how you go about
finding one will have some control over the outcome. If you stay at home
night after night and wait for the right person to knock on your door your
chances of finding that person are considerably less than if you actively
go out and make yourself available in social settings reflecting your
personality. We also know that we are all mortal and there's little we can
do about death as the final outcome, nothing actually, no control, but we
can have some control over our health and longevity by taking good care
of our bodies while we still live.
The most important aspect of this exercise is the tranquility that comes
from realizing that many of the things we fuss and fret about are largely
out of our control. Someone cut us off in traffic, is there anything we can
do about it? Of course. We can speed up and shoot the jerk, but that's not
going to prevent another rude person from cutting us off in traffic in the
future. As Marcus Aurelius says people will have bad breath, because
that's the sort of odor that emanates from such places. Why get annoyed?
Leave it alone.
Three Defenses
There are three kinds of defensive exercises against the personal assault
of others on our character:
1. Self-deprecation. Epictetus said that if someone accuses you of
having some flaw in your character you should tell him its a good
thing he doesn't know you well enough to point out even the
worst flaws you have. You quickly deflect criticism with selfdeprecating
remarks. Even without being witty, by
enthusiastically admitting the error of your ways you take the
sting out of the accusations against you.
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