This was written as a guest post for the blog Advancing to Greater. I hope you’ll give it a read. Thanks for the invitation, Rich!
Some things are under our control, while others are not.
This is one of the core teachings of the ancient philosophy of Stoicism: that we should be always aware of which things are inside our control, and which things are outside. What purpose does it serve to maintain an awareness of the limits of our control?
Knowing the limits of our control tells us where to focus our emotional energies.
Simply put, if a thing is outside of your control, then your emotional energy is better invested elsewhere.
The Tide
Consider an example: the tide. The relative motion of the Earth and Moon cause the sea to rise and fall in a regular cycle. The tide is extremely powerful compared to you and I, and it’s entirely indifferent to (indeed unaware of) our needs and desires. Suppose the tide is troublesome to you for some reason. Perhaps you want to build a house, but the tide keeps rising and flooding your preferred building site.
What would be the effects of your becoming upset about the tide? The tide itself will certainly not be affected. A house built in the way of the tide will continue to be flooded, regardless of your feelings about it. The primary effect of your upset will be to injure your well-being.
I have intentionally chosen an example where it is plain to see that it’s futile to get upset. Now, let’s move on to less obvious examples.
My Personal Malinvestment
Here’s one from my own history. I used to become very emotionally invested in political matters. I saw wrongs being committed on a massive scale - enormous violations of my personal ethics committed by politicians. Because the scale of these wrongs was so large, it seemed natural to me to be very upset about them. It took me quite some time to realize the futility of spending my emotional energy in this way. It just seemed so … right … to be indignant about all that wrongness.
But my angry rants, fist-shaking, and even letter-writing to my Congresspeople made no detectable impact. Politicians kept on being politicians, and I kept on being upset, and losing sleep, and feeling grumpy, and sometimes genuinely depressed - until I realized I didn’t have to be upset.
Now, I am certainly not saying that I’ve changed my opinion of politics and now approve of the behavior of politicians. No, I still think they’re by and large crooked. What’s different is that I now try and view politics as I might view the tide: It’s a part of my environment - a very powerful and potentially dangerous part - over which I have very little control. Getting upset can be reasonably expected to have no impact at all on the problem, and to have a significant negative impact on my well-being.
Out of Control
Consider this short list of things that are mostly or entirely out of your control:
- The behavior of other people, including
- politicians
- your kids
- your spouse
- your boss
- other drivers on the road
- that person who’s wrong on Facebook
- The weather
- Disease
- Death
Think about these and other things outside your control. How much emotional energy are you investing in them? How much value are you getting out of that emotional investment?
Within Control
What, then is within our control? The Stoics said, and I think they got it right, that we have control only over our own thoughts and actions. And since this is where we have control, this is where our emotional energies are best invested.
We serve ourselves best when we put our emotional weight not on our circumstances, which are often outside our control, but instead on our responses to those circumstances. Not on past events, which are always out of our control (being in the past), but instead on learning from what has happened. Not on anticipated future events, but instead of preparing ourselves to face those events in our preferred ways.
When, as is often the case, we find ourselves astray and investing emotional energy unproductively, the Stoics recommend repeating to ourselves the maxim with which we began: “Some things are under our control, while others are not.”
Learn More
Don’t take my word about Stoicism. I’m a student, not a master. To learn more about Stoicism, I recommend the following resources:
- Stoicism Today, home of the annual Stoic Week, which I strongly recommend.
- How to Be a Stoic, a blog by Massimo Pigliucci, who originally introduced me to Stoic Week.