Welcome to Your World Within Daily. I'm Eddie Panero. And in this episode, we're going to look at control. Or as Epictetus would say, the more we value things outside of our control, the less control we have. What does it mean to have control over your life?

There are, as Epictetus says, things that are beyond our control, and then there are things that are obviously within our realm of control.

And it's very interesting timing that I came across this quote.

I'm reading a book called The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker.

And as I'm reading it, right, it's basically about human beings and the contrasts

in our life. And it starts off, or early in the book, a quote from Abraham Maslow that says,

we are simultaneously worms and gods. You know know life is this paradoxical game of contrast and

that's the whole point of you know this book we're always fighting two conflicting things right how our

minds are these infinite amazing amazing, limitless tools.

Yet our bodies are animal flesh, right?

The determinism of our bodies are beyond our control.

We can get sick tomorrow. There's nothing we can do.

Or how we want to be part of this bigger picture,

add value to some cosmic order, be part of something bigger than ourselves, but at the same time,

we want to stand alone. We want to rule over our own worlds. We fear death. We don't want life to end, but we also fear life. We don't want to rule over our own worlds we fear death we don't want life to end but we also

fear life we don't want to do too much because that's scary that's where the the terrifying

unknowns live and this appears in so many aspects of our lives where we're juggling or trying to make sense of things that are on the surface irreconcilable

they contrasts they appear polar opposites but the truth is somewhere in the middle and that's why the epictetus quote

i was like oh my god this, this is, this is perfect.

We need that which we can't control, but we need to accept it.

And we need that which we can control.

And that is our vehicle to a happy, healthy existence.

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