Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we bring you a stoic-inspired meditation

designed to help you find strength and insight and wisdom into everyday life.

Each one of these episodes is based on the 2,000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of

history's greatest men and women to help you learn from them, to follow in their example,

and to start your day off with a little dose of courage and discipline and justice and wisdom.

For more, visitdailystoic.com.

The one thing in your life you can control.

Our lives are unpredictable.

We are at the mercy of so many forces.

The weather, the economy, your boss's mood, your teenager's mood,

whether the contractor finishes the job in time,

whether that idiot in front of you drives right. People can mess up our day, they can mess up our

margins, they can imperil our safety. But it has always been thus. Marcus Aurelius opens book

two of meditations with a meditation on precisely this,

preparing himself in the morning for what he's likely to encounter. He didn't control other people

or external events, he understood, but he did control whether he allowed them to change who he was,

whether he allowed them to implicate him in ugliness, as he put it.

He controlled, in short, how he responded.

It's not much, but it's plenty.

And the paradox is that the more we control ourselves, the more we end up shaping the world around us.

That's why when we focus on what's in our control on what's up to us, we find that it's more than enough.

Not only does it become a kind of hidden superpower, but also a secret source of peace.

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