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Welcome to the Daily Stoke. For each day, we read a short passage designed to help you cultivate the strength, insight, wisdom necessary for living good life.

Each one of these passages is based on the 2000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women. For more, you can visit us at dailystoke.com.

You don't have to be a victim. There's no questioning that the stilloks were victims of severe injustices. Marcus Arellius was betrayed by his most trusted general and what amounted to an attempted coup that threatened him and his family.

Epictetus had 30 years of his life stolen by slavery. Musonius was exiled on bogus offenses not once, but possibly for separate times. As unfair as all these situations were, what was impressive is how these stilloks never chose to see themselves as victims.

Marcus Arellius chose to use the betrayal as a chance to show future emperors how to deal with civil strife. Epictetus found freedom inside his captivity and then taught thousands the same after he was freed.

Musonius Rufus spent his exiles, productively writing and helping the locals who had become his new neighbors. This is one way to face the things that life throws at us.

If you've watched the new Taylor Swift documentary on Netflix, you get a glimpse of another here, a beautiful, talented, enormously successful singer songwriter spends north of an hour cataloging all the ways she has been a victim in her career.

From the expectations of the audiences to cruel journalists to Kanye West, Swift looks back at 15 years in the music business and sees almost invariably all the things that were done to her and how helpless she was in the face of them.

The inspiring exception is a groping incident that she fought back against getting justice not only for herself but for other women.

There still looks believe that there are two ways to respond to life and misfortune. We can be a victim or not. We could focus on our power and our powerlessness.

This is a distinction Marcus Arellius wrote between being harmed and feeling harmed. The events that happened to us are objective. We can't help being victimized.

But how we feel about them is up to us. We choose to identify as a victim or not. We choose how we're going to respond. We choose what good is going to come from this.

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