Welcome to the Daily Quote, the podcast designed to kickstart your day in a positive way. I'm your host Andrew McGivern and this episode is brought to you by the Great News podcast.
Because good news should be heard and the link is in the show notes.
Today we return to Epictetus, the Greek Stoic philosopher born into slavery who became one of the most influential thinkers in history. A man who understood, from the most visceral possible experience, the difference between what you can control and what you cannot. From his Discourses, he wrote:
”The more we value things outside our control, the less control we have.”Read that as the equation it actually is. The more energy, attention, and emotional investment you pour into things that are not in your hands, the less of all three you have available for the things that are.
It's a leak. And most of us are leaking constantly.The outcome of the meeting you've already done your best to prepare for. Whether the person you care about responds the way you hope. What the market does with the investment you've already made. How the audience receives the work you've already put out. Whether the weather holds for the event you've already planned. None of it is in your control. But the mind treats all of it as if sustained worry could somehow influence the result and in doing so, drains exactly the energy and attention that could be going toward the things that actually are yours to shape.
Epictetus put it plainly elsewhere: ”Freedom is the only worthy goal in life. It is won by disregarding things that lie beyond our control.” Not ignoring them. Not pretending they don't exist or don't matter. Disregarding them — withdrawing the emotional investment, the anxious attention, the draining value placed on outcomes you cannot determine. What remains when you do that is not emptiness. It's clarity. The things genuinely in your control your effort, your response, your attitude, your choices, the quality of what you bring to this moment suddenly have all the attention they deserve. And those things, properly attended to, are enough to build something real.
The Stoics called this the dichotomy of control. If you can control something, there is nothing to worry about. If you cannot control something, there is still nothing to worry about because it will happen as it will, and you can do nothing about it. The worry was never useful. What was useful was already available, your own response, your own effort, your own mind. So here's the question: Where is your attention currently going, toward things in your control, or things outside it?Because the energy is finite. Every unit spent on what you cannot control is a unit unavailable for what you can. And what you can control, right now, today, is more than enough to work with.
Withdraw the value from what isn't yours to determine. Put it where it actually belongs.
That's it for today. I'm Andrew McGivern — I'll see you in the next one with another Daily Quote.
