When life starts to feel messy—when plans fall apart, someone says something unkind, or you're just stuck in traffic—Stoicism gives us one of its most powerful tools: a way to see clearly through the noise.

At the very start of The Enchiridion, Epictetus draws a clear and practical line:

“Some things are in our control and others not.
Things in our control are opinion, pursuit, desire, aversion—in a word, whatever are our own actions.
Things not in our control are body, property, reputation, command—in a word, whatever are not our own actions.”
— Epictetus

This is more than a clever distinction. It’s a test you can carry in your back pocket for almost any situation.

Something goes wrong?
Pause. Ask yourself: Is this in my control?
If it is, you have work to do. If it’s not, you have permission to release it.

You don’t control whether your flight is delayed.
You do control how you speak to the person behind the counter.
You don’t control what people think of you.
You do control what you believe about yourself.

This way of seeing isn’t passive. It’s selective. It sharpens your focus on what matters: your choices, your values, your reactions. That’s where your energy belongs. Epictetus isn’t asking you to care less—he’s asking you to care better.

“Don’t demand that things happen as you wish, but wish that they happen as they do happen, and you will go on well.”
— Epictetus, Enchiridion 8

So much of our distress comes from gripping too tightly to things we never held in the first place. This is how the Stoic path becomes a daily practice: noticing, choosing, letting go. Not once, but again and again.