Self-Command
This week you are working on self-command, and these seven passages will take you somewhere specific. You begin by learning to pause before pleasure pulls you forward, and you end with a precise, integrated picture of what full self-command actually looks like in practice. Each day builds on the last: the early days teach you to notice and delay, the middle days hand you the conceptual tools you need, and the final days ask you to bring everything together into a single, coordinated way of living.
Passage
SOME THINGS are under our control, while others are not under our control. Under our control are conception, choice, desire, aversion, and, in a word, everything that is our own doing; not under our control are our body, our property, reputation, office, and, in a word, everything that is not our own doing. Furthermore, the things under our control are by nature free, unhindered, and unimpeded; while the things not under our control are weak, servile, subject to hindrance, and not our own. Remember, therefore, that if what is naturally slavish you think to be free, and what is not your own to be your own, you will be hampered, will grieve, will be in turmoil, and will blame both gods and men; while if you think only what is your own to be your own, and what is not your own to be, as it really is, not your own, then no one will ever be able to exert compulsion upon you, no one will hinder you, you will blame no one, will find fault with no one, will do absolutely nothing against your will, you will have no personal enemy, no one will harm you, for neither is there any harm that can touch you. With such high aims, therefore, remember that you must bestir yourself with no slight effort to lay hold of them, but you will have to give up some things entirely, and defer others for the time being. But if you wish for these things also, and at the same time for both office and wealth, it may be that you will not get even these latter, because you aim also at the former, and certainly you will fail to get the former, which alone bring freedom and happiness. Make it, therefore, your study at the very outset to say to every harsh external impression, “You are an external impression and not at all what you appear to be.” After that examine it and test it by these rules which you have, the first and most important of which is this: Whether the impression has to do with the things which are under our control, or with those which are not under our control; and, if it has to do with some one of the things not under our control, have ready to hand the answer, “It is nothing to me.”
— Epictetus, Handbook 1
Reflection
Now Epictetus hands you the structural key that makes everything else possible. Self-command is not a general effort to be stronger; it is a precise sorting operation. What is yours: your judgments, your choices, your desires and aversions. What is not yours: your body, your reputation, outcomes in the world. The mistake that causes most suffering is not weakness of will but misidentification, reaching for control over things that were never in your hands. Before you can command yourself, you have to know what 'yourself' actually contains.
Go deeper
Pick one situation where you are currently frustrated or anxious: when you sort it honestly using Epictetus's distinction, how much of your distress is coming from trying to control something that was never in your sphere to begin with?
Practice
The Sorting Exercise
Take a current source of stress or frustration and write it at the top of a page. Draw two columns: 'mine' and 'not mine.' List every element of the situation in one column or the other, being ruthless about what actually belongs in the first column. Then circle the items in 'mine' and write one concrete thing you could do with each one today. Leave the 'not mine' column alone.