The Daily Stoic - This Is It, Isn’t It? | Circle of Control

Episode Date: January 13, 2026

Focus on what you can control. Keep your cool. Do the right thing. Be brave. Because if you’re not going to do it now, when will you?📔 Pick up your own leather bound signed edition of The Daily Stoic! Check it out at the Daily Stoic Store: https://store.dailystoic.com/👉 Support the podcast and go deeper into Stoicism by subscribing to The Daily Stoic Premium - unlock ad-free listening, early access, and bonus content: https://dailystoic.supercast.com/🎥 Watch the video episodes on The Daily Stoic YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@DailyStoic/videos🎙️ Follow The Daily Stoic Podcast on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoicpodcast✉️ Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Get Stoic inspired books, medallions, and prints to remember these lessons at the Daily Stoic Store: https://store.dailystoic.com/📱 Follow us:  Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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. This is it, isn't it? No one wants to have to use their contingency plans to do what they plan for in a worst-case scenario.

No one wants to break that glass in case of emergency. No one wants to have to use stoicism, not at least the kind of stoicism that Marcus really, this used in the midst of plagues and wars and coups and strategies. At the same time, what was that plan for, if not for this? What was the emergency equipment for? And wasn't that why people taught this philosophy designed for adversity and difficulty for all these years? It was obviously for moments like this.

Epictetus once said that the whole point of stoicism was to be able to put ourselves in a position where whatever happened, we could say, this is what I trained for. Well, that's what this is, isn't it? One of those moments. Now you get to use it. Now you must use it. Focus on what you control. Keep your cool. Do the right thing. Be brave. Lead. Because if you're not going to do it now, when will you? Look, your body has this performance superhighway. That's the 60,000 miles of blood vessels that deliver oxygen and nutrients to every cell. This is your cardiovascular system. Maybe you learned about this in school or on an episode of the magic school bus. But it's the foundational system that powers everything we do.

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My co-author and translator, Stephen Hanselman. You can get signed copies by the way. in the Daily Stoke store. We have a premium leather edition at store. Atdailystoke.com as well. But let's get on with today's reading.

We control our reasoned choice and all acts that depend on that moral will. What's not under our control are the body and any of its parts are possessions, parents, siblings, children, country, or anything else with which we might associate.

That's Epictetus's Discourses 1.22. This is an important enough entry that it bears repeating. A wise person knows what's inside of their circle of control and what's outside it. The chief task in life is simply this, to identify and separate matters so I can say clearly to myself,

which are externals not under my control, and what have to do with the choices I actually control? Where then do I look for good and evil, not to uncontrollable externals, but within myself, to the choices that are my own? The good news is that it's pretty easy to remember what's inside your control. According to the Stoics, the circle of control contains just one thing, your mind.

That's right. Not even your physical body is completely within your control. After all, you could be struck with a physical illness or an impairment at any moment. You could be traveling in a foreign country and thrown in jail. But this is all good news because it drastically reduces the amount of things that we need to think about. There is clarity in this simplicity. While everyone else is running around with a list of responsibilities a mile long, things they're not actually responsible for,

you have just got that one item list. You've just got one thing to manage. Your choices, your will, your mind. So mind, I said this in my talks many times, but I think about the circle of control as a kind of resource allocation issue. Right. If you've got a hundred energy points, where are you going to spend them? Are you going to spend 50 of them on what's in your control and then 50% of them complaining about how you got there, wishing things were otherwise, trying to change things you don't control? Or are you going to spend all your energy on what you do control, right? So if the typical ratio of a person is 50-50, and that's probably being generous. if we're being perfectly honest. And you can get to a 60-40.

That's a huge advantage. I mean, God forbid you get to, you know, 90-10. I don't know how possible that really is. But if, again, just any you can move from one category to another category, it's not just saving the energy from beating your head against a wall that will not budge or wishing something that did happen hadn't happened. But you're moving it. to the category where it does make a difference towards something where that energy does make

progress. It's more than a one-point shift. It's an enormous shift. And you have to think about it that way. And again, taking it as stipulating that the vast majority of people struggle to do this, they're not even aware that they're doing it. Right. You think about how basic something like the serenity prayer is. God grant me the serenity to accept the things that cannot change, courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference, right? They say that in Alcoholics Anonymous. These are people who've lived their entire life. Some of them are very successful.

Some of them have tried literally every other thing on the planet, but this, right? And I think to me, that's just a humbling reminder of how much time, energy, life force is spent on things that we don't control, right? We care about what other people are doing. We care about the weather. We care about, you know, external results. I just, I try to remind myself of this as a writer over and over again. I control the work.

I control what I write today. I control that I showed up. I control what I do, my choices, my mind, what I put in it. Everything else that comes after might be nice, might break my way, but it's not up to me. That's not what we're talking about. We control our reasoned choice in all acts that depend on moral will. what's not under our control or the body and any of its parts, our possessions, our parents, our siblings, our children, our country, anything else, anything with which you might associate.

It's a little depressing reminder as you stare at where the world is on this day. But think about what that was for Epictetus, what was happening in Rome or Greece as he was saying these things. So instead he focused on his mental freedom, on his mental freedom, on his. his choices, on his actions, because that's all he could do. And in so doing, he made himself one of the most powerful people in the world, even though he was very powerless inside the Roman hierarchy. He made himself so powerful that his words echo down to us today all these years later. I hope you take them to heart. I hope you focus on what's in your control today. And I hope you

have a great week. Insofar as you focus on things that are up to you. Hey, it's Ryan. Thank you for listening to The Daily Stoag podcast. I just wanted to say we so appreciate it. We love serving you. It's amazing to us that over 30 million people have downloaded these episodes in the couple years we've been doing it. It's an honor. Please spread the word, tell people about it, and this isn't to sell anything. I just wanted to say thank you.