What to do about things you can’t control

Sort it now

Start with the thing itself, not with philosophy about it. The exercise below is Outside My Control from the Stoic Practice app, with the same steps: you name what is bothering you, sort its parts into “up to me” and “not up to me,” read the passage from Epictetus it rests on, decide what you will stop trying to control, name what is still yours to do, and choose one concrete action. It takes about two minutes, every step can be skipped, and nothing you type leaves your browser. It is one of three free exercises on I Need Perspective, alongside anger and worry.

This is philosophy, not professional care. If you are in danger, contact emergency services; in the U.S., call or text 988. Our guide to worry says more about when to get help.

What Epictetus put on each side

Arrian, who studied with Epictetus, set down his teaching in two works: the long Discourses and the brief Enchiridion, or Handbook. The Handbook opens with the division the exercise uses:

In plain terms, the first side is the activity of your own mind: what you take to be true, what you set out to do, what you want and what you refuse. Everything else sits on the other side, including your body, your money, your reputation and your job title, because each of them can be taken, blocked or changed by something outside you. The test is the phrase Epictetus ends each list with: is this one of “our own acts” or not? Usually the line runs through a situation rather than around it, and most of the work is finding it.

“Dichotomy of control” is a modern name for this passage, and our guide to the dichotomy of control covers the idea in depth, with everyday examples and its own sorting exercise. If you have seen lists of the “three things you can control,” the nearest ancient parallel is probably Discourses 3.2, where Epictetus (in our summary) divides Stoic training into three areas: what you desire and avoid, what you do, and what you accept as true. The much-shared line about having power over your mind is usually credited to Marcus Aurelius; we check that attribution separately.

Letting go is not approval

The usual objection is that this sounds like shrugging. If the layoff was unfair or the delay was the airline’s fault, putting it in the “not up to me” pile can feel like saying it was fine. The sort says nothing of the kind. It makes no judgment about whether something was good or fair. It only shows where your effort can work.

You can still act on the parts that are yours, and often that means acting in the world: disputing a charge, asking for what you are owed, speaking up in a meeting, voting, appealing a decision. What changes is how much you hang on them. You do your part as well as you can, and you stop making your peace of mind depend on the result. The exercise puts it in one line: letting go is not approval; it is refusing to spend your strength where it cannot act.

Epictetus uses the picture of a sea voyage:

The modern version is a job interview. You decide how to prepare, what to bring and when to arrive. Then the panel meets without you. Your part is done, and the decision “belongs to another.”

Letting go of an outcome is not letting go of people, either. In Discourses 3.2 Epictetus says he should not be unfeeling like a statue, and should keep up his relations as a son, a father and a citizen; our guide to Stoicism and emotions explains what the Stoics wanted to be rid of and what they meant to keep.

Three situations, sorted

Each of these follows the steps of the exercise: what is not yours, what is, and one action.

Your job is cut

Your company announces layoffs, and your role is on the list.

• Not yours: the decision, its timing, the job market this month, what people say about it.
• Yours: how you read it (a business decision, not a verdict on your worth), the questions you ask about severance and references, how you act toward the colleagues who stayed, and what you do with the next week. If the process broke the rules, raising that is yours too.
• One next action: before Friday, write to three people who know your work and tell them plainly what you are looking for.

For the longer stretch after a loss like this, see how the Stoics met setbacks.

Someone you love is ill

Your mother calls with test results, and the news is not good.

• Not yours: the results, how her body responds, what the doctors can and cannot do, how long any of it takes.
• Yours: showing up, the questions you bring to the next appointment, how you speak to her and to the rest of the family, and the sleep and meals that let you keep showing up.
• One next action: call her tonight and ask what would help this week, instead of guessing.

The sort will not make this painless, and it is not meant to. Caring about her is not on the list of things to let go. The sort only keeps you from spending yourself on the part you cannot change, so you have more to give her.

Your flight home is canceled

The evening flight home is canceled, and the next open seat is tomorrow afternoon.

• Not yours: the weather or the crew shortage, the airline’s decision, the length of the line, the dinner at home you will now miss.
• Yours: how you speak to the gate agent, who canceled nothing; asking for the voucher or refund you may be owed; telling the people waiting for you; where you sleep tonight.
• One next action: rebook on your phone while you stand in line, then text home with the new time.

Wanting things as they are

In Enchiridion 8 Epictetus asks for more than letting go: he asks you to want what happens to be as it is. How that fits with working hard for a better outcome, and why later readers call the attitude amor fati (Nietzsche’s phrase, not a Stoic one), is the subject of our guide to amor fati.

What is still yours to do

Once the sort is done, something is always left on your side, however small. Epictetus makes the point with illness and injury:

By “will,” Long means Epictetus’s prohairesis, the faculty in you that decides. A bad knee can stop your running; it cannot, on its own, decide how you will meet that. The same test works for a canceled flight or a lost job: each is an obstacle to your plans, your schedule or your income, “but not to yourself.”

Marcus Aurelius adds the practical edge:

Marcus is answering a particular complaint: you are pained because you are not doing something you think is right. His question, “why dost thou not rather act than complain?”, fits the evening spent fretting over the apology you owe or the problem you keep meaning to raise at work, when the call or the email is yours to send. And when something you cannot remove stands in the way, he says the cause “depends not on thee,” so the thing left undone is not yours to carry either.

In On Tranquility of Mind, Seneca considers a life caught in circumstances you can neither untie nor break. Everyone is bound by something, he says, and then he turns to what can still be done:

You may not get to choose the room. What you put in it, and where, is still yours. That is the last step of the exercise above: one action, small enough to do today, with the part that belongs to you.

More lines on control

Many Stoic quotes about control go back to the opening of the Enchiridion above. Here are three more, each from a public-domain translation.

Epictetus’s “contest” is any competition whose result someone else decides: who gets promoted, who is admired, who is liked. Enter one of those and you can always lose. The contests you can always win are inside your own conduct. That is why he turns straight to envy: if the good lies in what is in your power, a colleague’s promotion is no reason for envy or jealousy, because it was never your good to lose. Envy has its own guide.

Long’s first sentence is hard to follow, but the last one makes Marcus’s point plain. Count something outside your power as your good or evil, and when you lose it you will find someone to blame: the gods, or the people who caused the loss. Keep good and evil for what is in your power, and that reason for hostility is gone.

The last is Marcus at his most confident: tranquility is possible “even if all the world cry out against thee.” The second half is the practical part. Your judgment names a thing for what it is, “though in men’s opinion” it may look like something else, and then you ask what it can be used for. Named that way, a pile-on in the comments under something you posted is some words from strangers, not the public disgrace it felt like at first, and whether you answer once or not at all is the part that is yours to use.

For more, see our collections of Epictetus quotes and Marcus Aurelius quotes.