The One Thing In Your Life You Can Control

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1:26The one thing in your life you can control. Our lives are unpredictable. We are at the mercy of so many forces. The weather, the economy, your boss's mood, your teenager's mood, whether the contractor finishes the job in time, whether that idiot in front of you drives right. They can mess up our day. They can mess up our margins. They can imperil our safety. It has always been thus. Marcus Aurelius opens book two of meditations with a meditation on precisely this, preparing himself in the morning for what he's likely to encounter. He didn't control other people or external events, he understood, but he did control whether he allowed them to change who he was, whether he allowed them to implicate him in ugliness, as he put it.

2:12He controlled how he responded. It's not much, but then again, it's plenty. The paradox is that the more we control ourselves, the more we end up shaping the world around us. That's why when we focus on what's in our control, on what's up to us, we find that it's more than enough. Not only does it become our hidden superpower, it is also our secret source of peace.

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