Epicletetus was a member of a group of Greek philosophers, know as the Stoics . The Stoics were know for a core belief: We don’t control what happens to us, all we control are our thoughts and reactions to what happens to us.
This is better explained by a story: The story of the alcoholic father with two sons. One son follows in his father’s footsteps and ends up struggling through life as an alcoholic and the other becomes a successful, non-alcoholic businessman. People asked each one: “Why are you the way you are?” The answer for both is the same: “Well, it’s because my father was an alcoholic.” 🤔🤔🤔
The same event, the same childhood, two different outcomes. 🤔🤔🤔
This is true for almost all situations — what happens to us is a reality, a fact how we respond is our choice.
This is important. 🙄
We should not deny that something, possibly small, possibly big or possibly horrible, has happened to us. Acknowledge it as reality.
Then realize you can’t control what happened to you, but you can control your reaction to it.
Sometimes we feel powerless about what happened to us. But we take back power as we exercise our right to control our response.
When I was young skipping off to school, I sometimes encountered other children and they would ruin my happy mood by calling me names and making me sad or mad.
It took me a while to realized that if I just thought of their name calling as bad behavior on their part, which really had nothing to do with me, their name calling stopped ruining my day.
I could then ignore them.
Little did I know I was taking back from them their power to ruin my day by choosing to feel that the problem lay with them not me and skip on my merry way whistling and still happy. I was taking their power over me away and making it my power and adding to my strength.
I hope you see how this adaptive behavior of a child becomes important behavior for a teenager and then an adult. 🤔
My father use to remind me with this phrase: If you don’t mind( meaning you don’t get upset),
then they don’t matter ( meaning they can’t control your mood and emotions). 👍
Remember you are defined in this life not by your good luck or your bad luck, but your reaction to those strokes of fortune. ☀️
