You’re wasting your energy.
A few months ago, I spent a week obsessing over an argument I had with a friend. I replayed every word in my head, imagined every possible response I should have made, and even drafted whatsapp messages I never sent. I carried that argument around like a backpack full of rocks, checking it constantly, letting it ruin my mornings, afternoons, and nights. By the end of the week, I realized two things: the argument didn’t matter, and my friend probably hadn’t thought about it once. Every minute I had spent obsessing was completely wasted. The world had handed me a situation I couldn’t control, and I was treating it like my responsibility to fix.
Most of us live like this every single day, except instead of arguments, it’s social media outrage, global events, politics, or some random stranger’s opinion about us. We spend hours scrolling, reading, reacting, worrying, and crafting mental scenarios that make us feel important, like somehow our attention will shift the world. It won’t. You are not a superhero, and the world does not care about your personal brand of justice or morality or outrage. And yet we convince ourselves that caring about all of it will somehow make a difference. The truth is, the majority of the mental energy we burn daily is wasted on things that we literally cannot influence. We give ourselves ulcers over things we have no ownership over, and we think that obsessing equals caring.
The Stoics figured this out thousands of years ago. They realized that life will constantly throw chaos, pain, and disappointment at you, and most of it is completely out of your hands. The difference between a miserable life and a relatively sane one isn’t avoiding hardship, it’s realizing which things are yours to control and which things are not. Everything else is wasted energy. This simple idea, the Dichotomy of Control, is the single most powerful tool for protecting your sanity, and yet almost no one in the modern world practices it. That’s about to change.
The idea of control vs no control.
Most of the stress, anxiety, and frustration you feel every day comes from confusing what you can control with what you cannot. You think that your happiness depends on someone liking your post, getting approval at work, or avoiding traffic on the way to an appointment. You think your life should feel a certain way, and when it doesn’t, you spiral. The Stoics cut through all of this with a simple question: “Can I control this?” If the answer is yes, great. Do something about it. If the answer is no, stop wasting your energy. That’s it. That’s the whole system.
Epictetus, the Stoic slave who couldn’t control being sold, chained, or humiliated, figured this out the hard way. He had zero control over his circumstances, but he realized he could control his mind, his judgments, and his actions. That meant no matter what the world threw at him, pain, humiliation, or injustice, he retained an inner freedom that even kings often lacked. And Marcus Aurelius, centuries later, faced wars, political chaos, and a devastating plague. He couldn’t command the world to behave, but he could command himself to act with virtue, discipline, and calm. The lesson is painfully simple: your life is a mixture of uncontrollable chaos and the few things you actually own. Waste time on the chaos, and you’ll be miserable. Focus on what you own, and you’ll gain power.
The modern world makes this harder than ever. Everywhere you turn, there are stimuli designed to hijack your attention and make you think you can control what you cannot. Twitter debates, news cycles, endless notifications, some random stranger posting a video riding a jetski sipping champagne with a giel sitting on the back of it, they all scream, “You need to care about this.” But the Stoics would laugh at us. They’d say that caring about what isn’t yours is a fast track to misery. Your energy, your focus, and your attention are the only things you truly own. Everything else is borrowed, fleeting, or imaginary. Mastering the distinction between these two is not optional if you want to live a sane, intentional life.
What do the stoics think.
"It’s not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters." — Epictetus
Epictetus was born a slave, which in the ancient world meant you had almost zero freedom. He couldn’t control who owned him, where he lived, or how he was treated. Yet he discovered a freedom that most people today never find. He realized that while he couldn’t dictate his circumstances, he could dictate his responses. He could choose his thoughts, his judgments, and the way he approached each challenge. A beating, an insult, even the prospect of being sold to a stranger, these things couldn’t touch his inner life unless he let them. In his mind, he was already free, and that freedom made him unbreakable in ways that wealth, power, or status could never achieve.
Centuries later, Marcus Aurelius, one of the most, if not the most spoken man in stoicism also faced a world no less chaotic. He ruled an empire under siege, faced political betrayal, and watched a plague devastate his people. He couldn’t control the wars, the conspiracies, or the disease, but he could control his own actions and decisions. In his journal, he reminded himself daily to meet adversity with virtue, to accept what he could not change, and to focus on what truly belonged to him: his thoughts, his discipline, and his character. The point is clear: life will throw things at you that you cannot fix or prevent. The only power you have is over your mind and your choices. Mastering that distinction turns chaos into clarity and stress into freedom.
The modern day.
You ever notice how your brain loves free entertainment disguised as trauma? Open Instagram for one second and suddenly you’re watching someone’s breakfast, someone’s fight with their boss, someone’s vacation in Santorini ( on my bucket list for sure ) and somewhere in there, you’ve been emotionally enslaved for 45 minutes. You didn’t sign up for a hostage situation, but congratulations, your attention has been kidnapped. And here’s the kicker: the only reason it matters is because your brain thinks it’s “important.” It isn’t. Not to you, not to your life, not to the only things that will matter when you’re seventy and trying to remember what actually made your days worth living.
Your attention is a house. Every notification, every headline, every algorithmic tick of dopamine is a stranger knocking at your door, trying to move in. Most people fling the door open, hand over the keys, and then act surprised when their house is a disaster. The Stoics lived in a world with no notifications, no endless scrolling, but the principle is identical. Epictetus had people literally whipping him. Marcus Aurelius had people literally dying around him. And yet, both of them understood one thing profoundly simple: if you don’t own your inner house, nothing else matters. They weren’t stressed about insults or plagues because those things never got the keys to their minds.
Now, imagine treating your feed like a war zone instead of a playground. Every post, every headline, every angry rant is either ammunition you pick up or shrapnel you dodge. Most of us pick up all the shrapnel, carry it around, and act like it’s a trophy. But you don’t have to. You can walk through this digital battlefield like a veteran who’s survived a hundred pointless skirmishes picking what matters, ignoring the rest, and laughing at the chaos like it’s a clown in a pink little tutu. Your mind is the only territory the algorithm will never own if you’re smart enough to guard it.
Ignoring most of what happens outside of your head is not passive. It’s a declaration of war on mediocrity, distraction, and manufactured stress. Every time you scroll past something designed to provoke anger, envy, or fear, you’re winning a tiny war no one notices, except you. And that war is the only one that counts. It’s quiet. It’s invisible. But it’s everything. Control isn’t about scrolling less,it’s about refusing to let the world rent space in your head. This concept applies to everything in life, not just social media and tiny little arguments. Even after a major incident you should be able to put this concept into fruition thinking of what the next best step is.
Stop wasting your energy.
Here’s where most people screw it up: they read all this Stoic stuff, nod politely, and then go back to letting the internet hijack their brains. Knowledge without execution is just decoration, like putting fancy curtains on a collapsing house. Every second you give to something outside your control is a second stolen from your actual life, from building something that matters, from feeling anything real. Guard your energy like gold, because it is, and treat every day like a limited resource you can’t waste.
Majority of the time i like to think of my life as a game, which it is but a very serious game if you would. Think of your day like a video game with limited lives. Every notification, argument, or comparison is a trap door designed to steal one of those lives. Epictetus didn’t argue with insults, Marcus didn’t rage at the plague, and you don’t have to rage at a troll or scroll through someone else’s highlight reel. The skill is noticing what’s designed to hijack you and refusing it entry. Start small: pick one mental leak, whether it’s Twitter, group chats, or obsessively checking the news, and refuse to engage. Protect your mornings like a temple. Make your focus sacred. Every choice about where you spend your attention is like a deposit in your mental bank account, make the deposits count.
Once you do this consistently, the difference is surreal. You stop reacting to nonsense and stop carrying other people’s chaos because you realize that you cannot control them, you can only control yourself. You gain clarity, freedom, and a quiet power that no algorithm, troll, or news cycle can touch. It’s subtle, slow, and invisible, but transformative. In the end, the Dichotomy of Control isn’t just philosophy, it’s a cheat code for life. Only you’re not cheating the universe. You’re finally winning at your own life.
Freedom within limits.
You’ve started to guard your attention, ignore the nonsense, and invest in what truly belongs to you. You’ve noticed how much lighter your mind feels when you refuse to react to chaos, choosing on what you can give two rats about and letting go of what you can’t and how much clarity and energy you gain when your focus is protected. That’s the first taste of freedom, the kind the Stoics called the ultimate prize. But freedom isn’t just about discipline or avoiding distraction. It’s about how your mind feels in the middle of the mess.
The last time you were stuck in traffic, sweating your face off, 10 horns honking at the same time looking out your window looking to piss someone off because you’re pissed off, but now, the chaos is still there but you choose not to react to it because it’s pointless. You are watching the chaos, not drowning in it. That is what mastering control gives you: a mind that moves through life untouched by things it cannot influence.
The Stoics never promised a life without problems. Epictetus endured slavery, Marcus Aurelius ruled during plague and war, and yet both found freedom within themselves. The modern world is no different, only our chaos comes in notifications, deadlines, and viral outrage. Once you understand what belongs to you and what does not, you gain something few ever experience: a quiet, unshakable power. Your mind becomes a fortress, your attention a treasure, and even the most mundane frustrations like traffic, emails, or someone else’s drama, become harmless noise.
And here’s the final, most important part: freedom isn’t a reward. It isn’t something that happens after you finish your work, after the chaos ends, or after you’ve proven yourself to the world. Freedom is what happens the moment you stop giving the world permission to run your mind. It’s the peace in your chest when everyone else is losing theirs. It’s the calm smile in the middle of the storm. It’s the knowledge that nothing outside of you can touch the only thing that truly matters: the control of your own mind. Master that, and you’ve already won.
Talk soon,
Pathsofstoicism.
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Thanks for sharing it...This really is very helpful and informative!
I really enjoyed reading this. You description of your argument with your friend is so relatable, I love the video game analogy. Thank you for sharing 🤍