Epictetus: the dichotomy of control
Three people did not reply, and within half an hour the team is sure they have lost interest. The fact and your version of the fact are two different things. Only one of them can be acted on.
Between what happened and what you do there are ten minutes. The judgment lives there, and Epictetus says it is the judgment that disturbs you, not the event — and a judgment can be changed.
- Whether the treasurer sent the reportWhether your first thought is a fact or a version
- Which term of office you gotWhether the chair answers messages in those months
- What has already happenedThe message you write in the first ten minutes
Adopt one rule: no message about a problem goes out in the same hour. Write it, leave it, come back — and before sending, separate what is fact from what is your version.
The full biography is on the public version →
Engraving, 1715 — an imagined likeness; no ancient portrait survives. PD-scan / PD-old-100 — Michael Burghers after William Sonmans, Oxford 1715
These screens carry out this specific work. Every published work in the library also has at least an exercise — it is at the foot of this page.
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These works are related to the one you just read — and not by accident:
shared competencies: Self-command, Rhetoric
shared competencies: Self-command, Rhetoric
shared competencies: Self-command, Rhetoric
shared competencies: Self-command, Rhetoric
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The same work written at length: what it claims and what its evidence is worth.
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