“People are disturbed not by things themselves, but by the views they take of them.” ~ Epictetus

“People are disturbed not by things themselves, but by the views they take of them.” With this pithy observation, the Stoic philosopher Epictetus illuminates a pivotal psychological insight — we are far less affected by external events themselves than by the perceptions and judgments we layer upon them. This deceptively simple quote contains profound implications for nurturing resilience.

Epictetus invites us to fundamentally reconsider how we interpret and internalize the situations and circumstances unfolding around us. He argues that external factors, in isolation, are not inherently distressing. Rather, it is the personalized stories we tell ourselves about events, our subjective judgments and beliefs about them, that truly drive our emotional reactions. This places immense power to determine our inner peace and equilibrium within our own faculty of interpretation, rather than leaving it hostage to fickle outside forces.

Central to Stoic ethics is the explicit differentiation made between what lies within our sphere of influence versus what does not. By recognizing the considerable agency we have in choosing how to construe challenges that arise, we can redirect wasted energy trying anxiously to control uncontrollable events or the actions of others…