Epictetus had one question for every worry: is this yours?

A practice ground, rooted in the Stoa. Not a course you complete, but a way of thinking you keep sharpening. Careful with your choices, fearless about the rest.

The Stoics divided reality in two: what lies within your power, and what does not. Nearly all unrest arises from mixing those two up. We fret over the one box while the freedom sits in the other. Learning to sort is the whole art, and you never finish learning it.

The whole exercise turns on one question: do I have influence over this or not. Train it in four ways, from light to heavy: true or false on a provocative proposition, yours or not yours on a situation from life today, a cut in which you take a whole situation apart into six pieces, and a case: a true story from history, with the sorting hidden until you have thought it through yourself. Always with the answer, the explanation and, where it fits, a quote. Filter by topic; the order shuffles every time.

Fortuna picks the question, you pick the answer. One random exercise drawn from every form and all twelve topics at once. Boethius wrote in prison that the wheel turns, and that the only reproach you can make to Fortuna is that you expected her to stand still (his case).

Spin the wheel

Start here Propositions Situations Cuts Cases

Ten steps, in order. Everything else on this page is free practice; this is the way in.

True or false? Choose, read the answer, and move straight on to the next.

One situation, six pieces. Put each piece in the right box. There is no “both” button here, and that is the whole point.

Read the story, decide for yourself what was his and what was not, then reveal the sorting. All cases are also readable as separate pages.

Yours or not yours? Some situations are mixed; those you split.

The interactive exercises need JavaScript. The twelve topics below are readable without it.

No theory to memorize, but a movement you practise until it runs by itself. You do not pass here; you sharpen.

Something happens and a judgment rushes up at once. Catch it before you go along with it: this is an impression, not yet a fact.

Ask of each part: is this mine or not? The bare fact falls into one box, your response to it into the other.

Do carefully what is yours, and let the rest go. Not because it does not matter, but because it was not yours to hold.

The areas where a person loses balance. Each has its own page with the full set of exercises. Open one for the deeper layer, and practise the propositions that belong to it right away. Each topic keeps growing: examples and exercises are added over time.

Another person can touch your behaviour, never your worth, unless you countersign his judgment. Epictetus keeps turning the question around: is the criticism accurate? Then it is gain. Is it not? Then it does not touch you. What you practise here is the distinction between the deed (outside you) and the meaning you give it (yours).Practise this topicGrowing over time

2Work and failure · Effort versus outcome Your effort and your care are yours; the outcome never is. Whoever ties his self-worth to results signs up for a life of peaks and troughs he does not steer. The Stoic aims at acting well, not at a guaranteed result.Practise this topicGrowing over time

3The inner world · Feeling and self-command Feelings, impulses and moods happen to you; they belong in the box you do not steer. What you do with them belongs in the box you do steer. Between stimulus and action sits a beat, and in that beat sits your freedom.Practise this topicGrowing over time

4Desire and comparison · Becoming independent Desire almost always aims at what belongs to others: possessions, recognition, status. Whoever turns his desire toward what is his becomes independent. Wealth, said Seneca, is not owning much but desiring little.Practise this topicGrowing over time

5Loss and fate · Accepting without hardening What is lost lies irrevocably beyond your power; resisting it is fighting with what has already happened. The art is to accept without turning cold: loving things and people in the awareness that they are on loan.Practise this topicGrowing over time

6Fear and the future · No more suffering in advance Fear lives on outcomes that do not yet exist and that you do not steer. The worry itself is a judgment, and there lies the remedy. You suffer more often in imagination than in reality.Practise this topicGrowing over time

7Relationships · Expectation and connection Nearly all friction comes from the demand that others behave the way you want. Their behaviour you do not steer; your own attitude, boundaries and tone you do. You can love someone and at the same time accept that you do not command him.Practise this topicGrowing over time

8Body and mortality · The deepest lesson The body is the clearest thing you have but are not. Here the Stoa practises its deepest lesson: directing trust at death itself, vigilance at your fear of it. Mortality does not make life meaningless but urgent.Practise this topicGrowing over time

9Pity and compassion · Staying warm without sinking along The Stoics separated two things we often lump together. Suffering along, sinking into another person's sorrow, they saw as a trap: with two people in the pit, you help no one. What they put in its place is compassion that acts, warm and helpful, but without letting your own calm be dragged under.Practise this topicGrowing over time

10Time and attention · Your only true possession Seneca wrote a whole book about it: life is not short, we make it short through waste. Money can be earned back, things replaced, but a lost hour never returns. Yet we guard our balance better than our calendar. The exercise here is double: seeing that delay from outside (the traffic jam, the queue, the overrun) is not yours, and that your attention, the most precious thing you have to give, entirely is. Whoever keeps his attention whole lives twice as much in the same hours.Practise this topicGrowing over time

11Money and possessions · Tool, not master The Stoics were not against money; Seneca was enormously wealthy and Musonius taught ordinary household economics. What they warned against is the reversal: the tool becoming the boss. Wealth is not owning much but desiring little, and being able to live simply is a form of freedom, for whoever needs little is hard to coerce and hard to frighten. What you practise here is the distinction between the price, the market and the bill (not yours) and your choices, your enough and your honest look at your spending (yours).Practise this topicGrowing over time

12The world · Big news, small box War, climate, new technology, economic uncertainty: the world news feels like a weight you are supposed to carry, and the Stoics knew that weight, Marcus wrote his notes in an army camp, during a plague that lasted fifteen years. Their answer was neither looking away nor drowning in it, but sorting. What you practise here is the distinction between what happens in the world and what others believe (not yours) and your attention, your judgment, your assent and your small concrete contribution (yours).Practise this topicGrowing further

The source

Where this comes from

Yours, Not Yours is not new. It is the core of an ancient teaching, and that teaching surfaces in two places you might not immediately put side by side, but which say exactly the same thing.