What You Can’t Control (Buddhist-Stoic Synthesis)
The Stoics had a principle: Focus on what’s within your control. Accept what isn’t.
Epictetus: “Some things are up to us, and some are not up to us.” Your judgments, desires, and actions—these are yours. Everything else—reputation, outcomes, other people’s opinions—these are not.
The Buddha taught something similar: Suffering arises from craving what we can’t have and resisting what we can’t avoid.
Two traditions. Same insight. Different languages.
But here’s where they converge powerfully…
The Stoics say: Distinguish what you control from what you don’t. Then focus all your energy on what’s within your power.
The Buddha says: Recognize that grasping and aversion create dukkha (suffering/unsatisfactoriness). Practice non-attachment—not indifference, but freedom from compulsive craving and resistance.
Together: You can’t control outcomes. You can control your response. And learning to release desperate attachment to outcomes… that’s where peace lives.
Not resignation. Not passivity. But engaged acceptance.
You prepare for the interview without attachment to getting the job.
You care for the relationship without grasping to prevent its ending.
You work for justice without being destroyed by setbacks.
You create without needing external validation.
This is the synthesis: Stoic discipline of assent meets Buddhist non-attachment.
Act with full commitment. Release the outcome.
Do what’s yours to do. Accept what isn’t.
The paradox? When you stop desperately grasping for control, you often become more effective. Because your energy isn’t wasted fighting reality.
And when reality doesn’t cooperate (it often won’t), you’re not shattered. Because you never staked your peace on something outside your control.
Try this: Next time you notice yourself anxious about an outcome, pause. Ask:
- What’s actually within my control here?
- What am I grasping for that I can’t control?
- Can I do what’s mine to do… and release the rest?
The Stoics and the Buddha, separated by centuries and geography, arrived at the same truth: