“Some things are in our control and others not.”

Epictetus wrote that nearly two thousand years ago. Born a slave in the Roman Empire, he knew this boundary not as abstraction but as survival. His body, labour, even movement belonged to others, yet he insisted that freedom remained: not in events, but in how he chose to respond.

That single insight—the line between what we govern and what we cannot—is the heart of Stoic practice.

See the line. Act inside it. Release the rest.

We did not evolve for cubicles, contracts, or conference calls.

Our nervous system was tuned by the firelight: thirty to a hundred familiar faces, leadership that shifted with circumstance, belonging as survival. Safety meant the freedom to speak, argue, and contribute without fear of exile.

That was our natural habitat.

Today most of us live in another. Offices, factory floors, and Zoom grids. Hundreds or thousands of strangers. Leadership fixed in titles and reporting lines. Evaluation became formal and impersonal. Our livelihood tied to people who may barely know us.

It’s a habitat our brains struggle to recognise.

We often think beliefs are based on evidence. In reality, they’re shaped just as much by feeling. Beliefs, feelings, and behaviours form self-sustaining loops — helpful at times, but limiting when they trap us. The good news? Loops can change. With the right conditions, old beliefs loosen and new ones take root.

Every choice we make has a cost.

Economists call it opportunity cost — the value of the path not taken.

We usually measure that in money or time. But the deeper cost is harder to see: the life we didn’t live.

We often imagine ourselves as reacting to the world — responding to events as they happen. But the brain works differently. It doesn’t wait for reality to arrive. It is constantly guessing what will happen next and preparing us to meet it.

We are prediction machines.