Most of your stress comes from trying to run a department you were never given.
Epictetus — born a slave, became the most sought-after teacher in the Roman Empire — built his entire system on one sorting question: is this in my control or not? Your judgments, your effort, your responses: yours. Outcomes, other people’s opinions, markets, the weather, the past: never were. Most of our exhaustion is a category error — psychological energy poured into the second column, force-fed by a news cycle and attention economy built on exactly that. In this episode: why peak performers are ruthless sorters, why sorting is not passivity, and the modern echo — Viktor Frankl emerging from the camps having lost everything and reporting that one freedom proved untouchable: the capacity to choose your response in any circumstance. A slave and a camp survivor, nineteen centuries apart, arriving at the same question. I also share the moment before my first 10,000-person keynote — preparation on one side, surrender on the other.
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Transcript
Most of your stress comes from trying to run a department
Speaker:that you were never given.
Speaker:Welcome aboard, my friend.
Speaker:This is the Daily Podcast.
Speaker:My name's Jonathan Doyle.
Speaker:Today, we are gonna talk about the dichotomy of control.
Speaker:Today, you and I are gonna have a discussion about the allocation
Speaker:of psychological energy.
Speaker:Simple concept.
Speaker:I'm gonna suggest that the vast majority of things that keep us awake at night,
Speaker:the things that are stressful for us, the relationships, the business
Speaker:problems, the career problems, the financial problems, there's a great
Speaker:number of things that we allocate a huge amount of psychological energy to
Speaker:without, without first delineating the parts that we can deal with and the
Speaker:parts that are outside our control.
Speaker:Sounds very simple.
Speaker:Like a lot of these ideas, they're pretty straightforward.
Speaker:But in the pace and busyness of modern life, we overlook them, and we do
Speaker:ourselves a disservice because often we are exhausting ourselves over
Speaker:situations and problems over which we may have only limited control.
Speaker:And once we learn this, a certain peace descends.
Speaker:And I'm gonna talk about that a little bit later, but I wanna
Speaker:introduce you to Epictetus.
Speaker:I don't know if you've ever heard of Epictetus.
Speaker:He was a Greek slave born into the Roman Empire in about 50
Speaker:AD, and he was extremely wise.
Speaker:I mean, the Romans massively prized Greek learning, and so if you were
Speaker:a wealthy Roman, one of the, uh, the great signs of your affluence and
Speaker:influence and success was to have yourself Greek tutors in your home.
Speaker:So Epictetus becomes a Roman tutor and becomes very, very popular and
Speaker:very successful, to the point that he becomes the most sought-after teacher
Speaker:in the empire during his own lifetime.
Speaker:And he's left us quite a large amount of written material.
Speaker:But his entire system starts with what we would call one sorting question, and it's
just this:Is this in my control or not?
just this:So for example, if you think about the way we go about life, our judgments,
just this:how we, how we evaluate things, our efforts, the amount of effort we
just this:put into something, our responses, how we sp- the things we say, how we
just this:react to things, they belong to us.
just this:But the outcomes, other people's opinions, other people's behavior, markets, real
just this:estate markets, financial markets, global markets, the weather, the past, those
just this:are things that do not belong to us.
just this:They never did belong to us because we can't do anything about them.
just this:Sounds like a remarkably simple idea, but think about how many people spend huge
just this:amounts of their life thinking about, obsessing about the past or the future.
just this:What's gonna happen in the future?
just this:What's gonna happen then?
just this:What's gonna happen in a week's time?
just this:So this emotional, spiritual, psychological energy that we have
just this:very easily gets allocated to places that are functionally useless for us.
just this:And think about the modern news cycle.
just this:Think about social media.
just this:Think about the, the simple possibility that what grabs our attention is
just this:pretty much what they run with, right?
just this:So remember that old saying, "If it bleeds, it leads"?
just this:So we live in a information environment that's always about urgency and crisis
just this:and problems, and look over here.
just this:No, quick, stop looking there.
just this:Look over here.
just this:This is much worse.
just this:And so our emotional, spiritual, psychological energy is constantly going
just this:to things that we can't do much about.
just this:So what's the discipline here?
just this:Well, it's pretty straightforward, is that we learn the actual skill and skills we
just this:have to practice, that we ask ourselves, as Epictetus did, the one sorting
just this:question, "Is this in my control or not?
just this:Can I do something about this or not?" And I'll grant you that this can be
just this:subtle and complex at times, and that's why it's a real skill, and that's why
just this:extremely successful people get very, very good at this, because they get really
just this:good at delineating super quickly what they can control and what they can't.
just this:There's an idea that peak performers are what we call ruthless sorters.
just this:Ruthless sorters, they sort this question super fast.
just this:So athletes at the highest level, they can control their preparation, but
just this:they can't control the referee, right?
just this:Pretty straightforward.
just this:So the only thing if you're in, you know, competing at a high level is
just this:you can only control your nutrition, your sleep, your processes, your skill
just this:acquisition, your skill execution.
just this:These are things that you deal with, and you learn to very quickly not care
just this:about what's happening with the referee.
just this:So you control your work, your training, all the stuff that you do, but there's
just this:parts that you definitely can't.
just this:So sorting is also not passivity, so I wanna stress that.
just this:So passivity would be, "Oh, well, there's nothing we can do about
just this:anything, so we'll just, you know, I, I can't change anything."
just this:And it's kind of a weak stance.
just this:But real peak performers, it's not weakness, it's kind of very quickly
just this:looking at any particular situation and deciding as fast as possible which are
just this:the parts that I can bring some influence to and which are the parts that I cannot.
just this:And my kids talk about this sometimes.
just this:They often think, "Oh, what do you think this person thinks?" And my
just this:kids, if you asked them, they, they can almost repeat the line for me.
just this:I'm just like, "Hey, I spend, like, zero time wondering about what's going on
just this:inside other people's heads." Can you imagine living life that way, trying to
just this:figure out what somebody else is thinking?
just this:I wonder what they're thinking.
just this:I don't know.
just this:You could ask them, and they might not even tell you the truth.
just this:So I don't spend any time thinking about that.
just this:I'm just thinking about my own performance and behavior.
just this:Am I acting with integrity?
just this:Am I being honest?
just this:Am I doing the right things?
just this:And then I don't really think too much about other people because what's
just this:that old saying from Oscar Wilde?
just this:"Be yourself 'cause everyone else is taken." You just gotta focus on who you
just this:are and what you're bringing to the table and not let other people's potential
just this:thoughts and emotions run your life.
just this:So we've got Epictetus, right?
just this:Born back in 50 AD. But another example that you're probably
just this:more familiar with, many people in this who care about personal
just this:development, would be Viktor Frankl.
just this:So we've talked about him many times on the podcast.
just this:I'm sure most of you are familiar.
just this:If you're not, Viktor Frankl was a Viennese psychotherapist and was, uh,
just this:imprisoned in a, uh, Nazi concentration camp in the Second World War and wrote
just this:the very famous book, "Man's Search for Meaning." And the essential principle of
just this:that book is that he went through that experience with a clinician's eye, so
just this:he kind of looked at what was happening in the prison camps and looked at how
just this:people responded to what was taking place.
just this:And he was liberated from the camps.
just this:He managed to survive.
just this:He lost his sister and his parents, I think, and saw the
just this:most incredible human suffering.
just this:And about 10 days after being liberated, he went and sat in a cabin and wrote
just this:pretty much just freeform, wrote this famous book, "Man's Search for Meaning."
just this:And he talks about the last of the human freedoms, the last of the human freedoms,
just this:which he said is the capacity to choose your response in any given circumstance.
just this:So what this means was that he would see people literally, mentally, and
just this:emotionally, and psychologically disintegrate all the time, but he
just this:saw a very small number of people who, no matter what happened, could
just this:find a meaning and choose a response.
just this:So they still had what we would call agency.
just this:They still had some power, no matter what was taken from them,
just this:because they could still choose to be kind to someone or joyful.
just this:They could still make choices.
just this:No matter what the external circumstances were, they could still make these choices.
just this:So we've got Epictetus saying, "Is this in your control?" So if you're
just this:in a prison camp, there's a vast number of things not in your control.
just this:So imagine, I mean, obviously none of us have ever been in that circumstance, but
just this:it would be very easy for the behavior of a prison guard to tip you over, right?
just this:To just suddenly, you just like, you, uh, you just get so angry and, and
just this:just so traumatized and… But what Frankl's saying is that a small number
just this:of people were able to say, "I can't control that. I cannot control how that
just this:person treats me. I can only control my internal psychological dialogue, how
just this:I treat the other people around me."
just this:It sounds easy to say in a studio, doesn't it?
just this:But it's, uh, there's a reason that it's one of the most important books
just this:of the last 100 years because it delineates this incredible power that
just this:we do have to choose our response.
just this:So let's begin to wrap this up.
just this:I would offer to you that the central message for us today is many of
just this:us go about living our lives being psychologically hijacked by the
just this:behavior of things around us, people around us, systems around us that
just this:we fundamentally cannot control.
just this:So that creates emotional disturbance, it creates psychological pain, and the
just this:trick is to go, "Can't control that, can't control that, can't control that. What
just this:can I control? Which are the parts that belong to me?" So for me in my life, it's,
just this:it's basically my health, my training, my disciplines, my desire to serve
just this:people, uh, my processes, which are every day I run very disciplined processes.
just this:These are things that are within my control.
just this:I'm also an investor, so, you know, I, I have investments that are affected by
just this:geopolitical events, and I've learned very early on to go, "There's nothing
just this:I can do about the geopolitical events.
just this:I can just make choices based on these things that happen." Because
just this:it would be very stressful to be an investor to be going, "Oh, how can I
just this:control this weather pattern over here?
just this:How can I control this conflict over here?" Can't do it.
just this:Can just make responses to the data that comes in.
just this:Okay.
just this:So can I give you something to think about?
just this:Can I just ask you to think, what is an area of your life at the moment
just this:where the behavior of another person or the behavior of another system
just this:is living rent-free in your head?
just this:Now, again, as I said a few minutes ago, this is subtle.
just this:There is shades of gray.
just this:There are some things that are hard to know.
just this:Can I… Well, someone's behaving this way.
just this:What if I acted this way?
just this:Would that help them change?
just this:Would this change it?
just this:I get it, and this is the wisdom of discernment.
just this:We pray for grace in that, and It's hard to know, but
just this:this is the journey of wisdom.
just this:It is possible, but at least you can begin asking the question today, right?
just this:At least today you can begin to say, "If I'm lying awake, like what, what…" You
just this:know, maybe it's a financial problem.
just this:All of us have had them at times in life, you know?
just this:Uh, I've been in business a long time, and there's been times when it's been
just this:really tough and, and it's very easy to sink into despair or despondency
just this:and all sorts of, uh, relational health problems, financial problems.
just this:What do we do when?
just this:What do we do here?
just this:But I always want you to ask the question: What can you control?
just this:What can you control?
just this:And Frankl teaches us that even in the darkest circumstances, it is
just this:still possible to choose control.
just this:And I mentioned something at the start about peace, and I
just this:said that I'd come back to it.
just this:One of the greatest experiences of my life was the first time that I spoke,
just this:uh, did a keynote for an audience of around 10,000 people, and it was…
just this:I had done so much preparation.
just this:So on the control side, I'd actually done my job.
just this:I'd, I'd really tried very hard to do the prep and the work, and I remember
just this:being about to walk up on stage and just this awareness that if I blew this, if
just this:I got this wrong, that my career would pretty much come to a very famous flame
just this:out, that it would be very hard to come back from having a panic attack on stage.
just this:And, you know, I don't anymore, but I used to get quite… I could get quite
just this:anxious, as anybody would, right, I guess, with that sort of, those sorts of stakes.
just this:And I remember walking up there and, you know, you've, you've got these two, right?
just this:You've got these one or two moments in your life that are profound,
just this:kind of spiritual experiences.
just this:And I kind of said to God as I walked up there, like, "This is beyond me, and
just this:I just have to surrender this moment and trust that whatever gifts I've
just this:been given and whatever preparation I've done are enough." And I just
just this:surrendered, and I walked up there, and it was the most extraordinary
just this:experience, one of my successful moments professionally of my life.
just this:But I learned a very great lesson, is that preparation is really
just this:important, being organized, honoring people by your preparation.
just this:But there comes a moment in life of surrender, of trust, of just letting go.
just this:The-- Does that sound like a little bit, um, ethereal to you?
just this:Like a little bit fluffy?
just this:But it's real, and I have learned that, you know, we're not in control.
just this:If you really think about it, it's amazing that we're still here as a species because
just this:the fact that we were able to survive, you know, hundreds of thousands of years
just this:of weather patterns and natural disasters and, and disease and predators and all
just this:sorts of things, and that we've got this far, uh, you know, maybe, m-maybe
just this:we're, we're being carried a little bit.
just this:And I-- and sometimes I say to people, you know, I've said this on
just this:stage, in modern Western culture, we ignore the great reality of death.
just this:If you think about it, it's very much our culture.
just this:If you look, if you think of things like advertising and
just this:media, it's all about beauty.
just this:It's about beauty and health and energy and possession and accumulating
just this:stuff and, you know, how many commercials have you seen about death?
just this:Not many.
just this:Um, until they figure out how to monetize it, and then it'll be everywhere.
just this:But I often think that no matter how fit we are, no matter how successful
just this:we are, no matter how much we do or achieve or influence, the reality
just this:is that we're not in control.
just this:We can't even control our own life.
just this:Eventually, uh, it comes to a physical, a physical end.
just this:Not a spiritual end, but a physical one.
just this:So there's a certain peace in knowing that, wow, you know, there's this weird
just this:paradox that we're not in control, but at the same time, it's as if God
just this:kinda hands us the keys and says, "Hey, take this thing for a spin.
just this:Do the best you can with it.
just this:Contribute as much as possible.
just this:Make a difference.
just this:Use your skills.
just this:Help people." So He gives us some things to work on But ultimately,
just this:there's just a peace in knowing that, uh, that we don't have to run
just this:everything, and that if things… You know, in general, things work out.
just this:I used to say many times to my kids that the worst pretty much
just this:never happens, and it's kinda true.
just this:Like, I look back over my own life, maybe you can too, and what, what's
just this:that saying from, uh, was it Mark Twain?
just this:It was something along the lines of, uh, you know, I- when I was younger,
just this:I lived in constant fear and of blah, blah, blah, but, you know,
just this:basically none of them ever happened.
just this:So it is possible, isn't it?
just this:Have, have you done it?
just this:Have you lay awake at 2:00 a.m., you know, and you can look back now, maybe from a
just this:few years after whatever was stressing you out, and you know that it did pass?
just this:So live as if, uh, as if you're living in this paradox where you bring the
just this:best you can, and you find peace in letting go of the things that you can't.
just this:That's the wisdom of Epictetus, right?
just this:He teaches us that that's the only question we should be asking
just this:in difficult circumstances.
just this:What's in my control?
just this:What's not?
just this:And Frankl teaches us that no matter what happens to us, we still have some
just this:power, that we can choose how we respond.
just this:All right, I'd love you to subscribe to the podcast.
just this:If this has been helpful to you, hit subscribe.
just this:Share this with family and friends.
just this:You can find me on Instagram, Jonathan Doyle or jdoylespeaks, and
just this:YouTube, Jonathan Doyle Speaks, and on the website at jonathandoyle.co.
just this:Thank you for listening in.
just this:Let's leave you with a final thought, and it's this: Tonight, take one
just this:thing that's eating you and ask the 2,000-year-old question, "Is this mine?"
just this:If it's not, hand it back