It feels terrible to hear that someone is breaking up with you. Or that your retirement portfolio has dropped significantly in recent months. To find out that the company you’ve invested your entire career in is laying you off. That your father doesn’t accept the person you love or how you live your life.

We want it to be otherwise, so we’re disappointed. It hurts, so we take it personally. In Meg Mason’s novel Sorrow and Bliss (listen to our great podcast episode with Meg), Martha Friel’s mother, who had always been unhappy and resentful, goes into recovery and stops drinking. With time, she comes to realize that she had been living life as if it was happening to her. The adversity. The losses. The frustrations. The disappointments. In actuality, none of this happened to her. It was just happening. It just was.

This is what the Stoics want us to realize. Fortune is not out to get you. Life is not picking on you. This is just what’s happening, period. It happens to involve you…but it does not revolve around you.

The sooner we accept this, the less painful all of it will be. The less harmed we’ll feel, and thus, as Marcus Aurelius writes in Meditations, the less harmed we will be. What’s happening in the world, what’s happening in the economy, at work, inside other people? We need to stop seeing everything through the lens of how it impacts us. Because it doesn’t have anything to do with us!

It’s happening as it always has and always will. It’s driven by forces we can’t comprehend, decisions and factors we don’t control. All we can do is step back and observe. All we can do is accept what is. All we can do is decide not to be upset, hurt, offended, broken, or bitter.