Marcus Aurelius ruled over millions of people, and he didn’t care what any of them thought about him. Well at least, he worked hard to not care about what any of them thought of him. We see that throughout Meditations where we see him repeatedly talk about focusing more on his own actions than other people’s opinions.
The accidental byproduct of this focus was that those millions of people loved Marcus.
This is usually how it goes. After a great rookie season with the Chicago Cubs in 2017, Ian Happ had a rough second year, then started the 2019 season by being sent back down to the minor leagues. On the Daily Stoic podcast, Happ talked about the mindset shift that helped him get back to the big leagues:
“Instead of wondering why or trying really hard to impress a coach or the people who make the decisions, I said, ‘you know what? I’m going to believe in myself, put in the work, and at some point, they’re not going to be able to keep me out of the lineup…I was caring more about what the guy who made the decisions thought and got away from my process and what made me a good player. When you worry about the things that might get you put on the bench, the end result of that is always, you do the things that get you put on the bench.”
Shifting his focus from the externals to the internals, Happ worked himself back into the Cubs’ lineup and this past season, he made his first All-Star team and picked up his first Gold Glove Award in the process. That’s what happens when you care more about what you are doing and less about what others are thinking.
As Marcus Aurelius writes, “Ambition means tying your well-being to what other people say or do. Self-indulgence means tying it to the things that happen to you.” But real success, real mastery, real sanity? That, he says, comes only by “tying it to your own actions.”
So that’s why we, as Stoics, shift our focus to the internal stats and scoreboards.
We focus on the things we can control: the choices we make, the work we put in, the standards we hold ourselves to. We trust in that and know the rest will take care of itself.
