Tentative efforts lead to tentative outcomes. Therefore, give yourself fully to your endeavors. Decide to construct your character through excellent … - Epictetus

[14] It is in accordance with this plan of action above all that one should train oneself. As soon as you leave the house at break of day, examine everyone whom you see, everyone whom you hear, and answer as if under questioning. What did you see? A handsome man or beautiful woman? Apply the rule. Does this lie within the sphere of choice, or outside it? Outside. Throw it away. [15] What did you see? Someone grieving over the death of his child? Apply the rule. Death is something that lies outside the sphere of choice. Away with it. You met a consul? Apply the rule. What kind of thing is a consulship? One that lies outside the sphere of choice, or inside? Outside. Throw that away too, it doesn’t stand the test. Away with it; it is nothing to you. [16] If we acted in such a way and practised this exercise from morning until night, we would then have achieved something, by the gods. [17] But as things are, we’re caught gazing open-mouthed at every impression that comes along, and it is only in the schoolroom that we wake up a little, if indeed we ever do. Afterwards, when we go outside, if we see someone in distress, we say, ‘He’s done for,’ or if we see a consul, exclaim, ‘A most fortunate man’; if an exile, ‘Poor wretch!’; if someone in poverty, ‘How terrible for him; he hasn’t money enough to buy a meal.’ [18] These vicious judgements must be rooted out, then; that is what we should concentrate our efforts on. For what is weeping and groaning? A judgement. What is misfortune? A judgement. What is civil strife, dissension, fault-finding, accusation, impiety, foolishness? [19] All of these are judgements and nothing more, and judgements that are passed, moreover, about things that lie outside the sphere of choice, under the supposition that such things are good or bad. Let someone transfer these judgements to things that lie within the sphere of choice, and I guarantee that he’ll preserve his peace of mind, regardless of what his circumstances may be. [20] The mind i

Tradition has it that late in life Epictetus retired from teaching introduction and withdrew to the peace and quiet of family life, under conditions imposed by old age: that is, he became a parent by adopting rather than fathering a child, and took into his home a female servant to serve as a kind of surrogate mother to the child and domestic servant for himself. That he had absented himself from family life for so long shows that he regarded philosophy as a jealous mistress who demanded practically all his time and attention, which family life would not allow. That this renunciation of family life represented a real sacrifice is suggested by the fact that he took to it immediately upon retiring. He evidently thought he had earned the comforts of home after devoting most of his life to improving the lives of others – the successive generations of students who had passed through his school. We have no more news of Epictetus beyond this. After creating this version of a family he was evidently content to settle into it and live out the balance of his years in obscurity.

Every difficulty in life presents us with an opportunity to turn inward and to invoke our own submerged inner resources. The trials we endure can and should introduce us to our strengths...Dig deeply. You possess strengths you might not realize you have. Find the right one. Use it.