«Stoicism now focuses on Epictetus’ best known remark. It’s commonly glossed thus: “it’s not what happens to you that matters but how you respond that matters.” It’s the basis of a thousand self-help books. Try to control what you can, not what you can’t, which in practice means, monitor mindfully how you react to events. As for the rest, go with the flow.

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What Stoicism-lite removes is the cosmic view that informed his advice. He was convinced that the ways of the world and the universe were determined by an omnipresent, omnipotent force. Stoics called it the Logos. It was divine. It was irresistible. And crucially, it was benign.

In other words, Epictetus was not saying happiness is found by focusing on what you can control – which, after all, in a consumer society can often feel like quite a lot, so long as you have cash in your pocket and wifi to an online store. Rather, he was saying: “Freedom is secured not by the fulfilling of your desire, but by the removal of your desire,” as he himself glossed the counsel. “Don’t ask that events should happen as you wish; but wish them to happen as they do, and you will go on well,” he puts it in another place.

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Stoicism proper is about aligning your life to the Logos. The all-powerful God has its way anyway. Only the divine knows best. So give up your desire and desire what God determines. Then you will begin to perceive God in all things, in every tree, in every mountain, in other souls.»

— Mark Vernon, Why Modern Stoicism Misses The Point