Today I spent most of the day caring way too much about things I cannot actually control.

Will anyone join Lavish? Is it good enough? The film group I started over 5 years ago in the lowest moments of my life feel less like a little creative family and more like a game for egos and clout, and it hit me harder than I wanted to admit.

None of the facts really changed. The thing that kept shifting was the story in my head.  And it brought me back to something i've been thinking about a lot this past year.

There is a constant narrator in our heads.

Sometimes it sounds like a coach. Sometimes it sounds more like a critic, or an enemy. Most of the time its just sitting there spinning, working overtime filling in the gaps around everything that's happening, assigning meaning and deciding what it says about who we are.

I started digging into stoicism late last year.  Specially I started with what most people probably start with... Marcus Aurelius's Meditations. I'm beginning to read it again.  I've been sitting with this idea that Derren Brown expressed best when he said "the way our lives are shaped less by what happens and more by the stories we attach to what happens." That feels very true for how I live day to day, online and off.

Today we are soaked in a certain kind of story about happiness.

Set huge goals. Believe in yourself. Work harder. Manifest it. The universe will somehow line up behind your vision.

It sounds empowering. It also quietly sneaks in something else. If you do not hit the goal, if the universe does not magically rearrange itself, that must be your fault. You did not hustle enough. You did not believe enough. You failed. It's funny how similar this is to my thoughts around "faith" as a teenager. The idea the very same outcomes were because God loved you and wanted to reward you, or wanted to punish you.  The common thread is blame, guilt, and outcome based happiness. 

Anyway stoicism comes from a much older world, I believe they used dialup at the time. They also had emperors, plagues, wars, short lifespans. Marcus Aurelius was writing his private notes to himself while leading an empire through nonstop military conflict and a disease that would kill millions. That is the setting where a lot of this thinking was born, prior to Marcus Aurelius. 

In that world, the story "everything will go my way if I grind hard enough" would just be obviously wrong. People got sick. People died. Armies lost battles. You could be the most powerful man alive and your life was still fragile.

So Stoics framed the question differently. Instead of chasing some distant state called "happiness," or some external outcome, they were interested in a quieter target. They were interested in less anxiety, less needless disturbance, less getting thrown around by every gust of fortune. A calmer mind in the middle of chaos.

Not a ladder to the top. More like learning how to stand where you are without falling over every time something shifts. Its impressive. I get bent out of sorts when an hour of my day is thrown off, so you can see one of the reasons I find Stoicism so interesting.

One of the core Stoic ideas is amazingly simple and annoyingly hard to live by is the idea that there are things you can choose and there are things you cannot.

Your thoughts, your actions, the story you tell yourself about what happens to you. Not your genetics, the past, other people's choices, random events, whether a project goes viral or sinks without a ripple.

They would say: put everything in your life into two buckets.

Then focus your energy on Bucket 1 and practice letting Bucket 2 be what it is.

This is where the "stories we tell ourselves" part shows up. Because between an event and your reaction sits a tiny gap where the story gets written.

You send a message and someone leaves you on read.
 Story A: "They hate me. I am annoying. I should stop reaching out to people."
 Story B: "They are probably busy. I will give it time or follow up later."

Same event. Two completely different inner worlds.

Stoicism does not say the event is nothing. It just says the weight it has inside you is coming from the story you wrapped around it.

Derren Brown talks about this from the angle of magic and hypnosis. A trick works because your brain fills gaps, assumes causes, invents meaning. You walk away with a story about what you saw, and that story can be wildly different from what actually happened.

Marcus is doing a version of that on himself.

He is surrounded by war, illness, pressure, grief. In the middle of that he writes short reminders:

These pages were not branding. He never meant them to be published.  He wasn't looking to go viral. This was an emperor trying to keep his head straight. Trying to rewrite his own internal script so he did not drown in anger, fear, or ego.

I find that strangely comforting. If the most powerful person on the planet needed to sit and talk himself through the day, I do not feel so weird that I need to do the same.

There is a version of self help that says: "Just change your story to a positive one."

Sometimes that kind of reframe can be useful. Other times it is just spray paint over a crack in the wall. You still feel hurt, but now you also feel like you are failing at optimism.

Stoicism is more blunt than that.

Bad things happen. People act unfairly. You will suffer. You will lose people you love.

The point is not to pretend that is fine. The point is to ask:
 What part of this is actually mine to carry, respond to, or change?
 What part is outside my reach, however much I obsess over it?

And right in the middle of that question sits the story you tell about yourself.

The story "this happened because I am worthless" is not required by reality. It is an extra layer, glued on by habit, upbringing, trauma, culture, algorithms, whatever.

Stoicism is more interested in peeling that off than in flooding it with glittery affirmations.

Here are a few small Stoic flavored habits I am experimenting with when my brain starts spinning narratives:

1. Name the story, not just the feeling
Instead of only "I feel anxious," I try to write or say:
"I am telling myself a story that if this project or this new feature fails, it means I am not cut out for this."

Putting the story into words shows you where the cut is deeper than the event.

2. Use the two buckets
Ask: "Which part here is mine?"

Mine: how much effort and honesty I put into the work, whether I reach out to someone, how I speak to people, whether I show up again after a setback.

Not mine: whether the algorithm shows my post to anyone, whether someone else approves,  whether we hit our 1000 users goal for the end of the year, whether anyone knows that I made worked on that film project. 

If I notice I am obsessing about the second group, that is a hint that the story needs editing.

3. Borrow Marcus's tone
Marcus often writes to himself like a tired but kind coach. It is not a hype man voice. It reads more like: "Yes, this is hard. You have handled hard things before. Stay with what is yours to do."

When my inner critic starts screaming, switching into that kind of inner monologue helps. Simple, honest, a bit stern, but not cruel.

4. Let feelings be real, then choose the next move
Stoicism is not about pretending you are not sad, angry, or scared. It is about not letting those feelings run the whole story.

"I am hurt this person forgot me" can be true.
 The add-on "nobody ever cares about me" is the story.

Feel the first part. Gently question the second. Then pick a small action that belongs to you: send a message, take a walk, work on something that matters.

On a platform like Lavish Made, or any place where we share ourselves, these inner stories multiply.

Stoicism does not solve everything, but it gives a different way to stand inside those moments. It says:

There is the raw fact of what you see on the screen.
 Then there is the story you are spinning about what it means.

You can spend some time learning to listen to, question, and rewrite that inner narration.

Stoicism will not fix any of that. It will not suddenly make Lavish explode with people, or turn a messy film group into a perfect creative family. The facts are still the facts. At best it gives me a different way to stand inside them. To notice: here is what is mine, here is what is not. Here is what actually happened, here is the part my narrator is adding on top.

On a good day I can see that the story “Lavish is failing, the film group is ruined, you are bad at all of this” is just that: a story. A loud one, sure, but still a story. There are other honest stories available, ones that admit the disappointment without turning it into a verdict on who I am.

That is part of why I wanted to write this here. Lavish, hopefully, can be a place where we are a little more honest about those scripts running under everything we post. The fear, the ego, the hope, the hunger to be seen, and also the quiet wish to be less rattled by all of it.

Stoicism is not about muting that narrator forever. It is about learning to listen for when it starts lying. You are not only what happens to you, and you are not only the harshest thoughts you have about what happens to you. You are the one who notices. You are the one holding the pen. And on days like this, that is enough to start writing a slightly kinder, slightly truer story.