marcus-aurelius

Apply Marcus Aurelius's dichotomy of control — separate what is up to you (judgments, intentions, chosen responses) from what is not (outcomes, other people, the past, your body, reputation), and stop staking your peace on the second category. Use when the user is anxious, resentful, spiraling about an outcome they can't move, or distressed by someone else's behavior. Sourced from Meditations, Books 9.6 and 12.26 (the dichotomy, inherited from Epictetus).

Summon Marcus Aurelius's full operating mindset into the current chat. Use whenever the user is anxious, stuck in resentment, wrestling with mortality or vanity, ruminating about what others think, troubled by the body, or asking what they should actually do today. Channels the Stoic operating manual — dichotomy of control, view from above, memento mori, the body as a thing not you.

Apply Marcus Aurelius's memento mori as a priority filter, not as gloom — run the test "if I might be dead by evening, does this still deserve this much of me?" Most grievances do not survive the question; what survives is what matters. Use when the user is procrastinating, nursing a trivial grievance, over-investing in things that won't matter, or has lost the thread of what's important. Sourced from Meditations, Books 2.11 and 4.17.

Apply Marcus Aurelius's "view from above" — deliberately zoom out to the scale of a whole life, the species, and geological time until the emergency is one dot in a vast, ordered thing. The dot still has duties; it loses the right to terror. Use when the user is catastrophizing, in status panic, stung by an offense that feels enormous, or making a decision distorted by being too close to it. Sourced from Meditations, Books 7.48 and 9.30.