Marcus Aurelius wrote those words nearly two thousand years ago, yet I find myself returning to them more often now at sixty-four than I ever did during my working years. Back then, I thought I understood what he meant. I’d nod along, maybe even quote it to others during particularly stressful negotiations. But I didn’t really get it, not in my bones.
It took retirement to teach me the difference between knowing something intellectually and living it. When you spend decades building a reputation as the calm operator who keeps people talking when tensions spike, you think you’ve mastered your mind. You haven’t. You’ve just gotten good at performing calmness while your thoughts race ahead, calculating angles and managing outcomes.
The real test comes when those external events you once managed disappear. When the meetings end, the deals close for good, and you’re left with just your mind and whatever strength you’ve actually built.
The illusion of control we all maintain
Most of us spend our lives convinced we’re steering the ship. We make plans, manage risks, influence outcomes. We point to our successes as proof of our control. But watch what happens when something genuinely unexpected occurs. A diagnosis. A market crash. A pandemic. Suddenly, all that control evaporates like morning mist.
I learned early in my career that staying calm often beats getting emotional in conflict. But I mistook that tactical advantage for actual mental mastery. There’s a difference between suppressing your reactions because it gives you leverage and genuinely maintaining sovereignty over your mental state. The first is a performance. The second is freedom.
During my working years, I’d sit across from someone losing their composure and feel superior. Look at me, unruffled while they spiral. But my calm was conditional. It depended on having a role to play, a game to win, an identity to protect. Remove those external scaffolds, as retirement does, and you discover whether you actually have power over your mind or whether you were just good at managing appearances.
Why we chase external validation
Here’s what I think Marcus Aurelius understood that took me six decades to grasp: we exhaust ourselves trying to control what happens to us because we’ve tied our peace of mind to external outcomes. Your boss’s opinion becomes your mood. Your investment portfolio becomes your security. Your reputation becomes your worth.
I spent years in rooms where status and leverage mattered more than truth. You learn to read the invisible currents, to spot who has real power versus who’s posturing. But you also learn to need those dynamics. They tell you who you are, where you stand, whether you matter.
In retirement, I’ve had to face how much self-worth was tied to usefulness and competence. When nobody needs your expertise anymore, when your opinion stops mattering in those rooms, you either crumble or you finally learn what the emperor meant. The strength isn’t in controlling outcomes. It’s in recognizing that your mental state doesn’t have to depend on them.
Many people never make this transition. They spend their retirement bitter about losing influence, anxious about preserving wealth, desperate to maintain relevance. They’re still trying to control external events, only now with diminishing power to do so. The gap between what they want to control and what they can control becomes their suffering.
The practice of mental sovereignty
So how do you actually develop power over your mind? It’s not through positive thinking or motivation. Those are just more attempts to control outcomes by controlling thoughts. Real mental sovereignty comes from something simpler and harder: acceptance of what is while choosing your response.
I’ve worked on softening my instinct to manage situations instead of being present. This sounds easy until you try it. Every fiber of your being wants to strategize, to influence, to shape what’s happening. But there’s profound strength in stepping back and saying: this is what’s occurring, I cannot control it, I can only control how I engage with it.
Treating patience as a form of power that most people underuse has become my practice. Not passive waiting, but active choice. When someone cuts you off in traffic, when the doctor’s appointment runs late, when your adult children make decisions you disagree with, you have a choice. You can let these external events colonize your mind, or you can maintain sovereignty over your internal state.
This isn’t about becoming emotionless or indifferent. It’s about recognizing where your actual power lies. You can’t make your kids listen to your advice, but you can choose whether their choices disturb your peace. You can’t control market volatility, but you can control whether you check your portfolio obsessively. You can’t stop aging, but you can control whether you let each birthday diminish your spirit.
The paradox of letting go
Here’s what nobody tells you about releasing control: it actually increases your influence. When you stop trying to force outcomes, people sense it. They relax around you. They open up. They’re more likely to hear what you have to say because you’re not trying to make them hear it.
I see this with my adult children now. The less I push my wisdom on them, the more they seek it out. The less I try to manage their problems, the more they trust me with them. By accepting that I have no control over their choices, I’ve gained something more valuable: genuine connection uncomplicated by manipulation.
This extends to every relationship, every interaction. When you stop needing specific outcomes from people, you start seeing them clearly. You notice the fear behind the bluster, the insecurity behind the status games, the pain behind the rigid positions. You can engage with what’s actually there instead of what you need to be there.
Closing thoughts
Marcus Aurelius ran an empire, yet he understood that his real power was internal. He faced plagues, wars, and betrayals, but maintained that the only true strength comes from recognizing what you can and cannot control.
After a lifetime of negotiating, strategizing, and managing outcomes, I’m finally learning what he meant. The external events will keep coming. Some pleasant, some painful, most simply neutral. Your promotion or layoff, your diagnosis or clean bill of health, your recognition or invisibility. These things will happen regardless of your preferences.
But your mind? That’s yours if you claim it. Not through force or discipline, but through the simple recognition that you don’t have to let external events determine your internal state. You can observe what happens without being consumed by it. You can respond without being reactive. You can engage without being enslaved.
The strength Marcus Aurelius promised isn’t the strength to change what happens to you. It’s the strength to remain yourself regardless of what happens. And that strength, I’m discovering in my sixth decade, is the only kind that actually matters.
