| It makes you angry. It makes you depressed. It makes you scared. What watching the news these days does to you is indisputable. It disrupts your focus. It disturbs your sanity. It changes your mood. But what does it change in the real world? Well, that's much less clear, isn't it? So why are you subjecting yourself to it? Why do you continue to assume that your duty as a citizen is to watch and read about horrible stuff constantly? Seneca lived during the time of Nero. Epictetus lived in the time of Domitian. Cato's lifetime saw the fall of the Republic. Marcus Aurelius' saw the beginning of the decline of the Empire. They experienced famines and floods and wars and corruption and incompetence. The Stoics were not unfamiliar with the feelings—the dread, the disappointment, the bewilderment, the outrage—that we are feeling today. But you know what they also understood? They understood what was in their control and what wasn't, and what made a difference and what didn't. Do you think a Stoic in ancient Rome needed daily updates to know that Nero was deranged? Or that what Caesar was doing was illegal and inexcusable? Part of being a thinking and decent person is being able to discern what's going on. But part of being a discerning person is also knowing when you know enough—when more "information" is no longer helpful or even informative. You need to know that you probably already know enough. You need to understand that doomscrolling is not helping anyone or anything. Put the phone away. Get to work—where you can, on what you can. P.S. As a reminder of the Stoic practice of focusing only on what is within our control to avoid the spiral of "what-ifs," we created the Daily Stoic Anxiety Coin. It prominently features the Greek phrase "Ta eph'hemin, ta ouk eph'hemin," meaning "What is up to us, what is not up to us"—with a serpent devouring its own tail wrapping around the words. This image is known as an ouroboros, one of the oldest symbols in the world, and represents how anxiety often feeds on itself in an endless cycle, where worrying about something leads to more worry, and so on. And unlike our other medallions, the Anxiety Coin has a hole in its center so you can spin it between your fingers like a fidget to dispel nervous energy when it hits. Grab yours and take back control over your anxiety today!
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