The Ancient Wisdom Your Modern Mind Needs
Exploring the Stoic thread within The Journey to Phronesis
In recent weeks, I have shared components from my upcoming book, The Journey to Phronesis, moving from an overview of the book's Table of Contents to excerpts from the Introduction: Our Thinking Crisis, Part 1: Fundamentals of Systems Thinking, Part 2: Tools of a Systems Thinker, and Part 3: Applications in Life.
But underneath all the concepts, tools, and applications, there’s one more element that is woven throughout The Journey to Phronesis. The philosophical thread that ties everything across the entire book together is Stoicism.
Over the past few years, I’ve ventured down the rabbit holes of both systems thinking and ancient philosophy. Throughout this journey, I’ve realized you can’t entirely separate the question of how to live effectively in a complex world (the domain of systems) from the deeper question of how to live well (the domain of philosophy). The two are complementary.
This week, I want to explore the book through this Stoic lens. I’ll look at why I believe the ancient Stoics were, in their own way, some of our earliest systems thinkers. Like all thinkers throughout history, they grappled with complexity, trying to understand patterns and make sense of life. They left behind insights that are incredibly relevant to the challenges we face today.
The Stoics: Our Earliest Systems Thinkers?
As I’ve immersed myself, I’ve become convinced that the ancient Stoics were some of our earliest systems thinkers.
At its core, as I argue in the book, systems thinking isn’t some niche, modern invention. It’s the fundamental human skill of using structure to understand complexity. It’s a method of organizing the flood of information in front of us to make sense of a messy, interconnected world. We’ve intuitively thought in these terms throughout human history whenever we’ve tried to understand patterns, map relationships, or anticipate consequences. We are all systems thinkers, whether we realize it or not.
So, it shouldn’t be surprising that when we look closely at the writings of philosophers like Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, and Epictetus, we find echoes of modern systems concepts. They wrote extensively about the interconnectedness of things, the nature of cause and effect, the importance of understanding boundaries (like what we control versus what we don’t), and how small actions can lead to large outcomes. They may not have used terms like “feedback loops” or “emergence,” but the underlying principles are present in their attempts to understand the complex system of their world and their place within it.
This shared foundation — the timeless focus on understanding the interconnected nature of reality — is precisely what makes their philosophy so incredibly relevant for navigating the complex systems we face today.
Why Stoic Wisdom Matters for Modern Systems
The Stoics offered more than just insightful observations about how the world works; they showed how to develop a mindset for navigating it effectively. Their philosophy aimed to understand the system and teach us how to live well within it, regardless of external circumstances.
This is where their ancient wisdom becomes incredibly practical for us today. Virtues championed by the Stoics — such as recognizing our own ignorance and a relentless focus on what we can control versus what we can’t — are essential skills for dealing with the world. They help to ground us in the face of complexity, uncertainty, and the constant change that’s inherent in modern life. Without these mindsets, even the best analytical tools can lead us astray, leaving us frustrated when things don’t go according to plan.
I believe these mindset shifts are critical to successfully applying a systems approach. As a result, I explore them in two brief “Interludes” in the book. These two sections — Humility after Part 1 and Control after Part 2 — serve as necessary pauses between the main parts of the book, offering a chance to reflect on the ideas throughout.
The Liberating Power of Control
One of the most powerful and practical ideas from Stoicism, central to navigating any complex system, is the Dichotomy of Control.
I open the second interlude with an epigraph from Epictetus: “The chief task in life is simply this: to identify and separate matters so that I can say clearly to myself which are externals not under my control, and which have to do with the choices I actually control.”
I find this to be one of the most freeing ideas. When we truly internalize it — when we accept that we control only our own thoughts, judgments, and actions, not external events or outcomes — it radically shifts our focus. We can stop wasting precious mental and emotional energy agonizing over things outside of our sphere of influence.
I can look back on countless examples in my professional and personal career where this idea has been useful.
As a consultant, I often had to pitch potential clients on work. Within that effort, I could control my preparation, how well I understood my client’s needs, the quality of my presentation, and my diligence in following up. But I could not control the client’s budget, their internal decision-making process, market shifts, or whether they ultimately chose to work with me. Fretting over the ultimate “yes” or “no” drains energy; focusing on perfecting the process builds capability.
At the poker table, I could control my strategy, my understanding of the game's math, my recognition of my opponents and the game flow, and my decisions throughout each hand. I could not control the cards that were dealt, how my opponents responded, or the inevitable swings of short-term variance (luck). Accepting that variance frees you to focus solely on making the best possible decision in each moment, regardless of the immediate, uncontrollable outcome.
This Stoic principle encourages us to dedicate ourselves to fully executing our part to the best of our ability, and to accept the rest with equanimity. The mindset is so fundamental to navigating life’s inherent uncertainties effectively that I dedicated the book’s second Interlude to it.
An Excerpt from the Book: Embracing Uncertainty
To explore this idea further, here is an excerpt from that second Interlude in the book, which focuses on embracing uncertainty:
We don’t get infinite chances to start a business, find a partner, or raise a family. We only get a handful of attempts, and sometimes just one. We can do everything right – make the best decisions, follow the soundest process, work as hard as possible – and still achieve a negative outcome due to factors entirely outside of our control. Some people will be “luckier” because their variance will break in their favor. In the language of gamers, these people simply “rolled higher,” a reference to the luck of a random number generator landing on a higher number.
Often, outcomes are outside of our control, and we must develop a comfort with that uncertainty. The Stoics understood this profoundly. Their goal was not to eliminate the uncontrollable unknowns of life – an impossible task – but to cultivate an unshakeable inner peace in the face of them. The result of this understanding is not despair, but liberation. When we accept that we don’t control the outcomes, we are freed to focus entirely on the one thing we do control: our own actions and choices. This is the essence of Epictetus’s charge at the start of the chapter: to separate the external things we cannot influence from the internal choices we can.
We often cannot control the specifics of the game we play, our opponents and their strategies, or external circumstances. But we can control our own effort, our preparation, and our execution. As long as we maximize what’s within our control, we should feel good about doing our best. I always tell my daughters, “All you can do is the best you can do.” It’s my way of telling them to focus on the process and detach from the outcomes, feeling proud as long as they did their best.
The Stoics have a phrase, amor fati, which translates to a love of fate. They knew to embrace their good and bad outcomes as essential parts of life. Taking this approach to the things outside of our control in life can improve our well-being and resistance, putting us in a better state of mind to put our best foot forward and be ready to take advantage of the moments when we are on the right side of variance.
I’ll close this second interlude with some final reminders. Identify what is in your control and maximize your effort toward those things. Outside of that, accept that there will be variance that you cannot change. And finally, evaluate results over the long term, not from individual outcomes.
This Stoic wisdom, combined with the tools of systems thinking, provides a powerful path forward. It allows us to design the best possible systems for our lives – for our work, our health, and our relationships – while simultaneously embracing the reality that the final results are never guaranteed. We can be the architect of a brilliant process and still be at the mercy of chance. And that is okay.
Preorders Are Open for Two More Weeks
This connection between the analytical tools of Systems Thinking and the resilient mindset of Stoicism is what I set out to understand when I began writing this book. I found that they aren’t opposing forces. They are complementary, offering an integrated approach to navigating our complex lives. The systems lens helps us understand the “how,” while the Stoic wisdom guides the “why,” keeping us grounded when things don’t go according to plan.
Time is running out to preorder The Journey to Phronesis. The campaign closes on November 9, 2025. If any of this resonates with you, preordering the book is the most significant way you can help support my work.
You can find all the details and preorder your copy here:
Thank you again for joining me on this journey and for engaging with these ideas.
All the best,
Mike