How to be a stoic

From the New Yorker, Elif Batuman wrote a short piece on how she discovered stoicism:

When a cabdriver lied about a route, or a shopkeeper shortchanged me, I felt that it was my fault, for speaking Turkish with an accent, or for being part of an élite. And, if I pretended not to notice these slights, wasn’t I proving that I really was a disengaged, privileged oppressor? Epictetus shook me from these thoughts with this simple exercise: “Starting with things of little value—a bit of spilled oil, a little stolen wine—repeat to yourself: ‘For such a small price, I buy tranquillity.’ ”

My mind tends to go to images of monks in brown robes standing in the rain when I think of stoicism, but I think this is a really, really helpful frame of mind. It's complementary to the strategy of remembering what you have control over right now.