I built this site for myself. For years I read about the Stoic division between what is yours and what is not, and I did not get any better at it.
Reading about the dichotomy of control is easy. Applying it on an ordinary Tuesday, when a message lands badly or a plan falls apart, is not. I looked for somewhere to practise it the way you practise a language or an instrument: a little at a time, with an answer straight away. I could not find one, so I built it.
It started as a list of fifty examples in Dutch, which I called the two boxes: yours and not yours. The list kept growing, into propositions, situations, cuts and historical cases, and eventually into this site, in English and Dutch.
Many people today have more than any generation before them and are still not content, distracted from morning to night. The Stoics wrote for exactly that condition. This site does not fix it, but it offers a counterweight: a few minutes in which you sort what is yours from what is not, instead of scrolling. It is not a course you finish. Nobody ever is finished.
The texts are written with the help of AI and then checked against the ancient sources: every story, every quotation, every date. Quotations are labelled by how close they stay to the original text. When a check turns up a mistake, it gets corrected.
There are no accounts, no advertising and no tracking of what you answer. Your progress stays on your own device. The site does not sell a course, a coaching programme or a book. Running it costs little money and mostly time. You can donate a few euros if it helps you, but the site does not depend on it.
One person, not a philosopher by profession, who uses the site himself. I prefer to keep my name out of it: the teaching is two thousand years old and does not need a face. Questions, corrections and suggestions are welcome at hello (at) yoursnotyours.com.
Yours, Not Yours · A Stoic practice ground · All cases · About this site · Questions or suggestions