Stoic-like quote: Control of your experiences

I'm fairly interested in the science of focus, and methods to improve it. I suppose I feel, like we all do, that I'm not good enough at concentrating. I'll write more on this later.

Yesterday, I was reading an old but fascinating article on focus in the New York Times. The quote at the end has a particularly Stoic ring to it:

“People don’t understand that attention is a finite resource, like money,” she said. “Do you want to invest your cognitive cash on endless Twittering or Net surfing or couch potatoing? You’re constantly making choices, and your choices determine your experience, just as William James said.”

During her cancer treatment several years ago, Ms. Gallagher said, she managed to remain relatively cheerful by keeping in mind James’s mantra as well as a line from Milton: “The mind is its own place, and in itself/ Can make a heav'n of hell, a hell of heav'n.”

“When I woke up in the morning,” Ms. Gallagher said, “I’d ask myself: Do you want to lie here paying attention to the very good chance you’ll die and leave your children motherless, or do you want to get up and wash your face and pay attention to your work and your family and your friends? Hell or heaven — it’s your choice.”

There's a lot of this kind of advice out there. The Stoics certainly didn't have a monopoly on emphasizing the primacy of our own outlook. The ubiquity of it shows how fundamental and useful this sort of thinking can be.