[frubar]

>What if you were mugged?

In general, any time you point to others and say "they did this to me" you remove your own power to change the situation. You may have to be creative, but personally I never want to give others that power.

> but I don't think you can (or should) take responsibility for what you feel because you don't have control over that.

I disagree with this. I consider the mind a muscle like any other. It can be trained and taught more productive ways of thinking [1].

[1] https://web.ics.purdue.edu/~drkelly/DFWKenyonAddress2005.pdf (please ignore that the author of this speech later shot himself in the head)

[lisper]

> I never want to give others that power.

Of course you don't. But sometimes the laws of physics leave you no choice, in which case accepting that fact can save you a lot of heartache and frustration.

> I consider the mind a muscle like any other. It can be trained and taught more productive ways of thinking [1].

Of course it can. And I submit that one of those "more productive ways of thinking" is to understand the laws of physics and the constraints they impose on your agency, because if you don't do that you will be frustrated when reality doesn't live up to your expectations.

> please ignore that the author of this speech later shot himself in the head

And why should I ignore that? It seems like a pretty salient fact in the context of this conversation.

[frubar]

>But sometimes the laws of physics leave you no choice, in which case accepting that fact can save you a lot of heartache and frustration.

Different views of the world, I guess. If the laws of physics "leave me no choice" I'm personally going to still consider that my responsibility and look for ways to prevent that situation in future, if possible. Sometimes there really is nothing you could have done (e.g. fired by a scumbag boss who didn't reveal their nature until it was too late to do anything about it) but there is nearly always something you can do to respond.

>And why should I ignore that? It seems like a pretty salient fact in the context of this conversation.

I was half joking with the comment, but the non-joking part was more to say that just because this guy wasn't able to take his own advice and contain his "horrible master" doesn't mean everything he said is invalid. It's still something to strive for.

[lisper]

> I'm personally going to still consider that my responsibility and look for ways to prevent that situation in future, if possible.

I hope nothing I said gave you the impression that I would in any way disagree with that.

> It's still something to strive for.

Of course. All I'm saying is that you should not despair if you don't always achieve it.