In a word, neither death, nor exile, nor pain, nor anything of this kind is the real cause of our doing or not doing any action, but our inward opinions and principles.

Between an event and what you do about it sits a judgement, and the judgement is doing more of the work than the event. Two people lose the same job; one treats it as a humiliation and hides, the other as an interruption and starts calling people. The circumstance was identical. What differed was what they took it to mean, and that is what moved their hands.

This is not a claim that hard things do not hurt. It is an offer: when something knocks you sideways, look for the sentence you are telling yourself about it, and ask whether it is the only one the facts allow.