Whether you like the New England Patriots or not, it’s difficult to argue with two inescapable conclusions: One, they win a lot. Two, they manage to do it with players that other teams either overlooked or plain failed with.

Tom Brady was drafted in the sixth round. Randy Moss never realized his full potential in Minneapolis. Julian Edelman wasn’t invited to the NFL Combine. Mike Vrabel spent four unremarkable seasons in Pittsburgh before being traded to the Patriots. What Coach Bill Belichick—a guy who has dabbled with and explored Stoicism, along with other coaches in the franchise—explains to players is this: “I don’t care how you got here. It’s what you do when you get here.” His philosophy is to play the best players. He doesn’t care what college they went to, he doesn’t care what troubles they’ve had, he doesn’t care how well they’ve done with other teams or how many years they have in the league. None of that affects his decisions. The only thing that matters is whether they are the best man for the job that week. 

And this is the key: “Whoever that is is decided by you.” 

Each of us needs to do a better job understanding this. The past is over and done. We can’t dwell on it. We can’t let it define us. No, we have to seize the present and write the future. This is what the Stoics want us to think about constantly. Do this as if it was the last thing in your life, Marcus Aurelius wrote. Concentrate like a Roman. Do your duty, he said, just as Belichick tells his players to “do your job.” 

We can’t change what happened. We can’t undo or redo what brought us to where we are today. But we do have control over what we do right now, how we respond to those circumstances. It’s decided by us whether we are going to be the best person for the job or not. So let’s do it.

P.S. This was originally sent on November 2, 2019. Sign up today for the Daily Stoic’s email and get our popular free 7-day course on Stoicism.