I think the point being made is that no matter how others try to make you feel, you are still in control of how you react to their actions If you let others control how you feel, then you lose your autonomy and ability to have independent thought(s).

@snytiger6 Not how I read it. It says my thoughts caused my anger but it was the person. If you read my analogy then my autonomy and independent thought would supposedly make me happy about war and racism because I shouldn't let the people who fight wars or are racist keep me from having independent thoughts. According to good old Epictetus you should ignore all the bad in the world...don't let it control you! It isn't bad, it's your own thoughts. Good luck with that

@lerlo You can control how you respond to others who are being offensive. When I was younger, I had a short temper and got offended easily, and I often let others influence my behavior and thought it was them, not me, that resulted in my betting angry. As an adult, I realized that I was giving away control over my own actions to them. I simply chose to stop reacting with anger. By "simply chose", I don't mean it was an easy change, as I had to change my "conditioning" to react when provoked.

I simply no longer care to react in negative ways. By making the choice, others find it extremely difficult to try to control how I react to them, and because they fail to provoke me, they simply move on to someone whose actions they can influence.

The bottom line is that most people simply are not important enough in life to allow them to provoke me or to hurt my feelings. They are not important. Their views are not important and don't actually apply to me, no matter how much they might try to insist that their views are valid. Their insistence is an attempt to control how I feel about myself.

I am the only person who can actually control how I feel about myself, and I chose to not let others have all that much influence over how I feel about myself.