What Commands Your Attention?

Whatever controls what we desire or dislike, Epictetus warned, becomes our master. Whatever we obey, we serve. 💡 We designed our How To Read Epictetus (A Daily Stoic Guide) http://dailystoic.com/ecourse as a personal field guide —part book club, part masterclass, part daily practice. It’s designed to help you not just read the words of Epictetus, but live them—to turn his timeless wisdom into real change in your own life and the lives of those around you. And if you get the guide before August 27th, you’ll receive a private invitation to an exclusive LIVE Q&A with Ryan Holiday, where he’ll go deep on all things Epictetus, Stoicism, and how to apply these ideas right now, in today’s world. Head to dailystoic.com/epictetuscourse http://dailystoic.com/epictetuscourse to learn more and get your book, guide, and bundle today! 👉 Get How To Read Epictetus (A Daily Stoic Guide) http://dailystoic.com/ecourse & all other Daily Stoic courses for FREE when you join Daily Stoic Life | dailystoic.com/life https://dailystoic.com/life/ 🎟️ DAILY STOIC LIVE https://www.dailystoiclive.com/| Ryan Holiday is coming to a city near you https://www.dailystoiclive.com/! Grab tickets here https://www.dailystoiclive.com/ | https://www.dailystoiclive.com/ ✉️ FREE STOIC WISDOM https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail | Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key Stoic virtues: courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world.

• 0:14Ryan Holiday?

  What commands your attention? We'd like to think we're masters of our fate, that we're in charge of our own lives. But are we? Aren't you constantly checking your phone every few minutes? Don't you crave the approval of other people? What about that pull for a drink? The lure of various temptations? Those things you know you should stop doing, but just can't seem to quit? Epictetus, who was born into slavery, told his students that the critical question of life was, "Who is my master?" Because many free, even powerful, people are actually slaves. Slaves to their ambitions, slaves to their urges,

• 0:57Ryan Holiday?

  to their procrastination, to their emotions. Today, we could add to this list: the news cycle, social media, caffeine, nicotine, pot, keeping up with the Joneses. "Whatever controls what we desire or dislike," Epictetus warned, "becomes our master. Whatever we obey, we serve." Look, if someone kidnapped you and threw you into slavery, that would be one thing. Self-imposed slavery, though, the Stoics believed was something else, something shameful. It's a surrendering of the little amount of control we have in this life. So this question was what Epictetus encouraged his students to think about, to take action on, because it truly mattered how they lived their lives,

• 1:40Ryan Holiday?

  what they let or didn't let control them. And it was important advice 2,000 years ago, and it's utterly essential today. And it's one of the things that we're exploring here in Epictetus Month. We're doing a deep dive into Epictetus, how to read Epictetus, how to understand him. We're doing a live session about it. It's awesome. I'm really looking forward to it. At the end of the month, thousands of Stoics all over the world are going to be diving into it. I'd love to have you join us. I'll throw the link into today's show notes. You get Epictetus's discourses for 50% off. Then you get invited to our session, and you can walk yourself through the module as well. You can grab the guide and join us in the course.

• 2:23Ryan Holiday?

  I'll link to that in today's show notes.