You Don't Want To See This | The Stoic Guide To Freedom And Power (From Epictetus)

That obnoxious person. That contractor who ripped you off. That slow driver. That overly enthusiastic exercise instructor. That brusk receptionist. That clingy parent. That friend holding a grudge. That loud neighbor. They’re not exactly your favorite. They don’t exactly make your life easier. But you know what you need to remember? You need to remember that they are just doing their jobs. “Is a world without shameless people possible?” Marcus Aurelius asks in Meditations. No, it isn’t, he reminds himself. So why am I surprised to find one he says? Somebody has to be that person and this person is it.---In the first century AD, few would have argued that Epictetus was the most powerful person in Rome. Few would have argued that this lowly slave possessed any power at all–in fact, the name said it all: Epictetus means acquired one. Most of us are born into this world closer in status to Epictetus than Marcus Aurelius. We are more lowly than we are exalted. Yet each of us, as Seneca said, has access to the greatest empire, ruling over ourselves. Will we seize this kingdom? Or will we trade it away for superficial, shiny things? We free ourselves through our freedom of choice, or will we hand that freedom over to the mob, to our urges, to our fears? Grab a signed copy of Lives of the Stoics and Courage is Calling from the Daily Stoic Store. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info. 📢 Share | ⚙️ Manage Subscription

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

• 0:02Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we read a passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you in your everyday life. On Tuesdays, we take a closer look at these Stoic ideas, how we can apply them in our actual lives. Thanks for listening, and I hope you enjoy.

• 0:27Ryan Holiday?

  You don't want to see this. We have an idea, and then we sit on it. We think someone should do something, but we're afraid. We know that with a little work, a little effort, we can make it, but we can't muster the will. Emerson, the American Stoic, would say that we experience a kind of alienated majesty when we come across some idea that we thought of, but someone else brought it into existence. But that may be too generous. What we often feel is sadness and shame. That should have been me. Don't you think that's what Seneca felt when he saw other Stoics like Thrasse and Gripenis standing up to Nero with such wit and courage? We tell those stories in Lives of the Stoics. That's what Cicero felt when he learned of the conspiracy against Caesar. They didn't tell him about it because

• 1:11Ryan Holiday?

  they thought his loose lips would sink it. In fact, he tried to take credit for it after. Most of us have examples of stuff like that in our own life. Perhaps we're even wrestling with something like it right now. We know what we could do. We know what we should do. We hear what we have been called to do. But then we have to actually do it. We can't sit on it. We can't talk ourselves out of it. We can't expect someone else to do it, because eventually they will. And they'll upstage us and shame us and leave us with nothing but regret and what could have been was us. Anyways, this is one of the things I talked a lot about in Courage is Calling, especially the way Stoicism showed him what the right thing was, but then he wavered and made excuses. He vacillated. Actually, I

• 1:56Ryan Holiday?

  talk about this a lot in Lives of the Stoics also. But when I say Courage is Calling, this is what I mean. We know what we should do. The example is there. The inspiration is there. The opportunity is there. We don't do it. We make excuses. We delay. I tell the story of Florence Nightingale. She gets this call to be a nurse. It takes her like 16 years until she eventually does it. And she's lucky, I guess.

• 2:19Ryan Holiday?

  That someone didn't do it for her and that her destiny waited for, but it doesn't always wait. So anyways, if you haven't read Courage is Calling yet, it's the idea from the ancients that fortune favors the brave. I hope you check that out. And then if you want some examples of Stoics who were brave, like Thrasian, Agrippinus, and then Stoics who weren't brave enough, Seneca and Cicero, you can check out Lives of the Stoics. We've got signed copies at stoic.dailystoic.com of both.

• 3:02Ryan Holiday?

  There's probably not a better person to teach you about freedom than this guy. Almost 2,000 years ago, a Greek slave discovers philosophy and emerges the ideas from this philosophy, from Stoicism, with his own experience, the laboratory, a crucible of human experience, where he's tortured, his labor is stolen from him, he's basically used up like an animal and thrown away. I'm talking about Epictetus.

• 3:28Ryan Holiday?

  All the Stoics talk about freedom. Epictetus would have known what it really meant, and more importantly, he knew how to find it inside literal slavery. He said, "A podium and a prison are each a place, and each one of those places, we have a certain amount of freedom of will." I'm Ryan Holiday. I've written a number of books about Stoic philosophy. I've spoken about it to everyone from the NBA to the NFL, sitting senators and special forces leaders. And I want to give you some strategies for finding freedom wherever you live, whatever you do, whatever kind of life you have, from the one and only Epictetus.

• 4:02Ryan Holiday?

  You have two options. You can want things to turn out a certain way, or you could welcome them the way they happen, Epictetus says. He says, "You could want them to turn out as you want them to, or you could decide that you want them to turn out how they've turned out." For the Stoics, this is the discipline of ascent. Are you going to wish things are a certain way? Are you going to accept them as they are? That doesn't mean you accept the injustices of the world, per se, but it means if it's raining, you're happy that it's raining. If it's cloudy, you're happy that it's cloudy. If it's sunny and hot, you're happy that it's sunny and hot. If you're born short, you're happy that you're short. If you're tall, you're happy that you're born tall. You accept things as they are. You make the most of it. This is what the idea of a mor phat is, accept things,

• 4:45Ryan Holiday?

  be happy that things are the way that they are. You were given what you've been given and then get to work using it. That's what Stoicism is about.

• 4:58Ryan Holiday?

  So my favorite thing about Epictetus is he's born a slave and he finds himself a slave in the court of Nero. So here you have this guy, he has no power, no freedom amidst incredible wealth, power, and opulence. But he comes to realize, watching how people act in Nero's court, that these supposedly free people aren't nearly as free as he thinks. He watches a man suck up to Nero's cobbler. He's brown-nosing the guy who makes Nero's shoes because he wants to get in Nero's favor. One man comes to Nero and says, "I'm down to my last million dollars." And then Nero says, "Oh, my God, how can you bear it?" Epictetus realizes, although he's been deprived of his physical freedom, he's actually less of a slave than all of these people, who are slave to their ambitions, slave to power,

• 5:43Ryan Holiday?

  slave to keeping up, slave to impressing other people, a slave to appearances, a slave to urges or mistresses. And so Epictetus realizes that freedom comes from the inside. "Yes, people can bind us up in chains," he says. "They can't remove our power of choice. They can't change our ability to make our decisions, to set our own priorities." That's what Stoicism is actually about. And that's why the philosophy is popular, not just with Epictetus, a slave, but Marcus Aurelius, who's an emperor later in that same court.

• 6:16Ryan Holiday?

  The Stoics were fond of sports metaphors, just like we are today. Epictetus, one of the great Stoics, would say that this is what life is. He compares them to ballplayers, some version of an athlete. He says, "A ballplayer doesn't categorize a throw as good or bad. They're too busy trying to catch it and throw it back." He compares Socrates to being the ultimate athlete or ballplayer, because that's what Socrates was. Not only in the course of a discussion could he ping it back and forth, that he didn't get offended, he wasn't challenged, he would always just try to respond, but that Socrates responds to persecution, he responds to war, he responds to being doubted, he responds to all the difficulties of his life, not in thinking of whether they're good or bad,

• 7:00Ryan Holiday?

  but in how he's going to respond, how he's going to deal with them. This is the essence, then, of Stoicism. It's a very simple idea. We don't control what happens, we control how we respond to what happens. We don't control other people, we control how we respond to other people.

• 7:20Ryan Holiday?

  You can't trust appearances. Epictetus says that what studying philosophy gives you, he says, "It makes you like a money changer who can know from the way they bang a coin on the table, whether it's counterfeit or not." Stoicism is about putting every impression to the test. And as you try to make money in life, as you try to invest in life, it's not just finding the good investments, finding the good vehicles. It's about avoiding being scammed. It's about avoiding fads. It's about avoiding false promises. Marx really says you can't fall for every smooth talker. That's what Epictetus is saying. You put the impression to the test. You can trust, but you have to verify. If it seems too good to be true, whether it's an emotion or an investment,

• 8:05Ryan Holiday?

  it probably is.

• 8:11Ryan Holiday?

  Epictetus says that when you look outside yourself for approval, you have settled, you've handed over your happiness for your autonomy. And this is such a critical Stoic idea when we talk about what's in our control, what's not in our control, how you should judge yourself, whether you're getting better, whether you're a success, whether you're rich, whether you're... Whatever it is, it can't be determined by other people. What you've done is hand over your life on a platter to other people. Obviously, this is wonderful when people are celebrating you and saying you're awesome. But what happens when that turns? What happens if the crowd is wrong? What happens if the times that you're in are valuing the wrong things? So Epictetus is saying that you want to look inward. You want to create your own standards, your own scorecard for what's important to you. So a Stoic doesn't look to outside sources,

• 8:56Ryan Holiday?

  outside people, outside benchmarks for their success, for their happiness, for their self-worth. You find that internally.

• 9:07Ryan Holiday?

  One of my favorite lessons from Epictetus, he says, "It's impossible to learn that which you think you already know." Whenever I'm around people that are much better than me at something, when I'm embarrassingly bad at something, I have no fear or shame about asking really stupid questions. If I'm remotely unsure about something, I'll ask. I don't care if I look stupid, which is actually another really important lesson from Epictetus. He says if you want to improve, you have to be content. You have to be OK with looking stupid or foolish. You have to be willing to be embarrassed or to be awkward or be uncomfortable with something, or you can't get any better. I'm not afraid to ask questions. I'm not afraid to look like an idiot. I'd rather look like an idiot than chop off my hand or have something fall on me or screw it up. So that's how I think about it. I'm not afraid to ask dumb questions.

• 9:52Ryan Holiday?

  Epictetus sees power up close, and he learns something very important. He learns that most powerful people are not free at all. He says, because to be free, you have to be in control of yourself. He says, no man is free who is not master of himself. So even though Epictetus is a slave and his life is so circumscribed compared to the rich, powerful people he's owned by, who he sees every day in the palace, he knows he's actually freer, that he has a better life because he controls his urges, his desires, his thoughts. He directs his mind. He knows what he wants. He knows what's important. And if you don't know those things, it doesn't matter how rich you are. It doesn't matter how famous you are. It doesn't matter what you have, how big your platform is, how important your job is. You are not free.

• 10:37Ryan Holiday?

  You become free when you master yourself and you master your mind. Then you master your life and you master the world.

• 10:46Ryan Holiday?

  When life deals you a problem, you can complain. When you're facing a challenge, you can resent it. Or you can look at it as Epictetus did. You can say to yourself, life has paired me with a strong sparring partner, and I'm going to be better for wrestling with it, for fighting it, for beating it. And look, Epictetus isn't talking about this theoretically. He spends 30 years in Roman slavery. But he chooses to see the adversity, big and small, in his life as a challenge. So instead of being dealt an unfair advantage, he's stepping up and taking advantage of the opportunity to grow by struggling with this resistance, by wrestling with it, by sparring with it, by learning from it. And this is how we can face the adversity in our own lives.

• 11:30Ryan Holiday?

  Instead of feeling like we're unlucky, instead of feeling like we've been screwed over, we say, life dealt me something, and I'm going to be better for sparring with it.

• 11:42Ryan Holiday?

  Epictetus says, "Every situation has two handles. One will bear weight, the other won't." So what are you going to grab this by? How are you going to choose to see it? How are you going to choose to try to carry it? It's the same thing, a different perspective. Life is like that. We can look at it one way, or we can choose to look at it another way. We can choose to look at something as an obstacle, or we can choose to look at something as an opportunity. We can see chaos if we look close. We can see order if we look from afar. We can see disadvantage if we look at it one way. We could see advantage if we look the other. We can see obstacle from this perspective, opportunity from the other.

• 12:24Ryan Holiday?

  Well, actually, Epictetus talks about this. He says, you know, someone's working out, lifting weights. You don't say, "Show me your muscles." You say, "Show me what you can lift." As far as your insights go, or your breakthroughs go, or your dispuries go, or the philosophy you studied goes, that's great. But what matters is what you can do in the present moment. What matters is what you can do in moments, big and small, in your actual life.

• 12:49Speaker 01

  I would add, though, that people shouldn't expect that these ordinary contractions into negative states of mind won't keep occurring. The crucial difference between freedom and bondage is how quickly you can wake up from them, and whether you can really wake up from them.

• 13:05Ryan Holiday?

  If you want to keep your Stoicism journey going, well, that's the journey that I'm on. Every single day at this computer, I write one Stoic-inspired email that I give away totally for free to people all over the world. There's no spam. You can unsubscribe at any time, and you can sign up at dailystoic.com/email.