This is Your Kingdom. Will You Rule It? | Try The Other Handle

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. Yet what philosophy helped Epictetus come to understand was that it was actually Nero and the other ‘powerful’ men and women of the time who were the slaves. They were the ones who had been acquired–by ambition, by desire, by aversions, by insecurities, by money, by fame.---And with today's Daily Stoic Journal excerpt reading, Ryan discusses the importance of working to see the two courses of thought and action that you can take in any given situation, and striving to pick the right one.📚 If you purchase The Girl Who Would Be Free, we are giving you 75% OFF of The Boy Who Would Be King! We have signed and personalized copies available at the Daily Stoic Store and The Painted Porch, so don’t miss out on this fantastic deal!✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail📱 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. Each day, we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, illustrated with stories from history, current events, and literature to help you be better at what you do. And at the beginning of the week, we try to do a deeper dive, setting a kind of Stoic intention for the week, something to meditate on, something to think on, something to leave you with, to journal about, whatever it is you happen to be doing. So let's get into it.

• 0:41Ryan Holiday?

  This is your kingdom. Will you rule 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." Yet what philosophy helped Epictetus come to understand was that it was actually Nero and the other powerful men and women of the time who were the slaves. They were the ones who had been acquired by ambition, by desire, by aversions, by insecurities, by money, by fame. All of us were born with freedom of choice, but many of us relinquished this power in favor of much more superficial things.

• 1:24Ryan Holiday?

  Enslavement, the horrible torture that Epictetus underwent, the lifelong disability that followed it, none of this actually inhibited the inherent power that any of us have. "Did you injure your mind?" the father says to young Epictetus in The Girl Who Would Be Free. "No," Epictetus replies. "Was your soul hurt?" "No," again. "Was your sense of right and wrong affected?" "No." "Then I need you to focus more on who controls the empire between your ears," comes the Stoic wisdom, "and less on what happened to your leg." And later in the book, Marcus Aurelius tries to grant poor little Epictetus any favor that they like. But there's nothing the king can possibly do.

• 2:07Ryan Holiday?

  Epictetus is already perfectly free and all powerful. 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? Will we free ourselves through our freedom of choice? Or will we hand that freedom over to the mob, to our urges, to our fears? And that's the question of your life right there. Answer it. Right. Actually, my fable about Epictetus's life, The Girl Who Would Be Free, celebrates its first anniversary this month.

• 2:51Ryan Holiday?

  The Girl Who Would Be Free follows my other book, The Boy Who Would Be King, about Marcus Aurelius. And the idea is that I wanted to illustrate the incredible lives and the journeys of these two philosophers on their way to their own unique and inspiring greatness. Both books are for all ages, but they're especially good if you're trying to teach Stoicism to someone younger in your life. And right now, if you buy one of them, you can get the other for 70% off in the Daily Stoic store. Just go to dailystoic.com/kids. Check it out, and I'll link to that in today's show notes.

• 3:35Ryan Holiday?

  Try the other handle. Epictetus offered a powerful tool in his handbook, The Incoridion, which the Stoics use as an exercise in decision-making about difficult events. Everything, Epictetus says, has two interpretations or handles by which it can be grabbed, one that will make it harder, one that will make it easier. Do you take offense? Or do you focus on a common ground? Do you focus on all that's gone wrong or what has gone right? Ask yourself these questions about everything you see and feel. Try to always grab the right handle. That's from this week's entry in the Daily Stoic Journal. Let's listen to Epictetus drill down on this. "Every event has two handles," he says, "one by which it can be carried and one by which it can't.

• 4:19Ryan Holiday?

  If your brother does you wrong, don't grab it by its wrongdoing, because this is the handle incapable of lifting it. Instead, use the other, that he is your brother, that you were raised together, and then you have hold of the handle that it carries." This is Epictetus in Coridion 43. And then he says in Discourses 4:1, "No, it is events that give rise to fear. When another has power over them or can prevent it, that a person becomes able to inspire fear. How is the fortress destroyed? Not by iron or fire, but by judgments. And it is here that we must begin, and it is from this front that we must seize the fortress and throw out the tyrants." So this idea of grabbing things by the handle. In fact, there's this interesting list, you can Google it.

• 5:02Ryan Holiday?

  Thomas Jefferson wrote a bunch of like rules for, for one of his young relatives. And he says somewhat elusively, he says, you know, "always grab things by their smooth handle." And I think it was Donald Robertson who pointed out to me that he's referring to Epictetus grabbing by the right handle, instead of the rough handle, grab the smooth handle. The point being, stuff happens. Are you going to try to say, "This was done to me," or are you going to say, "This is done for me"? Are you going to say, "Look at all I've lost," or are you going to say, "Look at all I've gained"? As Epictetus says, you're going to say, "Look at my brother, what did he do? What an asshole." Or are you going to say, "This is my brother, I love him, he would never hurt me on purpose"? You grab the handle that makes you stronger, the one that gives you agency, not the one that strips you of agency.

• 5:46Ryan Holiday?

  You grab the one that gives you hope, not the one that strips you of hope. You grab the one that gives you a path forward, not the one that freezes you hopelessly in place. What's the right handle? That's what we're thinking about. And every situation has a handle. And I, are you going to get mad? Are you going to use it as an opportunity? I think about this with my kids. They do something, am I going to lose my temper and show them that I lose my temper and that I should be afraid? They should be afraid of me, or that they should hide things from me? Or am I going to use it as a chance to? Talk to them to teach them something. Famously, the story of George Washington and the cherry trees, teaching this lesson. His father catches him chopping down the cherry tree. He asks who does it? George Washington tells the truth. His father could be angry.

• 6:28Ryan Holiday?

  He just has a confession from his son that he chopped down a priceless cherry tree. Instead, the moral of the story is, I'm glad that you told me the truth and you can trust me, I'm not going to punish you for having told me the truth. I'd rather you chop down my trees than tell a lie. Right? What handle are you going to choose as a parent, as a teacher, as a boss? And by grabbing the right handle versus the wrong handle, are you making the relationship stronger, better, based on trust, based on aligned incentives, based on shared history? Or by grabbing the wrong handle, are you showing them to lie? Are you showing them to hide things? Are you showing them that you should be feared, that you should be ignored, that you can't be taken seriously, that you're not really their ally or friend? Right?

• 7:13Ryan Holiday?

  The handle we choose matters. Even Epictetus, you've got to imagine, he's trapped in slavery. It's horrible. He spends the first 30 years of his life that way. Does he choose to see this as the worst thing that could have possibly happened, or does he learn from it? Even the so-called Stockdale paradox. And he says, I knew I would survive. And if I did, I would turn this into the very best thing that happened to me. That's choosing to grab the right handle. That's choosing to grab the smooth handle, which is what you must do, which is what we must all do in any and all situations. And that's it for me today. I'm exhausted. I've just spent all day recording videos. You hear my voice going out a little bit, but I'm trying to tell myself, this is one day among many. This is making me stronger. I'm getting better for it.

• 7:57Ryan Holiday?

  I'm crossing off stuff in my list and I can focus on what I really need to be doing. I'm going to try to grab the good handle today. So should you. Talk soon.