How to Be Freer Than a King

We often imagine that freedom means having more power, more money, or fewer people telling us what to do. But none of that makes us free if we cannot control ourselves. 💡 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 26th, 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/ 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.

• 0:15Ryan Holiday?

  How to be freer than a king. One was a slave. The other was the most powerful man in the world. One lived with almost nothing. The other ruled from a palace in Rome. Yet the Stoic philosopher Epictetus was free, while the emperor Nero was trapped. Nero could command armies, order executions, and bend an empire to his will. But he could not govern himself. He was ruled by his appetites, his anger, his vanity, and his fear. Epictetus possessed no throne, no fortune, no political power. For the first 30 years of his life, he did not even possess legal freedom. But through discipline, he learned to govern his judgments, his desires, and his actions.

• 1:00Ryan Holiday?

  Epictetus's famous question was, "Who is your master?" Nero should not have had one, but sadly, he did. He was a slave to his worst impulses. Meanwhile, the literal slave became master of himself. "Men of intemperate minds cannot be free," Edmund Burke observed. "Their passions forge their fetters." We often imagine that freedom means having more power, more money, fewer people telling us what to do. But none of that makes us free if we cannot control ourselves. The person who must concede every craving is not free. The person who explodes whenever they are angry is not free. The person who needs applause, attention, or approval is not free.

• 1:45Ryan Holiday?

  You can rule an empire and still live in chains. You can own almost nothing and still be freer than a king. Freedom for the Stoics is mastering yourself and how you respond to fate. As we've said, Epictetus knew this better than anybody. He spent 30 years as a slave, surrounded by corruption and power he couldn't touch. But to be truly free, he said, "We have to understand what we can control and what we can't, and that are choices and how we respond." And this month, we are doing a deep dive into Epictetus. Here at Daily Stoic, we're calling it Epictetus Month. We're reading Epictetus's discourses together. We've got this digital guide, this course

• 2:26Ryan Holiday?

  that explains Epictetus's teaching that guides you through it. And then we're doing an awesome live Q and A here in just a couple of days, on August 27. Right now, if you purchase a copy of Epictetus's discourses from us and the Painted Porch, you'll get the Epictetus Digital Guide for 30% off. You can also bundle it with a copy of Meditations 2. Epictetus had another question. How long will you wait to demand the best of yourself? How long are you going to wait until you read Epictetus? Let's do it together this month. Sign up right now at dailystoic.com/epictetuscourse. And of course, if you sign up for Daily Stoic Life, you get this course and all the courses we do here at Daily Stoic included in that. That's dailystoiclife.com.