The Daily Stoic - 8 Lessons From Epictetus (To Live A Stoic Life)

Episode Date: May 15, 2022

Born a slave, Epictetus spent the first 30 years of his life in chains.Epictetus never actually wrote anything down. It is through his student Arrian that we have a written account of his lessons. And if everyone from Emperors to war heros have been grateful as they found guidance, solace and strength in Epictetus’ lessons, then there must be something for us. But only if we choose to.Learn more about Epictetus: https://dailystoic.com/Epictetus/ The Jordan Harbinger Show is one of the most interesting podcasts on the web, with guests like Kobe Bryant, Mark Manson, Eric Schmidt, and more. Listen to one of Ryan's episodes right now (1, 2), and subscribe to the Jordan Harbinger Show today.MUD WTR is a coffee alternative with 4 adaptogenic mushrooms and ayurvedic herbs with 1/7th the caffeine of a cup of coffee. Go to mudwtr.com/STOIC and use code STOIC to get 15% off your first purchase.Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemailCheck 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.

Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoic podcast early and add free on Amazon music. Download the app today. Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoic. Each weekday, we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, something to help you live up to those four Stoic virtues of courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom. And then here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview Stoic philosophers, we explore at length how these Stoic ideas can be applied to our actual lives and the challenging issues of our time. Here on the weekend, when you have a little bit more space when things have slowed down, be sure to take some time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with your journal, and most

importantly to prepare for what the week ahead may bring. Epic Titus is born a slave. He spends 30 years of his life in chains, and it's not like nice slavery. His leg is broken. Roman slaves had very little in the way of rights, and he happened to be a slave in Neuros Court, where he witnessed deprav gravity and insanity and all sorts of things. And yet, he became this fantastic, brilliant world-changing philosopher. In fact, what I think so fascinating about Epic Titus is that, although he is powerless, his writings resonate and influence the powerful, right? We don't know about his interactions with Nero,

but we know that it's Epic Titus writings, well actually not writings, it was his lectures that are written down by his student Aryan, but that goes on to find its way to Marcus Aurelius, change the world through meditations, it also finds its way to Admiral Stockdale, who we've talked about many times, all of which is to say, if those two men, Stockdale and Mark's realists, many, many, many in between, could learn from epithetists so can we. And in today's episode, we're gonna talk

about what epithetists can teach us, about living a stoic life. You have to be willing to look stupid. That's what epithetists says. He says, if you wish to improve, you must be willing to look clueless or stupid about some things. I think that means one, you have to be willing

to ask dumb questions. If you don't ask, you can't learn. If you're afraid of what other people think, you'll never learn what you don't know. But I think the other part is you have to be willing to not care about stuff, right? To be like, I don't care about that. I'm not following that.

I'm out of touch about that. That's one part. Then I think the other part is you have to be willing to be bad at stuff, right? To be at the beginner stages, to be embarrassingly figuring it out, to be mediocre, to be in the process of rediscovering or changing or growing. So if you want to improve the stokes, that you have to be willing to look stupid, to look embarrassed, to be ridiculous, to not be good, because that's how you get from where you are to where you want to go. The whole thing boils down to this one idea. There's some stuff that's up to us,

and some stuff that's not up to us. Epic Titus says, our chief task in life is, is this up to me, or is this not up to me? And I know that seems really basic, but the truth is most of us, most people spend most of their time on stuff that's not up to them, right? We complain about stuff, we wish stuff was otherwise, we spent our time worrying about the future or regretting the past, and none of that is energy spent towards what we actually control, which is right now, what's right in front of us. So that's the idea. Is this up to me?

Is this not up to me? And this dichotomy of control, as the stoic say, what really the dichotomy of control is about, is resource allocation. Are you going to spend your time and energy on things that are up to you, or things that are not up to you? Every second you spend on something that's not up to you is wasted, and at least if you spend it on something

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App. Are you putting in the work? That's the question. You hear people say stuff like, I'm going to trust my gut on this one or I'm going to trust my instincts. But the still should say, have you actually done the work to trust those instincts? Have you put in the training and the study and asked the questions and learned from the masters enough that you deserve to do that. A lot of people's instincts lead them to very dark, screwed up places. So it's not simply a matter of trusting your gut. It's about training and putting in the work so your gut is worth trusting.

Epictetus says, the key is to get to a place where when something happens you go, ah, this is exactly what I trained for, right? But a lot of people don't get there. They just want to be able to trust their gut. They just want to go with their emotions. They just want to justify what they're thinking about doing anyway by saying, ah this is what the universe wants. No, you have to put in the work. You don't just magically get there and it's a lifelong journey. It has to be where else anyone would do it. Long journey, it has to be or else anyone would do it. Don't focus on how far you've come. Focus on how far you have left to go.

Epic Titus says there is nothing less philosophical than someone who puts on errors about their progress, about their study of wisdom, about their breakthroughs. Marcus, it's really, even as an old man was saying, you're still a long way off from being a philosopher. This is a life-long pursuit. If you focus on how far you've come, you get arrogant in complacent. If you focus on how far you have left to go, all the things you have left to learn,

then you get better. A great physicist once said that, as our island of knowledge grows, so does the shoreline of ignorance. That's true for self-improvement too. As you get better, you should be seeing constantly all the things that you have left to get better in. So don't get complacent, don't get egotistical, focus on how far you have left to go.

Moving forward begins with one thing, always acceptance. If you're fighting it, if you're denying it, if you're blaming about it, you won't be able to make progress, you won't be able to do anything with it, and you certainly won't be able to move on. That's why for the Stoics, this idea of the art of acquiescence was sort of step one, but step two is a more fatie, a love of it. You not only don't run from it, you embrace it. You say, I don't have to do this, I get to do this. You don't say it's unfortunate that this happened to me

as Mark's realist. Did you say it's fortunate that this happened to me. You accept it, you run towards it and you use it, and that's how you move forward. You gotta blow your own nose. To me, that's the core idea of stoicism. Nobody's coming to save you. Nobody can handle this for you.

You're not magically going to get better on your own. Your problems aren't going to solve themselves on their own. You've got to do it. You've got to make the changes. If you want to be beautiful epictetus, make beautiful choices. Work on getting better. Focus on getting better. Focus on what you can do

today. That's how you solve your problem. Step by step action by action. As Mark has really said, that's how we improve day by day by making the little choices, the little actions, not by waiting for other people to save us, but by blowing our own nose, getting active in our own rescue. own nose getting active in our own rescue. EpicTitus says, who cares that you read? What matters is what you read. Senika talks about how it's not about how many books you read in your life. It's whether you're digesting the works

of the master thinkers. So it's good that you want to be a reader and you should read and you should spend a lot of time reading, but it's not about quantity, it's about quality. Read great writers. My rule is, I want to read books that have changed people's lives, one, and two, those tend to be older books, right? Books that have stood the test of time. And I know this is crazy as someone who puts out new books, but I have a bias towards old books, books that have stood the test of time that were relevant 100 years ago, a thousand years ago, books that have stood the test of time are likely going to hold up in the

future and you won't have wasted your time reading them. That you want to read is great, but it matters what you read and how you read, not just that you're shoving this information down your goal. If you want some more tips on reading, check out the Daily Stoke Reading Challenge at dailystoke.com slash reading. at the DailyStoke Reading Challenge at dailystoke.com slash reading. Epic Titus tells us that every situation has two handles. He says there's the handle that will bear weight and the handle that won't. He says, you could look at it as your brother has wronged you, he screwed you over, he's hurt you, or you could say, I only have one brother.

This is my brother. I'm going to forgive this person. I'm going to be patient. I'm going to be better. We are going to be better for having gone through this. So this idea that every situation you can choose to see it as the way that disempowers you, that makes you the victim, or you can choose to see it as the opportunity for growth, as the thing that will make you better, as the thing that will make you stronger for having to wrestle with. So I just love this idea, and it comes from a

person who's not speaking about this idly like you and I are so privileged compared to epictetus who's born a slave in Rome. He's been 30 years in slavery, but he doesn't see this as a huge disadvantage. He sees it as a learning experience. He sees it as a fate that he's struggling with that's making him stronger. He says you've been paired with a tough opponent and this is what's making you Olympic class material. That's epictetus seeing the right handle in his own situation. So whatever you experience today, think about this. This has two handles. Which one am I going to pick?

The one that will bear weight, that will make me better, or the one that won't bear weight, that will make me worse. Thanks so much for listening to the Daily Stoke Podcast. If you don't know this, you can get these delivered to you via email every day. Check it out at dailystoke.com slash email. Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoke early and ad free on Amazon Music, download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen early and add free with Wondery Plus in Apple podcasts. Hey there listeners, while we take a little break here, I want to tell you about another podcast that I think you'll like.

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