The Daily Stoic - Don’t Deprive Yourself This Fortune

Episode Date: July 23, 2025

If enslavement—the horrible torture that Epictetus experienced, the lifelong disability that followed it—didn’t touch his power over himself, what excuse do the rest of us have?💡 We designed our How To Read Epictetus (A Daily Stoic Guide) 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 July 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 to learn more and get your book, guide, and bundle today!👉 Get How To Read Epictetus (A Daily Stoic Guide) & all other Daily Stoic courses for FREE when you join Daily Stoic Life | dailystoic.com/life📖 Preorder the final book in Ryan Holiday's The Stoic Virtues Series: "Wisdom Takes Work": https://store.dailystoic.com/pages/wisdom-takes-work🎙️ Follow The Daily Stoic Podcast on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoicpodcast🎥 Watch top moments from The Daily Stoic Podcast on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@dailystoicpodcast✉️ Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Get Stoic inspired books, medallions, and prints to remember these lessons at the Daily Stoic Store: https://store.dailystoic.com/📱 Follow us:  Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we bring you a stoic-inspired meditation designed to help you find strength and insight and wisdom into everyday life. Each one of these episodes is based on the 2,000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women to help you learn from them, to follow in their example, and to start your day off with a little dose of courage and discipline and justice and wisdom. For more, visit DailyStstoic.com. Don't Deprive Yourself This Fortune In the first century AD, few would have argued that Epictetus was the most powerful person

in Rome. Few would have argued that thisictetus was the most powerful person in Rome. Few would have argued that this lowly slave possessed any power at all. In fact, his name said it all. Epictetus literally translates to 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 insecurities, by money, by fame. All of us are born free, Epictetus came to see, but many of us relinquish this freedom of choice in favor of much more superficial things.

Or we so wallow in our unfortunate circumstances, our lack of literal freedom that we fail to see where we do have choices, where we do have agency. If enslavement, the horrible torture that Epictetus experienced, the lifelong disability that followed it, if this didn't touch his power over himself, what excuse do the rest of us have? The world can upend us at any moment, through illness, misfortune, even oppression. But there's one thing we always command, our own minds, our thoughts, our emotions, our beliefs about what happens to us. This is the empire we must rule. As Epictetus put it, even Zeus cannot deprive you of that fortune. So will you seize it or will you trade it away for superficial or shiny things?

Will you free yourself through your freedom of choice or will you hand that freedom over to the mob, to your urges, to your fears? That is the question of your life right there. And you could argue that there's really no better philosopher to help you answer that question than Epictetus, your favorite philosopher's favorite philosopher, as we've been saying. After all, it was Epictetus who shaped the mind

of young Marcus Aurelius, who proved the exception to the rule that absolute power corrupts absolutely. And it was Epictetus' philosophy that James Stockdale used to survive his time as a Vietnam POW that Frederick the Great carried with him into battle and Teddy Roosevelt brought along on his famed River of Doubt expedition. And it's also the philosophy we've been exploring for the last month here with thousands of stoics all over the world.

We've been doing Epictetus month, the whole month of July, diving deep into his life and his legacy. Got this course, How to Read Epictetus. It's a digital guide. You can pair it with a copy of the Discourses, his famous book brought to us by Arian. We carried it to Painted Porch. And on July 26th, we're doing a private Q&A session, a deep dive into the life of Epictetus

and what he can teach us, what we can learn from him. I'd love to have you join me in there. All you got to do is grab the how to read Epictetus course. I'll link to that in today's show notes, dailystoke.com slash epictetus course. As I said, you can pair it with the Penguin Classics edition. We have a special deal. You can get that in the book from the painted porch dailystoke.com slash epictetus

course, and remember if you are a member of Daily Stoic Life, you get the course and all our courses for free. It's gonna be awesome. I wanna see you in there July 26th. Let's make July Epictetus month. Let's really learn a bunch from him together. I've been learning a bunch as we've done this deep dive. I think you're really gonna like it.

Dailystoic.com slash Epictetus course.