The Daily Stoic - This Is Almost a Miracle | The Epictetus Lesson Kyle Carpenter Lives By

Episode Date: August 6, 2026

Epictetus’s work changed Marcus’ life. Both of them have changed Ryan's life. Both of them will change your life—if you let them.--Kyle Carpenter is a medically retired United States Marine who received the United States' highest military honor, the Medal of Honor in 2010. Kyle is the youngest living Medal of Honor recipient. Full episode with Medal of Honor Recipient Kyle Carpenter | Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube💡 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 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 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📚 Grab a signed copy of Kyle’s memoir, You Are Worth It, at The Painted Porch | https://www.thepaintedporch.com/🎟️ DAILY STOIC LIVE | Ryan Holiday is coming to a city near you! Grab tickets here |  https://www.dailystoiclive.com/🎙️ AD-FREE | Support the podcast and go deeper into Stoicism by subscribing to The Daily Stoic Premium - unlock ad-free listening, early access, and bonus content: https://dailystoic.supercast.com/🎥 VIDEO EPISODES| Watch the video episodes on The Daily Stoic YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@DailyStoic/videos✉️ FREE STOIC WISDOM | Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemailSee 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, designed to help bring those four key stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world. This is almost a miracle and too many people refuse to take advantage of it. It should not exist. It should not have survived. It was not intended for publication. It's totally and utterly unprecedented, as we have said many times. Marcus Aurelius' meditations is the unguarded private thoughts, the most powerful man in the world.

In its pages, we have the philosophical insights and wisdom of someone who lived through a plague, live through wars, lived through famine, lived through floods, live through health issues, one thing after another. And somehow this wisdom has proven not just relatable, but essential for people, for people like us, for thousands of years. But there's another wrinkle that makes this whole thing even more remarkable. meditations would not have been possible without another book that should also not exist, that should not have survived whose lessons were not intended for publication.

Epictetus's discourses. The teachings of a person who wasn't even given a real name. Epictetus means acquired one. A person born a slave who spent decades of his life being tortured, a man who was later unjustly exiled, who didn't. even write down his own work not only survived, but his teachings made their way to a young Marcus a realist who, who even more improbably read them and put them to use. How does the thinking of one of the most powerless people in human history come to shape the thinking and the life of one of

the most powerful people in history? That's a question we should want to know the answer to, because here in two of the most incredible books ever written, we are presented with all the wisdom necessary to live the good life, with everything we need to know to deal with the difficulties of life. Epictetus's work changed Marcus Reelius's life. Both of them have changed my life. Both of them will change your life if you let them. That's why here in August, Daily Stoic is doing a deep dive into Epictetus. We're diving into discourses. We're diving into the Incuridian, not just to read them, but to put Epictetus's teachings into practice. We've created this awesome guide, How to Read Epicetus.

It's a 14 module companion to his works. We've got videos. We've got context. We've got prompts. We've got exercises designed to help you make those teachings. Stick. So whether you're new to Stoicism or you've read meditations a dozen times, maybe you've even read Epicetus already, this will help deepen that understanding of that philosophy.

Challenge how you live it. And if you join us this month with our guide, you not only can get the books as part of that, but you can join me. We're going to be doing a live session. with thousands of Stoics all over the world to dive into the teachings of Epicetus. I hope to see you there. As I said, his work changed my life. I think it will change your life.

I can't wait to see you in there. Just go to daily stoic.com slash epictetus to find out more. And we'll get into it. Talk soon. Every time you look at your phone, there's another chaotic headline. You almost feel like you have to be glued to your screen to keep up. But saving for your future doesn't have to be this. hard because wealthfront helps you tune out the noise and earn more with a high-yield cash

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with the people that you're trying to reach. You want as few intermediaries and as few sort of artificial blocks between you and what you're trying to do or what you're trying to say or who you're trying to reach as possible. You want those one-on-one interactions. And I don't know if you've seen this app whatnot, but it's live shopping. So sellers have direct access to their customers in real time where people are seeing your face and not a website, not a lot, logo. What Not is the largest dedicated live shopping platform beauty, collectibles, electronics, luxury, fashion, even cookies. People who sell those things are building real thriving businesses on whatnot. Anyone can sell, whether your business is big or small, just starting. And people

selling on whatnot sell 10 times more than on other major marketplaces because you're not just listing products. You're building a real direct connection with buyers. Across whatnot, the number of sellers making over $1 million a year has doubled. That means it's not just a side hustle, but a real path to building something that lasts. Just search whatnot, W-H-A-T-N-O-T, in the app store, download it, and you can start selling and buying right away. Do you know who Epictetus was, the Stoke philosopher? Absolutely. So, you know, Epictetus is tortured by his, he's a slave, but he has this cruel master who tortures him. He breaks his leg at one point. And so he has this, he's crippled the rest of his life, which is the,

I guess the term they would use then. So he's coming at this, not from like some tenured academic perch, but like a dude who really suffered and went through stuff. And his thing was that we, every situation has two handles. You know, we get to decide what we're going to try to pick it up by. And you can grab the handle that says, hey, I'm alive. This is good. Or you can grab the handle of like, why am I alive?

This is horrible. And that handles kind of everything. lens through which we decide to interpret the events or the position we're in is kind of the first step. Because if you get that one wrong, all the other steps are really hard, I feel like. If you're like, I was singled out, this is horrible, this is insurmountable, you know, you can tell yourself a story that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Now, just telling yourself, it's wonderful and I'm never going to suffer again and it's all going to grade.

That's the thing that those Vietnam prisoners talked about. The story you're telling yourself is, I'm going to be home by Christmas. This is going to be over really soon. That's also a bad handle because life doesn't really care that that's what you think. So it's the key

is sort of picking something that's both hopeful but also got a kind of a grit and a determination to it that's like, as you said, like, I just know I'm not quitting because as long as these people are helping me, I'm not going to give up. That's not like, oh, you know, if you get in a car accident and the doctors say you're never going to walk again, just because you go away, I'm going to walk again. Sometimes that works, but not always. That's not magically going to give you your legs back.

Yeah, there needs to be accepting a reality in there as well. But I think there is tremendous power, and I would say that's even an understatement, to embracing the struggle. Yeah. You know, in the beginning, to embrace the unknown, allowed me to step onto those yellow footprints at boot camp. Sure. To try to become a Marine. And really, a life of service is, especially in the military, it's kind of like an entire journey, whether that's four years or a whole career. of unknown. And then through my recovery and just life in general is an unknown journey. You can

you know prepare yourself. You can try to learn and and to become resilient throughout the difficult journey but you never really know what the day or what life in in the big picture is going to hold. But you know, I joined the Marine Corps to discover who I could really become and who I really was and they say be careful what you wish for sometimes yeah you probably thought that was you were going to find out who that was you know in battle not in a hospital room but one led to the other and that's you don't really know that's what i've been thinking about on this book that i'm right now so i'm writing a book about stockdale and you know stockdale goes to the academy he thinks he's enlisting in world war two he misses world war two then he thinks he's going to fight and

Korea, like all his buddies do, like Hudner wins the Medal of Honor in Korea. Like, I have his orders where he's like begging to be sent to Korea. And they're like, it would be detrimental to your unit if we sent you to Korea. And so he does. So he keeps thinking that he's missing his moment, right? Then he goes to test pilot school and he thinks, you know, this is my thing. And then, you know, Yeager breaks the sound barrier. He's not one of those.

Then he misses, like, astronaut school. And he thinks he's, you know, like, he's like, what? You know, he keeps any, but he doesn't know because you can't know that it's actually preparing him for this day in 1965 when he gets shot down. And then he can't even conceive then of what, you know, the next seven years are going to mean. But, like, you don't know what life is preparing you for. All you can really do is. is be ready for something that you can't even conceive up.

Yeah, absolutely. You know, whether it's through that journey or that moment that you're shot down and you become a POW. You know, I encourage people when I speak or when I have engagements on the road to, you know, embrace that struggle. Yeah. One, I think to be realistic that, you know, life is a very difficult journey at times. Sure. But it's also equally as beautiful. And most importantly, it's worth living and it's worth being here.

Because those moments are impossible to describe how immediately, I want to even say dark, just avoid things become. But to know that life is difficult and when you face that adversity to embrace it. Yeah. And you really, I mean, in a way, I feel like you don't have another choice. I mean, if you want to sit exactly where you are right now or right in that moment of adversity for the rest of your life, that's really the only other option. But to embrace the struggle and understand that there's always a silver lining, there's always that light at the end of the tunnel. And when you reach that, which, you know, everyone heals in their own time and their own way. So I'm not telling you, I'm not one of those that say,

oh, just brush it off, get back up and keep going. I mean, sometimes it takes an entire life to try to continue to get better. Sometimes it is just inching or crawling forward. But in the right time to know that when you move forward, you hold on those silver linings, you reach that light at the end of the tunnel, you will not only look back and be proud of yourself, you'll realize that the journey was worth it. And you will be the strongest, more perspective-driven, more grateful version of yourself.

And ultimately, in that moment, you know, there's never a finish line. But in that moment, when you're on the other side, you'll realize that you're the best version of yourself. And don't you think this is like, I think having a physical practice is, metaphor for that, right? Like every time I run, every time I jump in cold water, every time I with weights or whatever, I don't want to do it, but I'm glad after that I did it, right? It's the feeling afterward that the shitty part is for. And that, you know, sometimes, and it's not just like, oh, hey, the endorphins, you know, you do the thing and then you get a little rush of endorphins at the end. Sometimes you don't feel anything at the end, but tired or her or whatever, yeah.

But like six months later when you catch a glimpse of yourself in the mirror and you're like, I am in the shape that I want to be or you have to pick up something heavy and you can pick it up because you did the work, that's what it is. And yeah, I think that's the metaphor for life is like in the shitty moments. And it's not just in your own life. It's like every relationship has these dips. And the good parts in the relationship are never those dips. They're at some point after those dips if you don't quit. And just knowing like, yeah, it's, you get through the hard thing because of what's on the other side of the hard thing.