The Daily Stoic - Are You Really Free? | Protect Your Own Good

Episode Date: July 4, 2022

If you pre-order The Girl Who Would Be Free through the Daily Stoic Store BEFORE July 8, 2022, you receive these exclusive bonuses and deals:Audiobook and e-book versions (emailed directly to the email associated at checkout on July 8, 2022): the audiobook contains over an hour of original content, including an interview between Ryan Holiday and Victor Juhasz, narration by Ryan Holiday, narration by his wife, Samantha Holiday, and more.If you pre-order a signed copy of The Girl Who Would Be Free, you will receive a FREE copy of The Boy Who Would Be King (your free copy of The Boy Who Would Be King will automatically get shipped out with your copy of The Girl Who Would Be Free. Do not add The Boy Who Would Be King to your cart unless you want to pay for additional copies)If you pre-order an unsigned copy of The Girl Who Would Be Free, you will receive the opportunity to purchase The Boy Who Would Be King 50% OFF (you must add The Boy Who Would Be King to your cart to automatically have the discount applied)To learn more about the pre-order bonuses and pre-order your signed or unsigned copies of The Girl Who Would Be Free, head over to dailystoic.com/girl✉️ 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.

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 Daily Stoic podcast. Each day we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics illustrative 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 stoke, 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. Hi, I'm David Brown, the host of Wunderree's podcast business wars. And in our new season, Walmart must fight off target, the new discounter that's both savvy

and fashion forward. Listen to business wars on Amazon music or wherever you get your podcasts. Are you really free? When Sennaka was an advisor to Nero, he served alongside a secretary, and that secretary owned a slave named Epictetus. Yet between Seneca, who was the richest man in Rome, and this secretary, who was one of the most powerful men in Rome, the aide and the slave, the slave, was the most free. How could that possibly be?

Seneca himself would say that to be free was to belong to yourself. It is to be in charge of your mind, your will, your thoughts. To be free from pointless obligations, other people's expectations, materialism, the slavery of cravings or aspirations. Most powerful is he who has himself in his own power, Senuka said. Epictetus got a front row seat to Nero slowly buying and trapping Senuka in a gilded cage. In the end, Senuka couldn't even quit his job without permission. He saw people contorting themselves to get on Nero's good side.

He saw all the limitations and constraints that come with money and power. He saw how the chain of jobs that needed to be held for years in order to get ahead narrowed the choices of those who aspired to get ahead. He saw how people were unable to walk away from a job they hated because they were walled in by big houses and fancy titles. And he was horrified by what he saw. It is better to starve to death in a call and confidence state of mind, you would say, than to live anxiously amidst abundance. Freedom is the prize we are working

for, Seneca said, not being a slave to anything, not to compulsion, not to chance events. But then he said, show me a man who isn't a slave. One is a slave to money, another to work, another to fear, he was saying, another to whatever everyone else is doing, another alcohol, the cigarette, soda, material possessions, bad habits, followers on social media, anchors, on cable news. That's how it goes. And here on the 4th of July, the celebration of America's Declaration of Independence, before you head off to barbecues or eat hot dogs, you should think about this.

Are you free? Do you belong to yourself? Are you in charge of yourself? Do you have yourself in your own power? Are you held in the captivity of someone or something else? Of work, of money, of your mortgage, of your social media followers, of your anxieties or aspirations? Sober up.

You're a slave. Epictetus would know. And that's why he reminds us, no man is free who is not master of himself. And look, I've been thinking a lot about epictetus in this sort of journey to freedom, because I've been working on this fable about epictetus. I'm calling it the girl who would be free. I know epictetus historically is male.

I decided to make it female because I wanted it, particularly for young girls to be able to have something in the stoke can and to relate to. But all of that is secondary to this story. This idea of how epictetus went from being a slave to one of the greatest philosophers who ever lived to achieving a kind of internal freedom, conquering the empire between his or her years.

And I've been talking a lot about the book on the podcast. I hope you check it out. It's just like my first book, The Boy Who Would Be King, which thousands of people all of the world have loved. If you are a parent, you've got nieces or nephews, you're thinking about becoming a parent, maybe you're a teacher, you want to teach the ideas of stoicism to someone who's not a big reader, I think this book is for you. I can't wait for you to check it out.

And look, if you pre-order the girl who would be free, it's out next week. You can get the e-book and audio book for free. If you buy a sign copy, you can get the boy who would be came for free. If you order a non- sign copy, I'll even give you the boy who would be came for 50% off. So we got a bunch of awesome bonuses. Check that out. Go over to dailystoward.com slash girl. The girl who would be free, I'm really proud of this book.

I hope you enjoy your fourth of July, but I hope you're after that real freedom, which has nothing to do with government, nothing to do with politics, nothing to do with where you live as Epictetus shows us in his life, in his struggle through real slavery, finding an internal freedom, that's what this book is about. And I can't wait for you to read it. The girl who would be free, it's out next week, but you can pre-order it now and get a bunch of awesome bonuses at dailystalk.com slash girl.

Protect your own good. And this is from this week's entry in the Daily Stoic Journal, 366 days of writing and reflection on the art of living by yours truly and my co-writer and translator, Steve Enhancelman. I actually do this journal every single day. There's a question in the morning, a question in the afternoon, and then there's these sort of weekly meditations. As Epictetus says, every day and night, we keep thoughts like this at hand, write them, read them aloud, and talk to yourself, and others about them.

You can check out the Daily Stalk Journal, anywhere books are sold, and also get a signed personalized copy from me in the Daily Stalk store, it's store.dailystalk.com. Musoneus Rufus, one of Epictetus's teachers, taught that human beings are all born with an innate goodness, whereas he put it with an inclination to virtue. It's our choices that decide whether that goodness comes out or not.

We're not bad people, essentially, though we might sometimes do bad things. The purpose of stoicism then is to remind us of that goodness and to help us work hard to protect it. So spend some time this week writing about the choices you can make, the actions you can take to do just that. And this is from the Daily Stoke Journal, 366 days of writing and reflection on the art of journaling, on the art of living, which I use by self every morning.

I love the little prompts. Here is epictetus's discourses, who, as you know, epictetus was misogynistrophicist, epictetus was Musoneus Rufus' student. Protect your own good and all that you do. And as concerns, everything else take what is given as far as you can make reason to use of it. If you don't, you'll be unlucky, prone to failure, hindered, and stymied. That's discourses for three. And then Marx releases meditations, Marx then influenced by epictetus, so Musonius teaches stosism to epictetus, whose writings then survive and make their way to Marx's reliance. Marx's reliance, as it happens, is introduced to stosism through

Juni's rusticus, who loans him his copy of epictetus. Dig deep within yourself, Marx writes in meditations 759, for there is a fountain of goodness ever ready to flow, you will keep digging. I guess what the Stokes are doing here is really pushing back on this notion of original sin that were toxic, broken, horrible people, that human nature is something to be feared. You know, there is a darkness in us, but there's also incredible good, and I think the Stokes are talking about what side of you are you going to nurture? What side is going to come out? What side are you going to look for?

What side are you going to reveal? And Musoneus and Epictetus and Marcus are all tested in incredible ways. Musoneus is exiled three times, perhaps four, epictetus experiences the incredible injustice of slavery. Marcus Relius is given absolute power. And as they say, power reveals, but I think also adversity reveals. And in both Musoneus and epictetus's case,

adversity revealed a goodness, an unbreakable goodness, a commitment, a tenacity, a perseverance, an unswerving belief in these principles that we're talking about now. And in Marcus Aurelius, you know, he wasn't challenged the same way. The life did challenge him with loss and grief and pain and sickness, but it also challenged him with a great bounty of good fortune. And that too tested his character, it tested whether there really was goodness inside of him, and what side of him he was going to reveal. So as you go out into the world this week, think about who you really are underneath, think about what kind of character you've been cultivating. Let's show people who we are and who we can be

and what we actually believe, as Marcus says, let's not waste time arguing what a good man should be, let's be one, let's be the best we can for ourselves, for our family, for our world. And I'll talk to you soon. Thanks so much for listening to the Daily Stoke podcast. Again, if you don't know this, you can get these delivered to you via email every day. Just go to dailystoke.com slash email. So check it out. Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoic early and ad-free on Amazon Music,

download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen early and ad-free with Wondery Plus in Apple Podcasts. Ah, the Bahamas. What if you could live in a penthouse above the crystal clear ocean working during the day and partying at night with your best friends and have it be 100% paid for? FTX Founder's Sam Bankman Freed lived that dream life, but it was all funded with other people's money, but he allegedly stole. Many thought Sam Bankman Freed was changing the game as he graced the pages of Forbes

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