The Daily Stoic - Epictetus’s Five Most Significant Quotes

Episode Date: September 27, 2020

In today's Sunday Podcast, Ryan talks about Epictetus, who from birth was enslaved yet still managed to become one of the most significant founders of Stoicism, and gives five of his most important quotes.This episode is brought to you by Four Sigmatic. Four Sigmatic is a maker of mushroom coffee, lattes, elixirs, and more. Their drinks all taste amazing and they've full of all sorts of all-natural compounds and immunity boosters to help you think clearly and live well. Four Sigmatic has a new exclusive deal for Daily Stoic listeners: get up to 39% off their bestselling Lion’s Mane bundle by visiting foursigmatic.com/stoic.***If you enjoyed this week’s podcast, we’d love for you to leave a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps with our visibility, and the more people listen to the podcast, the more we can invest into it and make it even better.Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: http://DailyStoic.com/signupFollow @DailyStoic:Twitter: https://twitter.com/dailystoicInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoic/Facebook: http://facebook.com/dailystoicYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/dailystoicSee 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 Stoic, something that can help you live up to those four stoic virtues of courage, justice, wisdom, and temperance. And here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview stoic philosophers, we reflect, we prepare. We think deeply about the challenging issues of our time. And we work through this philosophy in a way that's more

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Sam Beckman-Freed. Follow Spellcaster wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, prime members, you can listen to episodes ad-free on Amazon Music, download the Amazon Music app today. Hey, everyone, welcome to another episode of The Daily Stoke Podcast. on Music app today. Our friend, Epictetus lived in, political corruption, you know, civil unrest. All of the things that we are struggling with today would not be unfamiliar to Epictetus, and he had to add on top of that some 30 years of slavery. And so I think at the core then of Epictetus's teachings is a quote we're gonna kick through a little bit today,

this idea that philosophy is something you embody, it's not just something you talk about. And obviously that's tricky for me because my job is in some respects talking about it, but I hope that you understand that I like you and ultimately struggling to apply these things in the real world. That's why we're here. That's what we are trying to do. There's no reason to study the philosophy for shits and giggles, if you will, right? The point is how do you apply this to your life? And how do you apply it in a world that is ultimately not just unpredictable, but in, but in epictetus's case, quite cruel, right? His leg is broken, he's born into slavery, he walks

with a limp for the rest of his days. He's forced, you know, to live hundreds of miles from Rome because he's driven out of Rome for a blanket ban on philosophers. So when we think about the Stoics, we're not just thinking about their words, we're thinking about the lives that those words were then applied to, which is of course, the premise of the new book, Lives of the Stoics, which you can pre-order now, dailistoic.com slash lives.

But I just remain endlessly fascinated with Epic Titus, you know, lives, but I just remain endlessly fascinated with epictetus. You know, all the Stoics talk about the importance of freedom, and it's so many of them did so from a place of obviously immense privilege in wealth, right? They were Marcus Aurelius and Seneca and Panateus and Posidonius. For the most part, almost all the Stoics came from a place of immense privilege. They were at the top of Rome's hierarchy,

and there was really nowhere worse to be than at the bottom of Rome's hierarchy. Clientis, who we talk about in the lives of Stoics, was at the bottom, but even he was a free man, he was a manual laborer and worked for a living, but certainly no one had sort of literal power over life and death from no one could steal his wages. From him, even his sort of subservient position to Zeno, was just nothing compared to what Epictetus went through. So Epictetus to me is just an awe

inspiring mind-aboggling figure, and so today we're going to look through five of his best quotes, what they mean, and most importantly, how we apply them. He was born a slave and died one of the most influential teachers of his time. But Epic Titus wouldn't have considered himself a teacher. He was a philosopher, a stoic philosopher, a man who sought a very specific kind of knowledge, the knowledge that when applied helped with facing and overcoming the inevitable difficulties of life. And through a combination of his own life experiences and the wisdom of his mentor, the

stoic philosopher, Misonius Rufus, Epictetus had the kind of insights that people traveled hundreds of miles for the chance to hear. It even if only for an hour to they sent their children to hear him. Even the poor, the affluent, the powerful, even the future emperor, Hadrian were told they all vied for a chance to sit in and sit down at Epic Titus's feet. And fortunately there was a young man who regularly got to listen in to Epictetus and he wrote down what Epictetus had to say and remarkably these notes survived to us and have been passed on to some of history's greatest figures over the last few thousand years. The Roman Emperor Marcus Arelius wrote in his journal, Thanking the Man Who Loaned Him a Copy of Epictus. Theodore Roosevelt famously carried a copy of Epic Titus with him along his incredibly dangerous river of doubt expedition.

Admiral James Stockdale had Epic Titus with him as he led Fighter Squadrons in daily combat in Vietnam. And it was on Epic Titus whom he leaned when he had had to survive seven years as a prisoner of war. The list is endless and hopefully after this video, you'll understand why and add your name to the list of epictetus's admirers because he truly was one of the wisest and most inspiring people to ever live. So here are five quotes from epictetus that will change your

life. Our first job is this epictetus said to divide and distinguish things into two categories. Externals I cannot control, but the choices I make with regard to what I do control. Where will I find good and bad in me in my choices? This single skill epictetus said will change your life. The art of differentiating between what's up to us and what is not up to us. What we have influence over and what we do not. A flight is delayed because of weather. No amount of yelling at an airline representative will end the storm. No amount of wishing will make you taller or shorter or born in a different country, no matter how hard you try. You can't make someone like you.

On top of all that time spent hurling yourself at these immovable objects is time not spent on the things we can change. As EpicTida said, all we can control is the choices they make right now. And the same is true for you. Focus on making clear what parts of your day are within your control and what parts are not. You will not only be happier, but you will have a distinct advantage over all the people who fail to realize they are wasting their time on unwindable battles. It is not events that disturb people.

Epictetus said it's their judgment about things. Albert Ellis, one of the most influential figures in modern psychology, said it was this line that guided the development of cognitive behavioral therapy. Epictetus said it was the most important power we have, something happens, but we decide that it's unfair or bad or a failure. Someone says something, but we decide that it's offensive or presumptuous or rude. If someone succeeds in provoking you, Epictetus said,

realize that your mind is complicit in the provocation. Events are objective. The opinion that they're objectionable is just that, your opinion, and you always have the power to change it. There's a reason this very quote is on the wall of the training facility of the Pittsburgh pirates in Bradenton, Florida, because even in sports, it matters, right?

There is no good or bad. There is just the game in front of you. You have to focus on that no amount of yelling or complaining changes and umpires call. You have to focus. You have to be present, you can't beat yourself down or puff yourself up. Get rid of self-conceit.

Epic Tita said, it is impossible to learn that which one thinks they already know. Epic Tita's kept his eyes and ears open always, actively looking for opportunities to learn from everyone and everything. And this is the attitude we must take with us, day in and day out, whether we're one of the best at what we do or just starting out.

It doesn't matter. Every person we meet, every situation we find ourselves in, every book we read or movie we watch, there is an opportunity to learn to keep getting better, to take another step forward on the path to progress. And that was one of Epicetus's favorite questions. How have you made progress? More than anything else?

We answer that question by focusing on what we don't know on where we can get better, on where we can improve, rather than patting ourselves on the back for how great we are. The true man is revealed in difficult times, EpicTidus said, so when trouble comes, think of yourself as a wrestler paired with a tough young buck for what purpose to turn you in to Olympic class material. We can think of hardship many ways as failure, as unfairness, as the end of the conversation. Clearly this was not meant to be, we say they don't want me to succeed, what's the point in trying. Or we can choose, we can train ourselves to

see it a better way, as grist for the mill, as a chance to learn about endurance, patience, resilience, struggle, as a chance to prove our metal, as resistance that is making our muscles stronger as a sparring partner. Epic Titus preferred the latter and became in his time and in hours the ultimate symbol of the ability of a human being to overcome dark circumstances. He said it was not about accepting hardship or resigning ourselves to it, but agreeing to work with it,

to decide to make the most of it to see hardship as an opportunity, not as an obstacle. And in this way, we can turn everything that happens to us into fuel and we can be made better and stronger by everything that happens. And so we have one more quote to come from Epic Titus, but before I do, if you're interested at all in Stoic philosophy, I'd love to have you join us in the daily email, the daily meditation. We do at dailystoic dailystoic.com slash email. It's one Stoic thought every single day, for free, designed to help inspire you and still this ancient wisdom in your life and help you practice those four Stoic virtues of courage, moderation, justice, and wisdom that were so essential to epictetus and will help you become the person you want to become.

And if you've heard about the email and have delayed signing up, let me give you a quick quote from Epic Titus. He says, how much longer until you demand the best for yourself and that's what we try to do in this email. And so the last quote from Epic Titus is this, don't explain your philosophy in body it. It's always been tempting to talk a good game and people have been doing it for thousands of years.

EpicTetus talked about those nauseating types who brag about how many books they've read and spew out facts and quotes and tidbits. These people are not wise, he'd say they just know a lot of useless trivia. The whole point of stoicism is what you do, it's who you are, it's active virtue not talking about virtue, or reading about it or writing about it or watching videos about it. If you didn't learn these things in order to demonstrate them in practice, Epictetus asked, what did you learn them for? He would have loved the expression we have today, don't talk about it, be about it. How much better would we all be if we put less energy into talking and more into being and

into doing, in letting our actions and results speak for us, in turning the lessons of an epictetus or a musonious rufus or a Marcus Aurelius into real world action and results. And that epictetus said is what earns one the title, Philosopher, Nothing Else. So if you're interested in finding more about epictetus, please sign up dailystilic.com slash email. And as epictetus said, don't talk about your philosophy, embody it.

If you like the podcast that we do here and you wanna get it via email every morning, you can sign up at dailystoic.com slash email. 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.