you'd think that the more powerful you are the more money you have the more freedom that you would have and and conversely it seems obvious that if you don't have money if you don't have power if you've been disenfranchised by the law or by Society or by some terrible set of circumstances that the converse would be true that you don't have any freedom but there is one person who refutes all this his name is epicus he's a Greek slave in the Roman Empire who knows poverty and torture and Exile a life that seemingly of Darkness
powerlessness and pain and yet he becomes in his own Lifetime and now through the centuries through his philosophy one of the most powerful and one of the freest human beings who ever lived epicus doesn't write anything down he gives a series of lectures some of which were actually attended by the emperor of Rome but those survive to us in the form of the inidian and his discourses and then there's a more recent collection by Princeton University press that summarizes some of his best work and I first discovered epic tetus when I was 19 or 20
years old in the same way that Marcus Aurelius would discover it 2,000 years earlier someone noticed I was going through something I was asking for some reading recommendations and they said you got to check out epicus I think this would be of use to you Marcus relus was lent a copy of epicus by his philosophy teacher rusticus whom he actually thanks in the opening of meditations it's pretty incredible just the power of a book recommendation right he says all the things that he learned from his philosophy teacher rusticus and then he concludes and thanks him
for introducing me to Epic titus' lectures and loaning me his own copy and here are 10 really important ideas that I took from epicus about the most important human topic there is freedom our first task in life epicas says the chief task of the philosopher is to separate matters into two categories the stuff that's up to us and the stuff that's not up to us he puts this in a lovely little greek phrase but basically saying that there's some things that are up to us and there's some things that are not up to us and
when we do this honest assessment of what's in our control and what's not in our control we then have the ability to direct our resources towards what is in our control epic says this elsewhere he says basically like a Podium and a prison are each a place he knows the prison and then he also knows the podium where he had a lot of power as a teacher when he became one of Rome's most famous philosophers but he's basically saying that we all have a certain amount of freedom of choice within our situations and we have
to know what this is when I talk to athletes I usually try to remind them look you don't control what the coach does you don't control what the media does you don't control the weather you don't control who the quarterback throws to you don't control how your teammates behave you don't control who made the rules all you control is how you play how you respond to these events so that's kind of the essence of epictetus's philosophy and this seems like a really basic exercise but we can imagine how essential it would be for someone who
spends the first 30 years of their life literally enslaved he has to figure out okay I don't control who my master is I don't control what my master asks of me I don't control that I Was Born This Moment In Time in this place I don't control any of this but I do control who I'm going to be inside of it I control whether it makes me bitter and angry and me he's probably realizes look I could lay down and die I could try to escape I could choose to be beaten to death I could
steal things he has a certain amount of choices and then he has things that he doesn't have Choice over and essentially stoicism epictetus's philosophy is this focusing this zeroing in on the parts of the situation that are in our control he says look some things in this world are up to us and then he lists some of the stuff that is up to us our judgment our motivations our desires are aversions he says the stuff that's in our own doing and so this is what we want to focus on because like I I sometimes tell
people like look you have a certain amount of energy points right are you going to spend your energy points on things that have already happened things that may or may not happen or are you going to focus them on what's in front of you right now are you going to focus them on wishing things were otherwise are you going to focus on accepting them and making them work so basically the the first bit of Freedom that we have to assert is our freedom to understand what is in our control and what isn't and as the
Serenity Prayer says first have the wisdom to know the difference between these two things and second to have the courage then to seize the power or the control that is [Music] ours if you wanted to inflict a horrendous torture on someone if you wanted to completely imprison them in in circumstances and in their own misery here's a spell I would cast on them I would say From This Moment forward you have to have incredibly strong opinions about everything you see and hear and read because things are constantly happening so the world is full of events
right it's full of people doing insane things and the more opinions we have about this first off the more miserable we're going to be and second like the less time we're going to have to focus on the things that are actually important to us that we actually have input over a lot of us are trapped by our need to have an opinion about everything one of the things you have to realize when you accept that certain things are outside of your control is that your opinion about them whether they're good or bad fair or unfair
it ceases to be relevant because they simply are epicas says that look it's not things that upset us it's our judgment about things so if we're trying to be free from being upset from being being miserable from feeling like we've been mistreated uh that this situation sucks that everything's falling apart well one of the ways we do that is by just deciding not to have that opinion and look maybe at some point in epictetus's life he got to a point where he just didn't have opinions about stuff he he escaped the opinion trap I would
say probably more realistically he understood he was free not to verbalize this opinion Markus who was such a big fan of epicus would would talk about this he was like look things are not asking uh to be judged by you you don't have to have an opinion about this you you don't have to turn this into something but he also talks about not complaining he says never be overheard complaining and I think that's partly what epic tetus is saying here which is like have the initial opinion that you don't like this that it sucks that
it should be otherwise that's so stupid that this or that happened but then just going yeah I don't I don't need to explore this I don't need to articulate all the things I don't like about this I don't need to pick at it I'm just going to practice the art of letting this go and not having strong opinions about it because those opinions are really only inflicting upon me the negativity that I feel and it's not changing the situation in any way and so epic tetus is saying look an critical step on the path to
freedom is just to have fewer opinions [Music] epic Tia spends a good chunk of his life in Nero's Court he's a slave to one of Nero's powerful secretaries so you know he's not necessarily like outworking in the fields or one of the hellscapes that was these sort of Roman Minds in this sense epicus gets lucky on the other hand he looks around and he goes this is not that wonderful either what he sees in Nero's court is all these incredibly successful powerful people who are in some ways less free than he is he sees at
one point this man sucking up to Nero's cobbler trying to get in the good graces of the man who makes Nero's shoes as a way of currying favor with the emperor he sees this man throw himself at Nero's feet begging pleading whining that he was down to basically his last million dollars and Nero is like oh my God are you okay how could you bear it in this moment epicus who didn't have any money who didn't have any freedom is hit by this notion that he he might not trade places with these people if given
the opportunity because they were slaves to their ambition to the whims of the emperor to their comfort level to their entitlements he says it may be better to starve to death in a calm and confident State of Mind than to live anxiously amidst abundance and I think he gets the sense that that's precisely what most of these Romans are doing they are living anxiously amidst abundance and he might have even included Sena in this Sena is in this court at the same time senaka is one of Rome's richest people he would have known philosophically that
he should have nothing to do with Nero and yet there he is working and he knows that the second he leaves Nero's service probably all his wealth power and influence and perhaps his life is going to be taken from him and in fact senica would largely agree with this in one of his essays he talks about how slavery lurks beneath marble and gold we think that having money having power being ambitious striving upwards is going to make us feel free but in in many cases it chains us down because we're dependent on somebody else's favor
we're dependent on you know what our industry allows what our peers do or don't do or their opinions or we just don't want to lose the things that we've gotten really comfortable having so yes look I think epic tetus is being a bit exaggerated here and speaking for effect but his point was to look at these people who by any definition seem like they are free and certainly like they are their own masters but in truth in reality in their day-to-day existence they are anything but so think about that in your own life how free
are you do you belong to yourself are you in control of your schedule day-to-day or is the next deal the next project does your mortgage determine what you do and don't do what projects you accept or don't accept do you have an audience like for me with daily stoke I have an audience but I know a lot of people who are captured by Their audience they can only say or do certain things or they have to create a certain amount of content just to keep that audience happy do they have the audience or does the
audience have them so are you self-sufficient are you your own Master are you living anxiously amidst abundance are you actually quite powerless despite all the power that you have I think it's important that stoicism is not the only tool in our toolkit the the ancient stoics are wonderful and and we can learn so much hearing from them but they can't hear us and so I have a practice I go to therapy in my life I have for many many years I've been all the different types of therapy I've done in person I've done couples I've
done uh online and one of the reasons I like online therapy is it saves time and that's where today's sponsor betterhelp comes in betterhelp connects you with a licensed therapist who's trained to listen to you and give helpful unb highest advice you just go to the link below I'll link to it in the comments betterhelp.com stoic you can do it via a phone call or video you can even text message with your therapist between appointments you get matched with a therapist usually within 48 Hours let better help connect you with a therapist who can support
you all from the comfort of your own home visit betterhelp.com dailyo or choose daily sto from the drop- down menu during sign up and you'll grab a special discount on your first month I've talked to a number of big people in Hollywood over the years for the podcast I've talked to rain Wilson and Matthew mcconahay I've talked to Francis Ford Copa one of the things that like people watching TV or movies don't necessarily understand when something's like bad or not good they they'll blame like an actor or they'll blame a specific director and they don't
realize like it's this collaborative art and as a result no one person is really like in control and so you might think that this a-lister or this big director or this you know producer has like so much control but actually every single person is dependent on all these other people it's a lot like life which is why the stoics use the metaphor of being an actor in a play epic said look the director is deciding the playwright is deciding the actor like an athlete doesn't control what the person opposing them in the scene does if
they're talented or not they don't control the director's Vision they don't control the the like the words written on the Page by the person who created this bit of intellectual property so if the actor is only going to be happy if the thing is a success if everyone loves it if it's well received well they don't have freedom because now all these other people and factors determine whether that thing was a success or not whether they feel good or not about it the best actors epicus understood and this is was as true back in ancient
Rome and Greece as it is today the best actors have to focus on their role and acting the hell out of that role cuz that's the only part of it that they control and so there is a certain amount of acceptance a scaling down of our purview of what we're worried about but it also allows us to really Embrace and do that thing well and succeed whether or not any of the other things go away because sometimes they will and sometimes they won't he says keep in mind that you are an actor in a play
your job is to put on a splendid performance of the role you have been given but the selecting of the role in life has been chosen by someone else he didn't choose to be born a slave just as Marcus Aus didn't choose the series of events that make him Emperor I didn't choose to be born a man I didn't choose to be born born in California I didn't choose to be born in 1987 as opposed to 1887 or the year 887 we don't control so much of what's happened but we control the role we're in
now the position we're in now and whether we show up and do our absolute best so it's this sort of acceptance of a certain amount of powerlessness but then embracing the power to act the hell out of it and you see this all the time where someone is delivers a stunning performance in an over overall mediocre thing but because they own that role they they take the responsibility of it it's actually very impressive and this is the attitude that you have to cultivate in Hollywood and also in life to not go crazy to not be
constantly disappointed and grieved and upset you have a a a Troublesome brother or an annoying coworker you you have some situation that's driving you nuts it's it's costing you something it's depriving you of options or opportunities that if you had your choice would be yours that is something that's taking Freedom away from you EP epic teachers would say okay we have another way to look at it in fact it says every situation has two handles you could try to pick it up by this handle that says like here's the freedom I'm losing here's what this
is taken from me here's why I don't like this like the negative opinion he or you can try to grab it by this other handle he says you know you could think about that you're related to this brother that you come from the same mother that you love them that you want things to be better he's saying that we choose which handle we're going to grab on a situation right we choose whether we're going to see this thing as positive or negative we're going to focus on the obstacle or the opportunity we're going to focus
on what was taken from us or what we can do now because of the situation every situation epicus reminds us has two handles but I would say actually there's like an unlimited amount of handles and maybe handles isn't even the right way to look at it basically there's an unlimited amount of lenses or angles that we can look at something from we could choose to look at where we've been constrained or we could choose to look at where we've been empowered the thing that depresses us and hurts us and makes us feel bad or the
thing that lifts us up makes us feel good that challenges us that allows us to grow that's what we want to think about basically epicus is teaching that our response to the event to other people is more important than the events themselves and Marcus Aus has a a Troublesome stepbrother a a brother that he didn't choose that wasn't exactly like him in many ways and yet at the end of meditations where he's thanking the gods for all the things he was given he says I'm thankful that I had the kind of brother that I did
one whose character challenged me to improve my own one whose love and affection enriched my life basically he's taking epic titus's advice to the letter because epicus was specifically talking about brothers here he's deciding to grab it by the right handle and that's a freedom we always have we choose which handle we're going to [Music] grab we live in a world of Conformity and and as a result of living in a world of Conformity we also live in a world of competition everyone's trying to do the same things everyone thinks they're fighting for a a
certain amount of spots and this creates a sort of a zero sum competition and also creates a sense that we're losing out that we're being deprived of something but epic tus talks a lot about running your own race he says you'll always win if you only enter competitions where winning is up to you basically what he's saying is stop trying to have more than someone else or be a little better than someone else at some try to be the best version of yourself actually he he quotes Socrates he says look some people try to breed
horses or cultivate land he says I try to cultivate my own self-improvement day to day but also by this he he meant that he wasn't afraid to stand out he wasn't afraid to be different or distinct in a time like living under Nero where this would have been a dangerous thing to do by epicus is ultimately banished sent into exile for being a transgressive philosopher under Nero's successor so this cost him something too but the freedom to be himself was the freedom that epicus seized on as we must also seize on there was a another
stoic under Nero one of his friends comes up to him and he says look you're kind of you're being a bit too conspicuous here you're going to you might invite some trouble from the emperor why don't you try to fit in a little bit better and so in in one sense you know he's faced with the prospect of losing his freedom but he says look that's just not who I am that's not how it works he says everyone else might like to fit in he says I prefer to be like the red thread in the
Garment that makes everything More Beautiful by being distinct and so we always have this freedom I I think it's incredible like we're all born totally unique totally unique DNA circumstances experiences skills and what do we do we try to be just like everyone else or we try to beat other people at their own game instead of running our own race instead of embracing the freedom to be ourselves and do what only we can do [Music] life is going to put challenges in front of us adversity is something that none of us are free from having
to experience we're all going to face difficult and trying circumstances in our own way epicus faces incredible difficulty in adversity Marcus aelius who is so much more privileged and you would say blessed by Fortune also experiences profound Misfortune an ancient historian would say look Marcus doesn't get the good fortune that he deserves because his Reign is defined by floods and plagues and coups and and death in his own health troubles it's like one thing after another for this guy it didn't matter how rich and Powerful he was he wasn't able to escape that but you
know what we do have the freedom to do we always have the freedom to embrace that epic said that when you face challenging circumstances you want to say to yourself life has paired me with a strong sparring partner he says do you want to be Olympic class well that's going to take struggle that's going to be tough we have the freedom to to embrace these challenges to grow by the resistance that we face that's in fact how one gets strong is by resistance training there's post-traumatic stress there's also post-traumatic growth you're not free to escape
injury harm trouble difficulty obstacles but you are free to transform that into something that makes you better stronger that's what resilience is we have the freedom to be resilient freedom to be anti- Fragile the freedom to as Mark cus would say turn the obstacle into the opportunity for virtue epic tetus would say a boxer derives his abilities from his sparring partners and he says your accuser your enemy your opponent the trouble you're facing it is your sparring partner and it turns us into to Olympic class material [Music] as a result of his time in slavery
epicus is crippled we're told that his sadistic Master breaks his leg or is is trying to inflict pain on epicus epicus is so tough that he doesn't resist he allows it to happen and then he tells his master how did you think that was going to go so he was a a tough guy but the result is he is injured as a result of this and he never walks the same way again so he has a disability he Bears the gar of this torture for the rest of his life that's something he's not free of
he's never free to walk and carry himself the same way again but he would say that we have to remember that lameness or or being crippled as they referred to it at that time he says is an impediment to the body not to the mind the stoics wanted us to understand that a tyrant a cruel Master a drunk driver or whatever someone could do something to our physical body that is something that could be taken away from us but how we see ourselves the story We Tell ourselves about our life our decision to be negatively
impacted disabled by this that's the choice that we have when you see the par Olympics which they're just competing in right now you see people who are in some cases more talented athletically and capable of things that not just ordinary people can't do but like some of the most extraordinary athletes in the world can barely do it's a beautiful thing when you see someone who has been dealt a Blow by Fate who's been lost a limb uh been incarcerated you know had something taken from them lost status or opportunities and instead of being like broken
or bitter as a result of this they find what they're capable of doing not just in spite of it but in some cases because of it they go towards the thing they don't see it as an impediment people who are dyslexic and they talk about how it's actually like a superpower for them because it's forced them to to learn differently to really engage with text when I talked to Patrick Dempsey the actor about this he he was talking about how his dyslexia and his disg graphia they made him a better actor because it forced him
to think about and do and engage with written material books writing acting differently than than he would have had he not had those things and so the decision to see the loss of Freedom or Mobility or options again this is about the handle that we choose to grab are we going to see what we've been deprived of or we going to be see what we can do now because of in spite of it's just an incredible thing and it's a testament to epictetus's greatness that this is basically the only thing that he says about this
uh incident in his life it doesn't slow him down in the least it's not always going to go the way you want it to go that's just not life none of us are in control in that sense even the most important people don't get their way all the time nobody has absolute power nobody has absolute control we are all at the mercy of events so epic says we don't have freedom then to to sort of make the world we want it to be or to have things go the way we want them to go but
he says you know what you have the freedom to do you have the freedom to wish for things to be the way that they are he says you are not free to demand things to go the way you want them to go but you are free to wish them to be the way that they are this is the art of acquiescence acceptance epicus talks a lot about Ascent not like Ascent up a mountain but as n t we have the freedom to accept things as they are to embrace them as they are to see it
not as I have to do this but I get to do this this is the way it should be because it is the way that it is now this is different than I think just a total resignation to external events never fighting against Injustice never pushing for social change I don't think that's what he's saying I think he's more saying like you can say I wanted this flight to be delayed because it means I get to take my kid to school this morning I wanted it to rain out this baseball game I was going to
cuz now I won't be out so late tonight I wanted this Scandal to happen because it showed me who my friends are I wished for it to go the way that it went again this is all part of the same idea of which handle you're going to grab we don't have the freedom to to for the world to be the way that we want it to be and this can cause you distress this can cause you Ang anguish this can cause you grievance but we can also wish for the world to be in some ways
essentially what it is we can be happy with life we can embrace our circumstances we can find out what we can do inside them and this is an essential power that epicus is forced to embrace in all the phases of his life from his early days in slavery from his disability and then ultimately when he gets his freedom and finds his Fame and his influence he's always having to accept and wish for things to be the way that they are there is one thing that doesn't matter if you're rich or poor powerful or powerless healthy
or unhealthy young or old eventually inevitably we all die it's the one prophecy that never fails it's the great equalizer it's the one thing that we cannot Escape but you know what we are free to do what we have to understand but we are free to use this to get clarity and urgency and perspective from it epic Tia says you have to set before your eyes every day death and Exile and everything else that looks terrible he said especially death he says and when you do this you will never again have a mean thought or
be too attached to anything I think when people think of this momentto Mori practice of meditating on mortality that it's about kind of Detachment about not caring about other people or things there's actually an exercise that Mark celius talks about in meditations that he gets from epicus epicus said as you tuck your child in at night you should say to yourself they will not make it until the morning that we should do one of the hardest things to do in the world meditate on the mortality of our children that is that how hopeless and resigned
we're supposed to be is is that a product of epicus being a slave where children could be taken from you or is that a product of him living in a world where people died suddenly for no reason no I don't think so I think what epicus is saying is to give you the freedom to enjoy that moment that you are in he's saying slow down don't rush through this don't tell yourself that you have an unlimited amount of these with this person in the future because you don't know that you do so the freedom comes
from embracing the moment appreciating it and only the perspective of our mortality can fully give us this Clarity I know sounds dark sounds uncomfortable and it is but that is life it is a fact and we have to face it and we can't run away from it and when you keep this darkness in mind it also allows you to appreciate the light the ordinary moments the wonderful of existence again even amidst the depravity and the evil that epicus would have seen up close allows you to appreciate the ordinary it allows you to be present it
allows you to live while you are alive and that is the most important Freedom that there [Music] is when I wrote The Daily stoic 8 years ago I had this crazy idea that I would just keep it going the book was 366 meditations but I'd write one more every single day and I'd give it away for free as an email I I thought maybe a few people would sign up couldn't have even comprehended a future in which 3/4 of a million people would get this email every single day and would for almost a decade if
you want to get the email if you want to be part of a community that is the largest group of stoics ever assembled in human history I'd love for you to join us you can sign up and get the email totally for free no spam you can unsubscribe whenever you want at Daily stoic.com [Music] [Music]
