17 Dec 2025 · 5 min
Brian Johnson presents a microchapter from his upcoming book Arete, which identifies 451 ideas for activating your heroic potential. He frames Stoic philosophy, especially Epictetus's Enchiridion, as a practical toolkit for living rather than abstract theory. The book ships November 14.
Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another arete plus 1 degree microchapter idea from my new book, Arete Activate youe Heroic Potential. We're going through the first 11 microchapters. Then we're going to systematically walk through some of my favorites. 451Total ideas in the book. Hope you dig it. For today, ready at hand. Your philosophical armamentarium. Epictetus is my favorite teacher. He was a former slave who taught and practiced Stoic philosophy in ancient Rome. He trained the guys who trained the emperor philosopher Marcus Aurelius. He's also the primary influence for the guys who created the modern cognitive behavioral therapy movement. One of his students took really good lecture notes. Thanks, Arrian. And captured his wisdom in a manual called the Enchiridion. Now, the Greek word enchiridion is translated as handbook. But it's important to note that the word literally means within hand. To put it in perspective, the word was used to describe a hand dagger. Epictetus. Wisdom and all the wisdom of all the great ancient philosophers was less like a guidebook you held in your hand and more like a sword or a tool or a Navy SEAL's explosive you held in your hand wisdom that was ready at hand and could be used to meet life's inevitable challenges. As we'll discuss. The Stoic philosophers told us that we needed to be warriors of the mind, not mere librarians of the mind cataloging interesting ideas. They had an entire collection of weapons and tools and in what was known as their armamentarium. And that's how I'd like us to think about this book. 451 ideas to help us move from theory to practice to mastery together closing the gap between who we're capable of being and who we're actually being as we activate our heroic potential and give the world all we've got. Not someday. Today. I hope you enjoyed that. Arete plus one degree from my new book. Arete, activate your heroic potential. The book will be shipped on November 14, right before Black Friday. In time to make it the perfect holiday gift, perhaps. I wanted to let you know that we have some special giveaways if you think you might like to pre order the book. And even more goodies if you think you might want to give the book away this holiday season. Here's the deal. Pre order one copy and get a free advanced reader copy of the ebook today. Pre order three copies and get a free advanced copy of the ebook and the audiobook. And a limited edition Arete coin that we'll send to you. Pre order 10 copies of the book bless you and get all of that plus and an autographed advanced Hardcover reader copy sent to you immediately inside the fancy Arete VIP box, which is packed with other goodies including this Arete T shirt, a Heroic t shirt and 10 free annual heroic memberships for your gift recipients. You'd be able to give them a book and a year's worth of Heroic for free. If you pre order 25 copies, you'll get all that plus a free ticket to our launch event party in Austin November 10th through 12th and you'll get a personal voice memo thank you and a high five from me if you're feeling inspired to order over 50 copies of the book. We've been blessed to have a lot of CEOs and corporations do that. We'll give you a huge discount. Just let us know all of this. You can learn more about at Heroic Heroic Us Book. Of course you can order the book on Amazon, Barnes and Noble Independent bookstores will be everywhere you can buy a book, Hudson's airport stores, etc. And let us know of course when you've done that and purchased a copy or three or ten or more if you feel inspired to do so at Heroic Us Book. I appreciate you and I hope you love the book. I'm super excited about it, super proud of it, and I hope it helps you and your families transform your lives.
