PNTV: Discourses by Epictetus (#337)

Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to Philosopher's Notes tv. Today, another great book, Discourses by Epictetus. Discourses and Technically selected writings by Epictetus, who is one of history's three great Stoic philosophers. The. The other two, Seneca and Marcus Aurelius. The three of them make a pretty fascinating group. Marcus Aurelius was the Roman emperor Stoic philosopher who wrote Meditations, which we featured. And then we have Seneca, who was effectively his era's billionaire advisor to the emperor Nero, who wound up going nuts and exiling him and compelling him to commit suicide. He. Then we have Epictetus, who is a former slave turned philosophy professor who had his own school in Greece where he taught the kind of noblemen of young noblemen of ancient Rome and fascinating guys, I love Stoicism. I'm planning to create Stoicism 101 probably by the end of the year. We'll see how that goes and I'll put a link below to all of our Stoic titles. We've got a bunch and, and you can search the site Stoicism as well to find that. So Discourses, bunch of big ideas. Other thing to know is the Enchiridion is in some ways kind of the philosopher's notes on the Discourses. Right. So Epictetus is one of his students. Arrian basically took lecture notes on all of the different presentations that Epictetus gave to his students. Not all of them, but whatever selected group of them. Right. And he created Discourses as part of that. And we have, I think like four different books out of the eight that existed at some point. Discourses captures that. Then the Enchiridion is a distillation of the most pithy wisdom from the Discourses. So the Enchiridium is awesome as just kind of an action packed, dense wisdom goodness. But you don't really get to feel Epictetus's kind of energy and his witness to go with his wisdom. The Discourses is great because you get to see the teacher in action and he's funny and he chides his students to go all in. And it's really fun to see his presentation style. So Discourses five big ideas. Let's look at our first one. Hercules. Hercules. So Epictetus tells a bunch of funny stories. And here's one of them. He says, who would Hercules be? Well, without his challenges, if you take away Hydra, you take away the boar, you take away all the criminals, all the challenges that Hercules had to face, who would Hercules have been? What would he have done? He says he answers his own question by saying, Hercules just would have rolled over and stayed in bed and kept on sleeping. It took the challenges that Hercules faced for Hercules to become Hercules. We all need challenges if we want to attain greatness. Otherwise, the life of luxury is just all about sleeping. Epictetus challenges his students, who, again, were kind of the wealthy individuals of Rome who came over to his school in Greece. All the philosophers were kicked out of Rome during this phase and studied from Epictetus. And he said, look, you're going to go back and you're going to have an opportunity to basically run the world. He you need to embrace challenges if you want to see what you're capable of. You got to quit complaining about every little challenge you face. Look at them as the pathway to your own greatness. That's how Hercules became great, rather than just rolling over and staying in bed and sleeping some more. Second big idea we have is figs and greatness. So, as I mentioned, the Enshridion is basically a distillation of the discourses. And in the Enshridian, they have the or they share this piece of wisdom. And I shared it in both notes because it's so good and it's impacted me so much. Epictetus says that if you want to be great and you want to get your mind right, you want to be able to show up as your highest, most noble self, you've got to realize that's not a snap your fingers and it's done immediately kind of process. It takes time. And he says it's kind of like a grape or a figure. If you tell me you want a grape, I tell you. He says, if you tell me you want a fig, I tell you there must be time. First you must let the tree blossom, then it will bear fruit, then it will ripen, then you can have your fig. He says it's the same thing with us as we want to optimize our lives and actualize our potential. Don't believe anyone who tells you it's going to happen like that is what Epictetus says. It's going to take time for your potential to come to fruition. So remember the figs, remember the grapes. And I remember this. And I've said this phrase to myself, this whole idea that nothing great is ever created suddenly. If you tell me you desire a fig, I answer, there must be time. First let it blossom, then bear fruit, then ripen. I've said that to myself literally hundreds and hundreds of times, particularly when I'm on a hike that I do here. Where I live, that goes around. One of the hikes, goes around an avocado orchard and then an orange orchard. So I'll watch during the seasons of whoop. There's the blossom, there's the fruit. Tiny little nub of fruit. It's growing now it's ripe. There's the process. Nothing great is ever created suddenly. And as a recovering, very impatient perfectionist, this wisdom has been incredibly helpful. And in our class, conquering perfectionism 101, this is really the through line. This is the theme. The incremental optimizer versus the perfectionist. The perfectionist thinks, oh, yeah, I got the idea. I should be able to implement it immediately. The incremental optimizer realizes things happen more like the figure, the grape. You've got to find a way to get 1% better today. Then you aggregate those little gains, you compound them over time, and you have magic figs and greatness. Keep that in mind the next time you find yourself getting impatient and thinking you should already be somewhere. No, you shouldn't. You should be where you are. It takes time. Now get back to work. Which leads us to our third big idea. Indifferent. So this is the cornerstone of Stoic philosophy, the cornerstone of Epictetus wisdom, and Aurelius and Seneca. The basic idea here is that there's good and there's evil, and then there's things you want to be indifferent to, right? Most people think good and evil is kind of stuff that's happening to them, right? This circumstance is good or it's bad. He says you need to get rid of all sense that good and bad is outside of yourself and realize it's all within you. The only thing that matters are the things. The only things that matter are the things that are within your control. He says, ultimately, there's really only one thing that's within your control and that's your will. Or another way he frames it is the choices you make. Right? You can't control the circumstances in your life. You can't control your genetics, you can't control your upbringing, you can't control your health perfectly. You can influence it, but you can't control it perfectly. You can't control your life, you can't control your death, you can't control your reputation. You. Again, you can influence these things, but you can't control them. And we suffer when we think that we should be able to control things that are outside of our control and then ignore the only thing that is within our control, which is the choice that we make in response to that. Which is happening to us. So we talk about this with James Stockdale. When he was falling into. Out of his plane into a prison of war camp, right? He went from being an elite soldier to being a criminal in this prisoner of war camp, according to his captors, right? He was tortured and he was put into solitary confinement. He was in prison for eight years. Four of those were in solitary confinement. And as he floated down in his parachute after getting shot down, he had about 30 seconds. He was thinking of Epictetus, and he was thinking of this rule. Epictetus says there are two things, things that you can't control and things that you can control. And literally, as he was floating down, he said to himself, I'm leaving the modern world. I'm entering the world of Epictetus. And I need to remember that I no longer have. I never have, but had. But now I have no choice over my circumstances. But I do have a choice in terms of how I'm going to respond to what's happening to me, and I'm going to respond as nobly as I possibly can. I'm going to live with Arete. Ultimately, that's what we want to do. We want to show up at our highest self. Viktor Frankl echoes this wisdom in man's search for meaning. He's in the Holocaust. He had no control over the fact that he lost everything in his life. His wife, his family, horrific circumstances. But what he said was, I refuse to give up my last freedom. I refuse to give up my choice, my will to. To respond how I believe is most noble, to live with Arete, even in the midst of these horrible circumstances. And the idea here is that anything outside of your will, outside of your own choice to live with virtue, you are indifferent to. You're indifferent to your reputation, you're indifferent to the amount of wealth you have. You're indifferent to anything that can be taken from you. You don't get hooked on it. That, he says, is the pathway to invincibility. Unfortunately, almost all of us spend all of our energy trying to get the things we think are going to make us happy. And we forget that this is where happiness exists. The invincible one is the one who can step in between stimulus and response. If you can do that, he says, and you can choose Arete as your response to everything that happens to you, like James Stockdale did in his demonstration of the heroic ideals, or Viktor Frankl, it doesn't matter what's happening to you, you choose to respond with as much nobility as you can. That's Invincibility, that's flourishing. That's the true ground of tranquility and happiness that we want to aspire to. Of course, our culture tells us we want to try to go after all the things outside of ourselves, he says, be indifferent to that. Focus on what really matters. That's what's key. The fourth big idea is what gets in the way of that. What gets in the way of that, Epictetus tells us, are all the impressions that bubble up in our minds. So impressions is the word that he uses to describe kind of thoughts and feelings and impulses that arise. So when a stimulus occurs, right then your mind bubbles up with impressions, so you have all these different thoughts that come into mind. He says, you can't let yourself get carried away by those. You've got to stretch the gap here between that stimulus and the impressions and. And your response, and choose the most noble response you possibly can. In the note, I talk about George Mumford. George Mumford wrote the Mindful Athlete. He coaches guys like Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, et cetera. And Epictetus is constantly talking about athletes. He lived close to Olympia in Greece, and he literally would go to the old school, ancient Olympics. So he uses these Olympians as a model for his students. And he says, you've got to train as hard as these great Olympic athletes, these gladiators who, by the way, seek challenges. They're not trying to avoid them. They want to fight the best, because that's the only way they're going to be able to prove what they're capable of. He says if you want to get good at being indifferent to things outside of yourself, you need to constantly challenge yourself, to step in between stimulus and response and to choose the best response. So for us, practically speaking, that means we want to use the most mundane things in our lives. Think of the last time you got annoyed. Some little thing that happened to you, and you said you're annoyed because this happened. You made something that you should be indifferent to the source of your happiness. He says, you got to practice, make a better choice, exercise your will. So every time you get annoyed by something, pause and say, this. This event is not creating my mood, right? That's just an impression. I need to wrestle with it, I need to train against it. I need to sweat and get good at choosing a better response. That's how we master the whole process, getting in control of our impressions. And again, practice with all the little things, such that when the big things come up, you've done the work, you're ready for them. And Hercules style. You're looking forward to them. So you can put this stuff into practice again. Epictetus says, what are you studying this stuff for if it isn't to put it into practice? And if it's to put it into practice, then you should be excited about challenges because that's when you get to see how well you've learned this stuff. Don't get upset by challenges or annoying things. Rub your hands together and say, cool, I got a training partner. He says, imagine God wrestling with you or sending you a wrestler who challenges you to show up and to perform at your peak. That's how you want to do it. Then the fifth big idea is Cole and grime. He says that as you go about this work, you want to pay attention to who you hang out with. He says if you hang out with 30 people who are not committed to these philosophical ideals, it's hard to hang out with people who don't share your ideals and not in the kind of dirty right and not get some of their grime. You're going to walk away feeling a little grimy. Kind of an old school take on the you are the average of the five people with whom you spend the most time. It's a good thing to think about who are you spending your time with? And do the math. How's that averaging? Is it bringing you up or is it bringing you down? He says, be aware of that because you're either going to go to their level or you need to do what you can to have them emulate you and to inspire them to step up your game. But you want to find the opportunities to surround yourself with people who share your values and be aware of how easy it is to be influenced. He says if you take two pieces of coal, to use in his old school metaphor, right, one has died out and one is still burning. He says those pieces of coal, as they're kind of connected and touching one another, are going to influence one another. This one's either going to burn this one out or this one's either going to light this one back up, right? You want to be aware of how you're interacting with other people and how they're affecting you. And be aware of any grime that you might get by choosing to spend time with individuals who aren't elevating you. Remember, you want to fight those impressions. Step in between stimulus and response. I started talking about George Mumford. This is his whole deal. When he talks about the work that he did with Kobe Bryant and Michael Jordan, he says, you need to find that calm in the storm where you can step in between stimulus and response and choose the the empowered response. You can only do that by training like an athlete. Become indifferent to all the things outside of you. Know that everything that is good and evil exists within you and your choices and your will arete is the ideal we want to aspire to. That does not happen overnight. Remember, figs and greatness blossom, bear fruit and ripen. Everything takes time. Celebrate your challenges Hercules style what would Hercules have done if he didn't have challenges? You would have rolled over and stayed in bed. Let's embrace our challenges. Let's get our stoic wisdom on and in the process have another awesome day. Can't wait to share more Again. Check out all the work on Stoicism. Can't wait to share the Stoicism 101 class for now. What was your favorite big idea? How can you implement it in your life? And next time you find yourself annoyed, go to work. Train on it Olympian style. Have another great day. See you. Isn't it a bit odd we went from math to science to history but somehow missed the class on how to live? For some wacky reason, optimal living 101 never made the schedule. Of course, it's too late to go back and change that and you're too busy to read full time to catch up yet. If you're like us, you're all about optimizing your life and actualizing your potential. So imagine this. Imagine having someone read the best books on optimal living and pulling out the big ideas that can truly change your life. You know those sections you asterisk and underline and mark all up? Then imagine that guy me, connecting those ideas to other great books and helping you apply them to your life today. Well, that's what I do with something we call Philosopher's Notes, where I break down each great book into a simple 6 page PDF, 20 minute MP3 and 10 minute Philosopher's Notes TV episode. Then imagine me taking the absolute best big ideas from those great books and sharing them with you in fun, inspiring, super practical optimal living 101 classes on stuff like purpose 101, confidence 101, business 101, meditation 101, that sort of thing. You've got a personal trainer. I'm kind of like your personal philosopher. Ancient Wisdom plus Modern Science plus Common Sense plus Virtue plus plus Mastery plus Fun. That's what our optimized membership program is all about. We'd love to have you join us. Check us out at BrianJohnson me join.