This Is Almost a Miracle | The Epictetus Lesson Kyle Carpenter Lives By

0:00Ryan Holiday: Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key Stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world.

0:14Ryan Holiday: This is almost a miracle, and too many people refuse to take advantage of it. It should not exist. It should not have survived. It was not intended for publication. It's totally and utterly unprecedented, as we have said many times. Marcus Aurelius' meditations is the unguarded private thoughts, the most powerful man in the world. In its pages, we have the philosophical insights and wisdom of someone who lived through a plague, lived through wars, lived through famine, lived through floods, lived through health issues, one thing after another. And somehow this wisdom has proven not just relatable, but essential for people, for people like us for thousands of years.

0:59Ryan Holiday: But there's another wrinkle that makes this whole thing even more remarkable. Meditations would not have been possible without another book that should also not exist, that should not have survived, whose lessons were not intended for publication. Epictetus' Discourses. The teachings of a person who wasn't even given a real name, Epictetus means acquired one, a person born a slave who spent decades of his life being tortured, a man who was later unjustly exiled, who didn't even write down his own work, not only survived, but his teachings made their way to a young Marcus Aurelius who even more improbably read them and put them to use.

1:45Ryan Holiday: How does the thinking of one of the most powerless people in human history come to shape the thinking and the life of one of the most powerful people in history? That's a question we should want to know the answer to. Because here in two of the most incredible books ever written, we are presented with all the wisdom necessary to live the good life, with everything we need to know to deal with the difficulties of life. epictetus's work changed marcus realis's life both of them have changed my life both of them will change your life if you let that that's why here in august daily stoic is doing a deep dive into epictetus we're diving into discourses we're diving into the in coridian not just to read them but to put epictetus's teachings into practice we've created this awesome guide how to read epictetus it's a 14 module companion to his works we've got videos we've got context we've got prompts.

2:41Ryan Holiday: We've got exercises designed to help you make those teachings stick. So whether you're new to Stoicism or you've read meditations a dozen times, maybe you've even read Epictetus already. This will help deepen that understanding, that philosophy, challenge how you live it. And if you join us this month with our guide, you not only can get the books as part of that, but you can join me. We're going to be doing a live session with thousands of Stoics all over the world to dive into the teachings of Epictetus. I hope to see you there. As I said, his work change my life. I think it'll change your life.

3:11Ryan Holiday: I can't wait to see you in there. Just go to dailystoic.com slash Epictetus to find out more and we'll get into it. Talk soon.

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6:26Ryan Holiday: Do you know who Epictetus was, the Stoke philosopher? Absolutely. So, you know, Epictetus is tortured by his, he's a slave, but he has this cruel master who tortures him. He breaks his leg at one point. And so he has this, he's crippled the rest of his life, which is, I guess, the term they would use then. So he's coming at this not from like some tenured academic perch, but like a dude who really suffered and went through stuff. And his thing was that we, every situation has two handles. You know, we get to decide what we're going to try to pick it up by. And you can grab the handle that says, hey, I'm alive.

7:01Ryan Holiday: This is good. Or you can grab the handle of like, why am I alive? This is horrible. and that handles kind of everything. The lens through which we decide to interpret the events or the position we're in is kind of the first step. Because if you get that one wrong, all the other steps are really hard, I feel like. If you're like, I was singled out, this is horrible, this is insurmountable, you know, you can tell yourself a story that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Now, just telling yourself it's wonderful and I'm never going to suffer again and it's all going to great. That's the thing that those Vietnam prisoners talked about.

7:43Ryan Holiday: Like the story you're telling yourself is I'm going to be home by Christmas. This is going to be over really soon. That's also a bad handle because life doesn't really care that that's what you think. Like, but if you if you so it's the key is sort of picking something that's both hopeful, but also got a kind of a grit and a determination to it. That's like, as you said, like, I just know I'm not quitting because as long as these people are helping me, I'm not going to give up. That's that's not like, oh, you know, if you get in a car accident and the doctors say you're never going to walk again just because you go, I'm going to walk again.

8:21Ryan Holiday: And sometimes that works, but not always. That's not magically going to give you your legs back. Yeah, there needs to be accepting of reality in there as well. But I think there's tremendous power, and I would say that's even an understatement, to embracing the struggle. Yeah. You know, in the beginning to embrace the unknown allowed me to to step onto those yellow footprints at boot camp. Sure. To try to become a Marine. And really a life of services is especially in the military. It's kind of like an entire journey, whether that's four years or a whole career of unknown. And then through my recovery and just life in general is is an unknown journey.

9:09You can prepare yourself. you can try to to learn and and to become resilient throughout the difficult journey but you never really know what the day or what life in in the big picture is going to hold but you know I joined the Marine Corps to discover who I could really become and who I really was and they say be careful what you wish for sometimes yeah you probably thought that was

9:38Ryan Holiday: you were going to find out who that was, you know, in battle, not in a hospital room, but one led to the other. And that's, you don't really know. That's what I've been thinking about on this book that I'm writing now. So I'm writing a book about Stockdale and, you know, Stockdale goes to the Academy. He thinks he's enlisting in World War II. He misses World War II. Then he thinks he's going to fight in Korea, like all his buddies do, like Hudner wins the Medal of Honor in Korea. Like I have his orders where he's like begging to be sent to Korea. And they're like, it would be detrimental to your unit if we sent you to Korea.

10:16Ryan Holiday: And so he does. So he keeps thinking that he's missing his moment. Right. Then he goes to test pilot school and he thinks, you know, that's this is my thing. And then, you know, Jaeger breaks the sound barrier. He's not one of those. Then he misses like astronaut school and he thinks he's, you know, So like, yeah, he's like, what? You know, he keeps any, but he doesn't know because you can't know that it's actually preparing him for this day in 1965 when he gets shot down. And then he can't even conceive then of what, you know, the next seven years are going to mean. But like, you don't know what life is preparing you for.

10:58Ryan Holiday: all you can really do is be ready for something that you can't even conceive of. Yeah, absolutely. You know, whether it's through that journey or that moment that you're shot down, you become a POW. You know, I encourage people when I speak or when I have engagements on the road to, you know, embrace that struggle. Yeah. One, I think to be realistic that, you know, life is a very difficult journey at times. Sure. But it's also equally as beautiful. And most importantly, it's worth living and it's worth being here because those moments are impossible to describe how immediately. I want to say dark, just avoid.

11:46Ryan Holiday: Yeah. Things become. But, you know, to know that that life is difficult and when you face that adversity. To embrace it. Yeah. Yeah. And you really, I mean, in a way, I feel like you don't have another choice. I mean, if you want to sit exactly where you are right now or right in that moment of adversity for the rest of your life, that's really the only other option. But to embrace the struggle and understand that there's always a silver lining. There's always that light at the end of the tunnel. And when you reach that, which, you know, everyone heals in their own time in their own way. So I'm not telling you I'm not one of those that say, oh, just, you know, brush it off, get back up and keep going.

12:33I mean, sometimes it takes an entire life to try to continue to get better. Sometimes it is just inching or crawling forward. But in the right time to know that when you move forward, you hold on those silver linings, you reach that light at the end of the tunnel, you will not only look back and be proud of yourself you'll realize that the journey was worth it and you will be the strongest more perspective driven more grateful version of yourself and ultimately in that moment you know it's never there's never a finish line but in that moment when you're on the other side you'll realize that you're the best version of of yourself.

13:21Ryan Holiday: And don't you think this is like, I think having a physical practice is a metaphor for that, right? Like every time I run, every time I jump in cold water, every time I lift weights or whatever, I don't want to do it, but I'm glad after that I did it, right? It's the feeling afterward that the shitty part is for. And that, you know, sometimes, and it's not just like, oh, hey, the endorphins, you know, you do the thing and then you get a little rush of endorphins at the end. Sometimes you don't feel anything at the end, but tired or hurt or whatever. But like six months later, when you catch a glimpse of yourself in the mirror and you're like, I am in the shape that I want to be, or you have to pick up something heavy and you can pick it up because you did the work.

14:08Ryan Holiday: That's what it is. And yeah, I think that's the metaphor for life is like in the shitty moments. And it's not just in your own life. It's like every relationship has these dips and the good parts in the relationship are never those dips. They're at some point after those dips, if you don't quit and, and just knowing like, yeah, it's, um, you get through the hard thing because of what's on the other side of the hard thing.

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