Epictetus: focus only on what you control
Epictetus, a Greek slave in Nero's court, originated the Stoic idea of focusing exclusively on what is 'up to you' and ignoring everything that is not.
Where this was said
Epictetus: The Slave Who Was Freer Than the Emperor
At 1:57:37 · chapter starts 1:54:20
Ryan Holiday places Epictetus as the polar opposite of Seneca — both in Nero's orbit, one at the summit of Roman power, one at its absolute bottom. From that position, Epictetus observed free Roman millionaires debasing themselves before Nero's cobbler for imperial favor and concluded they were less free than he was, because they were enslaved to fear and desire [1] — Ryan Holiday "Cato the Younger was the Roman Republic's last line of defense against Caesar. When he lost, rather than submit, he went to his room, read …" 1:21:10 . His core teaching — that there are things up to you and things not up to you, and wisdom consists in separating the two — is the most resilient and battle-tested layer of Stoicism. The emperor Hadrian eventually traveled to listen to Epictetus lecture, a reversal of power that Holiday finds deeply fitting. Epictetus's Discourses, recorded by his student Arrian, made their way to a young Marcus Aurelius via his philosophy teacher Rusticus — a book loan that Holiday argues changed Western civilization.
Epictetus's dichotomy: 'It's not things that upset us, it's our opinion about things'
Epictetus's most famous teaching — that events are neutral and only our judgments about them cause suffering — is the philosophical foundation of modern CBT.
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