Start with a hard split.
You control your judgments, decisions, aims, refusals, and actions.
You do not control your body in the final sense, your property, your reputation, your position, other people, or events outside your own actions.
What depends on you can remain free. What depends on the outside world can be blocked, taken away, damaged, or changed by somebody else.
Confuse the two and you give the outside world control over you. You will spend your time frustrated, angry, frightened, or blaming people.
Keep the split clear.
Treat your own choices as yours. Treat everything else as something you have temporary use of.
This is difficult. If you seriously want it, some other ambitions will have to go. Others will have to wait. You cannot make freedom your first priority while also treating money, status, power, and approval as necessities.
When something hits you hard, do not react at once.
First say: “This is my first impression of what happened.”
Then inspect it.
Ask whether the matter is under your control.
If it is not, do not hand it command of your mind.
Desire creates a promise in your head: I will get this.
Aversion creates another: I will avoid this.
When you desire something that another person or circumstance controls, you have made disappointment possible before anything has even happened.
The same applies to things you fear.
Illness can happen. Poverty can happen. Death will happen. Trying to build a life in which these things must never occur guarantees fear.
Put your effort into your own conduct instead.
For now, be cautious with desire. Learn how your judgment works before you start filling it with demands.
Pursue things lightly. Avoid things lightly. Leave room for reality to disagree with you.
When you value something, remember what kind of thing it is.
You like a particular cup. Fine. It is still a breakable cup.
If it breaks, nothing impossible has happened.
The same rule gets much harder with people.
The people you love are human. Human beings are mortal. Remembering this does not mean loving them less. It means refusing to pretend that love includes permanent possession.
Before doing something, think about what normally comes with it.
You are going to the public baths. Expect splashing, pushing, shouting, theft, and irritating people.
Then go there with two aims:
Take your bath.
Keep command of yourself while doing it.
If somebody behaves badly, only the first aim has been disturbed.
Use this method everywhere.
Do not plan only for the ideal version of an event. Include the ordinary stupidity of human beings in the plan.
Events reach you through your judgment of them.
Death terrifies one person and does not terrify another. The event has not changed. Their judgment has.
When you become upset, examine the judgment before you blame the event or another person.
A beginner blames everybody else.
A student notices his own contribution.
Someone who has learned the lesson has less need to blame anyone.
Do not take personal credit for things that are not yours.
A fine horse can be a fine horse. Owning it does not make you fine.
The same applies to possessions, connections, appearance, rank, and reputation.
Your own contribution starts with how you judge things and how you act.
If you want something worth taking pride in, work there.
Imagine that your ship stops during a voyage.
You go ashore for water. While there, you find a shell or something else worth looking at.
Fine.
Keep one ear on the ship.
When the captain calls, drop the shell and go.
Life works much the same way. You can have relationships, possessions, work, interests, and pleasures. Enjoy them.
Do not forget that none came with a guarantee of permanent possession.
When it is time to leave them, you leave them.
The older you get, the less sensible it is to pretend the ship is nowhere near departure.
Stop requiring events to follow the script in your head.
Work with the events that actually occur.
You will waste much less of your life fighting completed facts.
Illness can restrict your body.
It does not automatically control your decisions.
An injured leg restricts the leg.
It does not automatically injure your judgment.
Whenever something blocks you, be precise about what has actually been blocked.
Do not expand a local problem until it occupies your entire identity.
Every difficult situation gives you something to exercise.
Attraction gives you a chance to practise restraint.
Pain gives you a chance to practise endurance.
Insults give you a chance to practise patience.
Look for the useful capacity before the event carries you away.
Repeated often enough, this becomes habit.
Be careful with the word lost.
Many things you call yours were only in your possession for a time.
When something leaves, think of the arrangement ending.
This applies to property and, painfully, to people.
You may object that the person or event which took something from you was unjust. Deal with the injustice if it is within your power.
It still does not give you permanent ownership of what could always be taken.
Treat external things the way a traveller treats a room at an inn.
Use them well.
Do not mistake them for the building you own forever.
If you want to improve your mind, watch the excuses that appear immediately.
“If I do not obsess over my business, I could lose money.”
“If I do not control this person, they might behave badly.”
Maybe.
Now include the price of constant fear, anger, and agitation in the calculation.
Start small.
Some oil spills.
Someone takes a little wine.
Something inexpensive goes wrong.
You can treat every minor irritation as an emergency, or you can regard the loss as the fee for practising calm.
Nothing useful is free.
Other people will sometimes ignore you, misunderstand you, fail to arrive, or do a job badly.
Do not give every random person administrator access to your nervous system.
If you seriously want to improve, accept that some people will think you foolish.
They may see you refusing opportunities, status games, arguments, luxuries, or chances to show off and conclude that you do not understand how the world works.
Let them.
Trying to improve your own judgment while constantly managing everybody else's opinion is an expensive arrangement.
You rarely get both.
Wanting impossible control does not become sensible because the thing matters deeply to you.
You cannot require your family to live forever.
You cannot require friends to remain unchanged.
You cannot require another person to have no faults.
You can work on making your own desires less dependent on those requirements.
Anybody who can grant or remove something you regard as necessary has power over you.
If your freedom matters, be careful what you make necessary.
Treat life like a meal being passed around a table.
Something reaches you. Take a reasonable share.
It passes you. Let it pass.
It has not reached you yet. Do not lean across the entire table grabbing for it.
Apply this to money, relationships, office, reputation, and opportunity.
You can also refuse what is offered.
A person who can comfortably leave desirable things on the table has become difficult to control.
When someone suffers, do not let their reaction automatically become your own.
Understand what happened.
Understand that their judgment of the event contributes to the suffering.
You can still sit with them, help them, and speak sympathetically.
Compassion does not require you to collapse internally beside them.
Think of yourself as an actor given a role.
You do not choose the length of the play.
You may receive poverty, disability, authority, obscurity, wealth, or an ordinary life.
Your part of the job concerns how well you perform with what you have.
Casting was handled elsewhere.
People once heard ravens and saw omens.
We have our own versions.
A bad sign appears. A prediction frightens you. Somebody says disaster is coming.
Separate the external outcome from your own conduct.
Even an unpleasant event can give you material for good judgment and good action.
In that sense, no omen can prevent you from using what happens well.
You become very difficult to defeat when you stop entering contests whose result somebody else controls.
Look at powerful, famous, wealthy, admired people carefully.
Do not add “happy” to the description without evidence.
If your freedom rests on your own conduct, another person's rank gives you little reason for envy.
You do not need to become a senator, general, executive, celebrity, or important man.
You need enough independence that losing those titles would not destroy you.
When somebody insults you, there are two events.
They spoke.
Your mind decided what their words meant.
That second stage often happens so fast that it feels like one event.
Slow it down.
When somebody provokes you, buy a little time before you answer.
A few seconds can prevent another person from choosing your behaviour for you.
Remember death.
Remember exile, loss, illness, and the other outcomes people spend enormous effort pretending cannot happen.
This does not require constant misery.
The opposite is more useful.
A person who remembers that time is limited has less reason to grovel, waste years on appearances, or desperately collect things he cannot keep.
If you begin practising philosophy seriously, expect some mockery.
People may think you suddenly became pretentious.
Do not help them by acting pretentious.
Keep doing the work.
Consistency matters more than the performance of wisdom.
Some people who laugh at first may respect you later.
If mockery makes you abandon the whole thing, you have gained neither the improvement nor their respect.
The moment you make pleasing everybody else a requirement, you have handed them part of the steering system.
Practise what you believe is right.
Do not spend much effort making sure everybody also recognises you as the sort of person who practises it.
Knowing your own standard is enough.
Do not panic over the possibility that you may remain obscure.
Fame, office, invitations, access, and social importance depend heavily on other people.
Your character does not.
You may worry that without money or influence you cannot help your friends.
Be exact about this.
Perhaps you cannot give them money.
Perhaps you cannot obtain favours for them.
You can still be a reliable and honourable friend.
If somebody asks you to become corrupt so you can obtain resources for them, the bargain is rotten.
The same applies to public service.
You do not need to build monuments or hold office to be useful.
A competent carpenter contributes as a carpenter. A competent doctor contributes as a doctor. A decent citizen contributes by remaining decent.
Take whatever role you can perform without selling the qualities that made your contribution worth having.
Suppose another person gets invited somewhere and you do not.
Maybe he visits the host constantly.
Maybe he flatters him.
Maybe he performs all the little social duties that buy access.
You chose not to pay that price.
Good. Then stop demanding the product.
Everything has a price.
If a lettuce costs a coin, one person can have the lettuce while you keep the coin.
Neither got both.
Social favour works the same way.
If an invitation costs flattery and attendance, decide whether you want it badly enough to pay.
If you do not, keep what you refused to spend.
Wanting the benefit while despising its price is childish.
Notice how sensible you become when the problem belongs to somebody else.
Your neighbour breaks a cup.
You say, “These things happen.”
Your cup breaks.
Suddenly the universe has committed an offence.
Try to carry some of that outside perspective into your own problems.
The same principle reaches into much more painful events.
When tragedy happens to another family, you understand that terrible things happen to human beings.
Remember that you belong to the same species when tragedy reaches yours.
A target exists to be hit.
Missing it does not become the purpose of the target.
Do not treat error and failure as though the world was constructed for their sake.
You would be furious if someone handed your body over to any stranger who happened to walk past.
Yet people routinely hand their minds over.
One insult arrives and a stranger gets control for the afternoon.
Guard your mind at least as carefully as your body.
Before you commit to something, inspect the whole job.
Do not inspect only the attractive bit.
You want to win at the Olympic Games?
Fine.
Now add the diet, training, heat, cold, rules, injuries, obedience to a trainer, discomfort, humiliation, and the possibility that after all of it you still lose.
Still want it?
Proceed.
This applies to philosophy as well.
People see an impressive philosopher and decide they want the result.
They have not priced the work.
Then another interesting identity arrives and they become something else.
Do not spend your life trying on personalities like costumes.
Look at the requirements.
Look at yourself.
Decide whether you are willing to do the work when the novelty has gone.
Different people can carry different loads.
If you choose this one, expect discipline, frustration, lost pleasures, social friction, and occasions when other people get ahead because they are playing games you refused to play.
The reward you are buying is greater command of yourself.
Know the price before you order it.
Your duties depend partly on your relationships.
A father gives you one set of responsibilities.
A brother gives another.
A neighbour, citizen, colleague, or commander gives others.
The other person may perform his role badly.
That does not automatically settle how you should perform yours.
Ask what conduct your own position requires.
You cannot choose another person's character.
You can choose whether their bad conduct drags yours down with it.
If you believe in gods, think carefully about what that belief implies.
Epictetus assumes a universe governed by divine reason and justice.
Within that framework, raging at every unwanted event makes little sense. A person who calls external fortune “good” or “evil” will eventually blame the gods whenever fortune turns against him.
Human beings naturally pursue what they believe will benefit them and resent what they believe has harmed them.
Your idea of what counts as good shapes your religion as much as your rituals do.
Epictetus also advises following the religious customs of your community properly and within your means. Do not make a performance of excess, and do not be careless.
If you consult an oracle, fortune-teller, adviser, prediction system, or anything else that claims to tell you what will happen, keep your priorities straight.
You are asking about an outcome.
You have not handed over the decision about what kind of person to be.
Do not approach prediction already terrified of one answer and desperate for another.
Reason can settle many duties without knowing the future.
If a friend needs help in danger, asking whether helping him might go badly misses the point.
The danger may be real.
The duty may still remain.
Set a standard for your own conduct.
Use it when alone and when other people are present.
Speak when you have something useful to say. You do not need to fill every silence.
Avoid endless chatter about entertainment, gossip, status, sport, food, and other people. You can discuss ordinary things without making them the entire contents of your mind.
Do not spend your time ranking, praising, and condemning everyone around you.
If you can improve a conversation, do so without making a production of it. Sometimes the better option is simply to listen.
Do not make constant loud laughter part of your personality.
Avoid pointless oaths and dramatic promises.
Be careful about environments that reliably pull you into behaviour you dislike. Nobody is completely immune to the habits of the people around him.
Handle food, clothing, housing, exercise, and the other needs of the body sensibly. Need and display are different categories.
In sexual matters, Epictetus recommends restraint and the accepted rules of his society. Whatever standard you adopt, apply it to yourself before turning it into a lecture for everybody else.
If somebody tells you that another person has criticised you, do not immediately start your defence.
You can always say: “Apparently he only knows some of my faults.”
When you attend games, performances, or public events, watch without surrendering your judgment to the crowd.
You do not need your side to win for the event to have been worth attending.
Leave the shouting there when you go home.
Do not spend the rest of the evening replaying it unless doing so has some actual value.
When meeting an important person, imagine beforehand that the meeting might go badly.
He may ignore you.
He may refuse to see you.
You may wait.
You may get nothing.
If you still have a good reason to go, go.
Do not act shocked when one of the possibilities you already knew about occurs.
Do not dominate conversation with stories about your adventures, risks, victories, or cleverness.
They are usually more interesting to you than to everybody else.
The same warning applies to constantly trying to be funny.
A person who needs every room to laugh at him will eventually say things beneath his own standards just to keep the reaction coming.
When a tempting pleasure appears, create a delay.
Do not decide at maximum excitement.
Imagine enjoying it.
Then move the clock forward.
Imagine the consequences, including the possibility of regret.
Now imagine refusing it and being pleased later that you kept control.
Then decide.
You are trying to make the whole event visible at once instead of letting one attractive moment hide everything after it.
Once you have examined an action properly and decided it is right, do not become ashamed merely because somebody sees you doing it.
If the action is wrong, avoid the action.
If it is right, somebody else's misunderstanding does not change its quality.
You can satisfy an appetite while still behaving badly toward the people around you.
At dinner, taking the largest portion may suit your stomach perfectly.
It may also make you a lousy guest.
Include the social cost when you judge an action.
Do not take on a role larger than you can carry.
You will perform that role badly and may abandon another role you could have performed well.
Ambition is not a substitute for capacity.
When walking, you watch for nails, holes, and anything that could injure your foot.
Give your judgment the same protection.
Before acting, notice what could make you surrender your principles, lose your temper, or behave beneath your own standard.
Your body gives you a rough measure for what you materially need.
A shoe needs to fit your foot.
Once fitting the foot stops being the goal, there is always another upgrade.
Better leather.
Decoration.
Gold.
Jewels.
Luxury has no natural finish line.
Need does.
Know which one you are serving.
Epictetus looks at the expectations placed on young women in his society.
Men treat girls as though their main value comes from being sexually attractive. The girls then learn to invest heavily in appearance because the surrounding culture has told them this is where their value lies.
His proposed correction follows the standards of his own period: teach them to value modest, disciplined, respectable conduct instead.
The wider point survives the ancient social assumptions.
People tend to build themselves around whatever their society rewards them for.
Be careful what you teach a person to regard as their only source of worth.
Do not make maintenance of the body your life's main project.
Eat.
Drink.
Exercise.
Wash.
Sleep.
Deal with the ordinary machinery.
Then get on with the rest of your life.
A support system has become a problem when servicing it consumes the mission.
When somebody behaves badly toward you, remember that people normally act according to what seems right, useful, justified, or necessary to them at the time.
They can be badly mistaken.
If their judgment is wrong, they are already operating with a defective map.
Understanding this can reduce your anger without requiring you to approve of the conduct.
You can oppose somebody, correct them, avoid them, or hold them responsible without needing to believe that they woke up intending to fulfil your idea of evil.
From inside their own head, something about the action made sense.
Problems often have more than one handle.
Some handles let you carry the problem.
Others only cut your hand.
Your brother behaves unjustly.
You can hold the entire situation by repeating his injustice to yourself.
Or you can include the rest of the relationship: he is your brother, you grew up together, and you still have choices about your own conduct.
Use the handle that lets you move the problem.
“I have more money than you, so I am a better person.”
The first claim tells us about the money.
It tells us nothing about the person.
“I speak more skilfully than you.”
Fine.
That tells us about speaking skill.
Do not quietly convert every advantage into evidence of superior human worth.
You are not your bank account, vocabulary, title, equipment, property, or résumé.
Describe what you actually know.
A man bathes quickly.
Say he bathes quickly.
You do not yet know that he bathes badly.
A man drinks a large amount of wine.
Say he drinks a large amount.
You may have good reasons to judge further, but make sure you actually have them.
People routinely smuggle moral conclusions into descriptions and then forget that they added them.
Keep observation and judgment separate until you have enough information.
Do not keep announcing that you are a philosopher.
Use the philosophy.
At dinner, do not give a speech about how a disciplined person ought to eat.
Eat properly.
If people discuss philosophy and you have little worth adding, remain quiet.
Half-understood ideas become especially dangerous when you are eager to display them.
Sheep do not prove how much grass they ate by vomiting it back at the shepherd.
They digest it.
The evidence appears later in wool and milk.
Do the same with ideas.
Let your behaviour show what you managed to digest.
If you learn to live cheaply, do not turn cheap living into a performance.
Nobody needs hourly updates about the fact that you drink water and own three shirts.
Poor people regularly endure more hardship without receiving philosophical applause for it.
If you practise discomfort to strengthen yourself, do it for the training.
Secret exercises are often better because showing off cannot become the reward.
An untrained person expects his happiness and misery to arrive from outside.
A trained person pays much more attention to his own judgment and conduct.
Progress starts to show in recognisable ways.
You become slower to accuse people.
You need less praise.
You make fewer claims about your own importance.
When somebody criticises you, you do not automatically launch a legal defence of your entire personality.
When somebody praises you, you know how incomplete their information is.
You handle progress carefully, like an injury that has begun to heal but could still be reopened.
Desire becomes less frantic.
Aversion moves away from events you cannot control and toward failures in your own conduct.
You stop caring quite so much when somebody thinks you ignorant.
Most importantly, you keep watch over yourself.
Your own bad habits are patient opponents.
Do not mistake expertise about philosophy for philosophical achievement.
A man may become excellent at explaining Chrysippus.
Good for him.
The purpose of reading Chrysippus was to understand how to live.
If you require an interpreter, find one.
Then use what you learn.
Being able to explain a difficult book is an academic skill.
Living according to the useful parts is the harder test.
If your interpretation is brilliant and your conduct is rotten, the interpretation has not done much for you.
Once you have seriously chosen a rule for your conduct, treat it seriously.
Stop waiting for the perfect teacher, perfect year, perfect circumstances, or improved future version of yourself.
You already know enough to begin correcting obvious failures.
You are an adult.
Procrastination can disguise itself as preparation for years.
There will always be another Monday, another plan, another book, another clean starting point.
Use this one.
Pain will test the rule.
Pleasure will test it.
Status will test it.
Embarrassment will test it.
That is the work.
You do not become disciplined before these tests arrive.
You become disciplined through what you do when they arrive.
Socrates did not become Socrates by waiting for circumstances suitable for Socrates.
You are not Socrates either.
You can still behave like someone trying to improve.
Philosophy has several layers.
First comes conduct.
For example: do not lie.
Then comes the reasoning behind the rule.
Why should you avoid lying?
After that comes the technical machinery used to analyse the reasoning: logic, proof, contradiction, truth, falsehood, and inference.
The technical layer matters.
The reasoning matters.
The conduct matters most.
People often reverse the order.
They become extremely capable of proving that lying is wrong while continuing to lie.
Do not confuse mastery of the explanation with mastery of the thing being explained.
Keep a few principles ready for the moments when everything becomes difficult.
Go where reality requires you to go.
Go willingly if you can.
Refusal does not give you an escape hatch from what has already happened.
Yielding to necessity without surrendering your character is a form of wisdom.
And remember Socrates at the end of his life:
His enemies could kill him.
He did not grant them the power to make him dishonour himself.
That part remained his.