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We’re doing a deep dive into Epictetus’ powerful lessons all month long—not only studying and discussing his philosophy together as a community with our How to Read Epictetus Digital Guide, but learning how to use it for the challenges we face as people every day.
Here are three more essential rules Epictetus lived by and how you can apply them today:
1. Make beautiful choices
"If your choices are beautiful, so too will you be."
It’s simple and it’s true: you are what your choices make you. Nothing more and nothing less. Today will present you with plenty of opportunities to choose between—to choose beauty or ugliness, kindness or selfishness, mercy or vengeance, serenity or anger. There will be little choices—what you eat, how you talk to people, whether you pick up the television remote or a book. And there will be bigger choices, too: whether you stand up for what’s right, whether you reach down to help someone who needs it, what kind of work you do, what standards you hold yourself to. Make the choices that reflect who you are and who you aspire to be.
2. Don't wait to demand the best for yourself
“How long will you wait before you demand the best of yourself?”
The Stoics come down pretty hard on procrastinating. There is no bigger waste of life, they said, than putting things off. “If you are careless and lazy now,” Epictetus said, “and keep putting things off and always deferring the day after which you will attend to yourself, you will not notice that you are making no progress, but you will live and die as someone quite ordinary.”
What’s that thing you’ve been putting off? What is one step you can take today to start making progress on it?
3. Fuel the habit bonfire
“If you want to do something, make a habit of it, if you don’t want to do that, don’t, but make a habit of something else instead.”
Epictetus said habits—good and bad—were like a bonfire. Every time we perform a habit, we reinforce it. We add fuel to the fire. “Every habit and capability is confirmed and grows in its corresponding actions, walking by walking, and running by running,” Epictetus said, “therefore, the same principle is at work in our state of mind. When you get angry, you’ve not only experienced that evil, but you’ve also reinforced a bad habit, adding fuel to the fire.” It was likely one of the many lessons he learned from his teacher, Musonius Rufus. Rufus was perhaps the earliest philosopher to identify the power of habits. In “many circumstances,” he said, “we do not deal with our affairs in accordance with correct assumptions, but rather we follow thoughtless habit.”
So think about the things you’ve done in the last week. Think about what you have planned for today and the week that follows. Think about the person you’d like to be, or the person you see yourself as—are your actions the actions of that kind of person? Will your actions get you there if you are not there yet? Are you fueling the right bonfires?
Few thinkers in history have offered as much clear, practical guidance for everyday life as Epictetus. His teachings—on mastery, self-control, and meeting hardship with resilience—shaped not only Stoicism itself, but the lives of countless people over thousands of years, from Marcus Aurelius to Admiral James Stockdale and many more.
