Would you believe I was totally unfamiliar with Epictetus? Yet, when I opened Sharon Lebell’s The Art of Living: A New Interpretation, I found myself nodding my head at certain points and asking, “Wow, now I know where this idea came from in XYZ book or religion. Why wasn’t this connection made more obvious or uncovered in school?”

Get book

As I read the The Art of Living by Epictetus, I realize that this was essentially a way of living that wasn’t tied down to religious beliefs. Once you read Epictetus’ work, and Sharon’s interpretation in particular, you realize how powerful these ideas are and how they have embedded themselves in so many perspectives. My ongoing regret is not reading and applying these principles early in life. Obviously, my upbringing did cover some of the ideas, but it also introduced a lot of other unnecessary ones. More study is needed, but I am grateful to have gotten such a start now with this text.

“Do not seek for things to happen the way you want them to; rather, wish that what happens, happens the way it happens: then you will be happy.”
– Epictetus

Here are a few of those perspectives that I took note of in my daybook.

My Notes

1. First, say to yourself what you would be, then do what you have to do.
2. Know what you can control and what you cannot
1. What You Can Control:
1. Opinions
2. Aspirations
3. Desires
4. Things that Repel You
2. What You Cannot Control:
1. Your Body
2. Wealth
3. Other’s Opinions
4. Your Status
3.  Trying to control or to change what we can’t only results in torment.
3. Stick With Your Own Business
1. Focus entirely on what is truly your own concern and be clear that what belongs to others is their business and none of your’s.
4. Recognize appearances for what they really are.
5. Practice saying to everything that appears unpleasant:
1. “You are just an appearance and by no means what you appear to be.”
2. Does this appearance concern the things that are within my own control or those that are not?
6. Restrain the habit of being repelled by all those things that aren’t within your control. Focus on combating things within your power that are not good for you.
7. Events happen as they do. People behave as they are. Embrace what you actually get.
8. Open your eyes: See things for what they really are, thereby sparing yourself the pain of false attachments and avoidable devastation. When something happens, the only thing in your power is your attitude toward it.
9. Things and people are not what we wish them to be nor what they seem to be. They are what they are.
10. Harmonize your actions with the way Life is.
11. We cannot choose our external circumstances, but we can always choose how we respond to them.
12. Things simply are what they are. Other people think what they will think; it is of no concern to us. No shame, no blame.
13. Do your own useful work without regard to the honor or admiration your efforts might win from others.
14. Focus on your main duty.
15. Accept events as they actually happen. That way, peace is possible.
16. Your will is always within your power. You will needn’t be affected by an incident unless you let it.
17. Make full use of what happens to you. The trials we endure can and should introduce us to our strengths.
18. Nothing can truly be taken from us. There is nothing to lose. Have your possessions and property been taken from you? They have been returned to where they came from.
19. The important thing is to take great care with what you have while the world lets you have it, just as a traveler takes care of a room at an inn (This reminds me of “We are not of the world, so don’t get attached to it,” a call to not be enamored of material things).
20. The Good Life is the Life of Inner Serenity. Moral progress results in freedom from inner turmoil. Cope calmly with inconvenience.
21. Disregard what doesn’t concern you. Stick with your purpose. Refrain from trying to win other people’s approval and admiration.
22. Conform your wishes to reality. For good or ill, life and nature are governed by laws that we can’t change. By accepting life’s limits and work with them, we become free.
23. Avoid Adopting Other People’s Negative Views
1. Don’t sabotage yourself by unwittingly adopting negative, unproductive attitudes through your associations with others.
2. Remain detached and avoid melodramatic reactions.
3. Be sympathetic, but avoid being pulled down.
24. Wherever you find yourself, and in whatever circumstances, give an impeccable performance.
25. As you think, so you become. Assume that all that happens to you is for some good.
26. Happiness depends on 3 things within our power:
1. Your will
2. Your ideas concerning the events in which you are involved
3. The use you make of your ideas
27. The real essence of good is found only within things under your own control.
28. Avoid reacting in the moment.
29. Pull back from the situation. Take a wider view; compose yourself.
30. Spiritual progress is made through confronting death and calamity. By facing the realities of death, infirmity, loss, and disappointment, you free yourself of illusions, false hopes, and you avoid miserable envious thoughts.
31. Hold to your true aspirations no matter what is going on around you.
32. Seeking to Please is a Perilous Trap:
1. Content yourself with being a lover of wisdom, a seeker of truth.
2. Return again and again to what is essential and worthy.
3. If you want to live a wise life, live it on your own terms and in your own eyes.
33. Character Matters More than Reputation:
1. Seek to preserve your honor, faithfulness to family, friends, principles, and self-respect.
2. Do not sacrifice your personal integrity. It’s better to be a good person than to have renown and power.
34. All Advantages Have Their Price:
1. It is always our choice whether or not we wish to pay the price for life’s rewards.
2. And often it is best for us to not pay the price, for the price might be our integrity.
35. Make the Will of Nature Your Own.
36. Evil does not naturally dwell in the world, in events, or in people. It is a by-product of forgetfulness, laziness, or distraction. It arises when we lose sight of our true aim in life.
37. Before Taking Action
1. Consider what comes first, then what follows, and then act.
2. Cultivate the habits of surveying and testing a prospective action before undertaking it. 
3. Before you proceed, step back and look at the big picture.
4. Determine what happens first, consider what that leads to, and then act in accordance with what you have learned.
5. Fully consider what you’re getting into:
1. What does your desire entail?
2. What needs to hapen first?
3. Then what?
4. What will be required of you?
5. And what else follows from that?
6. Is this the whole course of action really beneficial to you?
6. Contemplate the possibility, be mindful of all the things that might happen and their consequences. Then exercise your judgement.
38. Different people are made for different things. Make the necessary sacrifices that are the price for the goals YOU seek. You can either put your skills toward internal work or lose yourself to externals, to be a person of wisdom or follow the common ways of the mediocre.
39. Trust that there is a divine intelligence whose intentions direct the universe. View the world as an integrated whole.
40. Achieve tranquility by asking on every occasion, “What is the right thing to do now?”
41. Never suppress a generous impulse. Follow through on all your generous impulses.
42. If you have a daybook, write down who you are trying to be.
43. Think before you speak. Do so with purpose. Be mostly silent or speak sparingly. Avoid blaming, praising, or comparing people.
44. If anyone has spoken critically of you, don’t bother with excuses or defenses. Instead respond, “I guess that person doesn’t know about all my other faults. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have mentioned only these.”
45. When people around you start to slip into indecent speech, leave if you can or at least be silent and let your look show you are offended by coarse talk.
46. Practice the art of testing whether particular things are actually good or not.
47. Learn to wait and assess instead of always reacting from untrained instinct (Reminds me of Fast vs Slow thinking, or System 1 and System 2)
48. Those who seek wisdom come to understand that even though the world may reward us for wrong or superficial reasons, such as our physical appearance, our family, what really matters is who we are inside and who we are becoming.
49. Mistreatment comes from false impressions. When someone interprets a tue proposition as a false one, the proposition itself isn’t hurts; only the person who holds the wrong view is deceived, and thus damaged.
50. Strong education in logic and the rules of effective argument will serve you well.
51. Give your assent only to what is actually true.
52. Live simply for your own sake.
53. The first task of the person who wishes to live wisely is to free himself or herself from the confines of self-absorption.
54. If you want to develop your ability to live simply, do it for yourself, do it quietly, and don’t do it to impress others.
55. Living wisdom is more important than knowing about it (Reminds me of “Faith without works is dead” (James 2:26).
56. Conventional thinking is about preserving the status quo for overly self-defended individuals and institutions.
57. Is this life-giving? Does it promote humaneness, justice, beneficial growth, kindness, possibility, and benefits the human community?
58. Consider your deepest yearnings merely as facts (to be proven or disproven).

There’s a lot more, but I’m still writing my notes. Check back since I’ll be updating my notes. What amazing nuggets of wisdom appear above. I’ve highlighted a few (yellow is familiar, orange is new, green is ongoing practice) that resonated me from past teachings/lessons I’ve learned. So much of this would have been helpful to have learned at a young age to apply throughout life.