Awareness; 10 Stoic Quotes That Will Help You Discover Your True Potential

3 min readApr 12, 2022

Discover your true potential by practicing awareness, something held deep in the heart of all stoics.

Heavily based on Ryan Holiday’s bestseller, The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living.

The centred focus for the month of March was awareness.

What Is Awareness? 💭

Awareness is immensely important to the stoics and practiced daily.

Awareness is an acknowledgement, an acceptance and understanding that something is happening, or that it exists.

It doesn’t require action or thought, but just a knowing.

I. The Beginning Of Philosophy

“An important place to begin in philosophy is this: a clear perception of one’s own ruling principle.”
— EPICTETUS, DISCOURSES, 1.26.15

II. On Handing Over Your Freedom

“If a person gave away your body to some passerby, you’d be furious. Yet you hand over your mind to anyone who comes along, so they may abuse you, leaving it disturbed and troubled — have you no shame in that?”
— EPICTETUS, ENCHIRIDION, 28

III. Cut Back On The Costly

“So, concerning the things we pursue, and for which we vigorously exert ourselves, we owe this consideration — either there is nothing useful in them, or most aren’t useful. Some of them are superfluous, while others aren’t worth that much. But we don’t discern this and see them as free, when they cost us dearly.”
— SENECA, MORAL LETTERS, 42.6

IV. Don’t Tell Yourself Stories

“In public avoid talking often and excessively about your accomplishments and dangers, for however much you enjoy recounting your dangers, it’s not so pleasant for others to hear about your affairs.”
— EPICTETUS, ENCHIRIDION, 33.14

V. Live Without Restriction

“The unrestricted person, who has in hand what they will in all events, is free. But anyone who can be restricted, coerced, or pushed into something against what they will is a slave.”
— EPICTETUS, DISCOURSES, 4.1.128b–129a

VI. Impossible Without Your Consent

“Today I escaped from the crush of circumstances, or better put, I threw them out, for the crush wasn’t from outside me but in my own assumptions.”
— MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS, 9.13”

VII. On Real Freedom

“. . . freedom isn’t secured by filling up on your heart’s desire but by removing your desire.”
— EPICTETUS, DISCOURSES, 4.1.175

VIII. You Need A Witness

“We can remove most sins if we have a witness standing by as we are about to go wrong. The soul should have someone it can respect, by whose example it can make its inner sanctum more inviolable. Happy is the person who can improve others, not only when present, but even when in their thoughts!”
— SENECA, MORAL LETTERS, 11.9

IX. The Present Is All You Possess

“Were you to live three thousand years, or even a countless multiple of that, keep in mind that no one ever loses a life other than the one they are living, and no one ever lives a life other than the one they are losing. The longest and the shortest life, then, amount to the same, for the present moment lasts the same for all and is all anyone possesses. No one can lose either the past or the future, for how can someone be deprived of what’s not theirs?”
— MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS, 2.14

X. Retreat In Yourself

“People seek retreats for themselves in the country, by the sea, or in the mountains. You are very much in the habit of yearning for those same things. But this is entirely the trait of a base person, when you can, at any moment, find such a retreat in yourself. For nowhere can you find a more peaceful and less busy retreat than in your own soul — especially if on close inspection it is filled with ease, which I say is nothing more than being well-ordered. Treat yourself often to this retreat and be renewed.”
— MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS, 4.3.1