Quote 3 – “Don’t long for others to see you as sophisticated, unique, or wise. In fact, be suspicious if you appear to others as someone special. Be on your guard against a false sense of self-importance”

Here Epictetus makes a really crucial point. He says, don’t long for others to see you as someone special, in fact, be alert when someone gives you excessive praise and inflates your ego.

The first part of his saying is hard to implement, as most of us see ourselves as special and naturally we want others to see us as special too.

So, while we may get rid of the obsessive desire to be seen as important, at some level, fundamentally there is almost no one who would dislike praise.

The second part of his saying is actually more crucial – being on guard when someone gives us excessive praise and inflates our sense of self.

There are two problems when someone gives you excessive praise.

• The person themselves may not be genuine and has a hidden agenda.
• Even, if they are genuine “fans” who literally see you as God, the problem is if you are only surrounded by them, you are going to see yourself as above the laws of nature too, and the moment that happens, your doom is imminent.

I know of an individual who started off as extremely humble and the quintessential “focused worker.” He was lucky enough to get the fruits of his labor too, earning both considerable fame and wealth.

Unfortunately, with that came an entourage that started treating him like a God that could do no wrong.  Soon, he was surrounded by all kinds of ill advisors who not only gave him bad advice, but fed his ego so much that he actually started believing he was above everyone else. As a result, he got involved in all kinds of shady activities and truly believed nothing could touch him.

One day his luck ran out and he ended up unwittingly committing a serious crime for which he was eventually jailed. From being seen as a hero, he turned into a criminal.

You may think this is a one-off story, but there are literally thousands of cases like this. So, if you do get attention, be grateful for it but don’t start believing the rules suddenly do not apply to you anymore.

Quote 4 – “Don’t make the mistake of assuming that celebrities, public figures, political leaders, the wealthy, or people with great intellectual or artistic gifts are necessarily happy. To do so is to be bewildered by appearances and will only make you doubt yourself.”

If you wish to be thoroughly convinced that everyone except you is a winner and you are the only loser in the entire world, you only have to do one thing – spend your whole life following “influencers”, most of whom are faking their own lives.

They maybe faking it on two levels. Number one, their whole success maybe fake, or it may be built upon a lie.

In the less common cases where their so-called success is actually real, do not forget that there are multiple dimensions to success.

There is freedom of time, freedom of will, mental peace, freedom of money to actually enjoy, good health, happiness in terms of relationships. If you have all the money and fame in the world, but missing the above, you will have a hard time being happy.

Here is another brutal fact though, even if one has all the above, they can still be extremely unhappy, because sustained happiness is not an easy thing to maintain.

 Ask anyone who has genuinely “made it” in life if they are happy. You will be surprised to know how empty and dissatisfied many feel in their lives, especially if they are not philosophically and spiritually grounded.

They struggled all their lives to seek happiness, only to realize that once they achieved all their goals, they suddenly had nothing else to do.

A self-professed public example of this is the sportsman, Abhinav Bindra, who struggled all his life to want to win an Olympic Gold medal.

He finally managed to achieve this in 2008. After the win he was greatly praised by everyone and became the darling of the media. Soon though, he became more depressed than ever, because after he had actually won the medal, he had no idea what to do in his life next.

A life with zero struggle is like playing a video game with all cheat codes on, exhilarating at first, but extremely boring soon after.