I

November    7th

HOW TO  BE  POWERFUL

“Don’t  trust   in  your    reputation, money,  or  position,   but in  the strength    that    is  yours—namely,   your

judgments   about   the things  that    you control and don’t   control.    For this    alone   is  what    makes   us

free    and unfettered, that    picks   us  up  by  the neck    from    the depths  and lifts   us  eye to  eye with    the

rich    and powerful.”

—EPICTETUS, DISCOURSES, 3.26.34–35

n a scene in Steven Pressfield’s classic novel about Alexander the Great, The Virtues of War,
Alexander reaches a river crossing only to be confronted by a philosopher who refuses to move. “This
man has conquered the world!” one of Alexander’s men shouts. “What have you done?” The philosopher
responds, with complete confidence, “I have conquered the need to conquer the world.”
We do know that Alexander did clash with Diogenes the Cynic, a philosopher known for his rejection
of what society prizes and, by extension, Alexander’s self-image. Just as in Pressfield’s fictional
encounter, in Diogenes’s real confrontation with Alexander, the philosopher was more powerful than the
most powerful man in the world—because, unlike him, Diogenes had fewer wants. They were able to
look each other in the eye and see who really had control over himself, who had achieved the self-mastery
required for real and lasting power.
You can have that too. It just means focusing inward on acquiring power rather than outward. As
Publilius Syrus, himself a former slave, put it: “Would you have a great empire? Rule over yourself!”