The Daily Stoic - The Most Temporary and Illusory State | Anger is Bad Fuel

Episode Date: February 10, 2022

Ryan explains why you should remember the fragility of life, and reads The Daily Stoic’s entry of the day.Try Surfshark risk-free with a 30-day money-back guarantee. Get Surf...shark VPN at surfshark.deals/STOIC. Enter promo code STOIC for 83 % off and three extra months free!Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: http://DailyStoic.com/emailFollow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Starting point is 00:00:00 Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoic Podcast early and add free on Amazon Music. Download the app today. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. On Thursdays, we do double duty, not just reading our daily meditation, but also reading a passage from the book, The Daily Stoic, 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance in the Art of Living, which I wrote with my wonderful co-author and collaborator, Stephen Hanselman. And so today, we'll give you a quick meditation from one of the Stoics, from Epititus Markis, really a Seneca, then some analysis for me, and then we send you out into the world to do your best to turn these words into works. Hi, I'm David Brown, the host of Wundery's podcast business wars.
Starting point is 00:00:51 And in our new season, Walmart must fight off target, the new discounter that's both savvy and fashion forward. Listen to business wars on Amazon music, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Most Temporary and Illusory State. On April 14, 1912, William John Rogers sent a postcard from the Titanic to his friend, James Day. Dear friends, Rogers wrote, just in line to show that I am alive and kicking and going grand, it's a treat. The next day, the Titanic sank.
Starting point is 00:01:26 Rogers, a third-class passenger from Wales went down with the ship. His body never identified. The astronomer and philosopher Carl Sagan kept a copy of this postcard on his bathroom mirror so that he could see it every morning when he shaved. My wife and I display the postcard for a reason, he wrote, we know that going grand can be the most temporary and illusory state.
Starting point is 00:01:50 The Stoics believe this too. Senka had just begun his promising lock career when a lung flare forced him into isolation for nearly a decade. Then after he returned and successfully rebuilt his life, he was exiled to an island off the coast of Italy. Mark is suggest return home victoriously when the Antonine plague broke out. Epictetus had just been made free as school had just gained a following when he was driven into exile. Moments are torn from us, Sennaka wrote, the whole future lies in uncertainty. Fortune behaves as she pleases he wrote, and we've talked about this a few times.
Starting point is 00:02:25 Now life comes at you fast. It doesn't rhyme, doesn't reason, doesn't care about your wants or needs. It just is. All we can do is accept the uncertainty of all of it and heed Senaqa's command. Command, live immediately and be prepared. Anger is bad fuel, and I'm reading to you today from the Daily Stoic 366 meditations on wisdom, perseverance, and the art of living by yours truly, my co-author and translator, Steve Enhancelman, you can get signed copies, by the way, in the Daily Stoic store, over a million copies of the Daily Stoke in print now.
Starting point is 00:03:08 It's been just such a lovely experience to watch it. It's been more than 250 weeks, consecutive weeks on the best cellist. It's just an awesome experience. But I hope you check it out. We have a premium leather edition at store.dailystoke.com as well. But let's get on with today's reading. There is no more stupifying thing than anger, nothing more bent on its own strength. If successful, none more arrogant, if foiled, none more
Starting point is 00:03:33 insane, since it is not driven back by weiriness even in defeat, when fortune removes its adversary, it turns its teeth on itself. Senica on anger, 3-1. As the Stoics have said many times, getting angry almost never solves anything. Usually, it makes things worse. When we get upset, then the other person gets upset. Now everyone is upset, and the problem is no closer to being solved. Many successful people will try to tell you that anger is a powerful fuel in their lives. The desire to prove them all wrong or shove it in their faces has made many a millionaire
Starting point is 00:04:12 and a celebrity. The anger at being called fat or stupid is created fine physical specimens in brilliant minds. The anger at being rejected is motivated many to carve their own path. the anger at being rejected is motivated many to carve their own path. But this is short-sighted. Such stories ignore the pollution produced as a side effect and the wear and tear it puts on the engine. It ignores what happens when the initial anger wears out and how more and more must and how more and more fuel must be generated to keep the machine going until until eventually the only source left, as Seneca said, is anger at oneself. Hate is too great a burden to bear, Martin Luther King Jr. warned, his fellow civil rights leaders in 1967, even though he had every reason
Starting point is 00:04:59 to respond to hate with hate. And the same is true for anger. In fact, it's true for most extreme emotions. They are toxic fuel. There's plenty of it out in the world, no question, but it is rarely worth the cost to come along with it. What I've come to say, as I wrote this many years ago, but I talked about anger more as a fuel in my book, Stillness the key. Anger is very powerful fuel, but it's very volatile fuel. And it might make the machine go quite fast, but it could also blow up and burn you and everyone around you. And this is why this is what Sennaka was writing about an anger in on anger. He saw this with Nero certainly and he tried to talk to Nero about this directly where he said like, look other people can afford to be angry, can be afford to be led by their passions, but not you.
Starting point is 00:05:58 Too much is at stake here. And I think that's an important way to think about this. Anger is dangerous fuel and people are counting on you. There are people around you. There are innocent people around you. And you don't wanna blow up all over them. I tell the story of Michael Jordan and still this is the key. And if you watch his Hall of Fame speech, you can see a guy who manufactured slides,
Starting point is 00:06:29 his whole career as a source of fuel, as a source of propulsion. And there's no question it made him great. But there's this moment in the speech where he calls out like the kid who took his spot, not even really took his spot as I get into in the book because it's more complicated than that, but the kid who got a spot in the varsity basketball team
Starting point is 00:06:50 in high school in front of Jordan. And it's clear that Jordan has been hanging on to this for like 40 years. And he brings the guy to the talk, to the Hall of Fame thing. And he rubs it in his face. Like, look where I am now. The most accomplished person in the history of that game
Starting point is 00:07:11 and that's what he's doing. And I'm not saying he's a bad person. I'm saying it's sad. That would be a hard way to live. You know, Senka talks about how getting angry is like returning the bite to a dog or a kick to a mule. But that's what we do.
Starting point is 00:07:29 The TV remote isn't cooperating. We smash it to pieces. That'll show the remote. But who are you really punishing, man? First off, the remote is an in-animate object. And now you have to go get a new remote. It just doesn't work. I just, there's almost no times that I've been glad
Starting point is 00:07:47 afterwards that I lost my temper. And my best work, when I think about it, it didn't come from a place of showing people up. Honestly, most of the things I regret came from, you know, wanting to prove people wrong or, you know, prove myself right or win. My best work came from a place of love, a place of deep interest, a fascination. It was a puzzle, not a problem to obliterate. Anger is bad fuel. Try to, I'm not saying it's not effective.
Starting point is 00:08:23 I'm just saying it's a long term I'm just saying it's it's long-term. And I think the metaphor in this in this chapter of the pollution is right, even if it works for you, it's going to be bad for your kids. It's going to be bad for the people that you're competing against or with. It's going to be bad for the people that witness it. Ultimately, it will be bad for you. Anger is bad fuel. There's plenty of other things you can find to motivate you. Stokes said to be wary of the passions. Mark's really said to be free of passion, full of love, think working from a place of love, fascination, commitment. That's a good passion. Anger, not so much. Anyways, that's today's message. Talk to you all soon.
Starting point is 00:09:08 Thanks so much for listening to the Daily Stoke Podcast. Again, if you don't know this, you can get these delivered to you via email every day. You just go to dailystoke.com slash email. So check it out. Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoic early and add free on Amazon music. Download the Amazon music app today, or you can listen early and add free with Wondery Plus in Apple podcasts. Celebrity feuds are high stakes.
Starting point is 00:09:44 You never know if you're just going to end up on page six or do moa or In court. I'm Matt Bellas. I'm Sydney Battle and we're the host of Wonder E's new podcast Disantel where each episode we unpack a different iconic celebrity feud from the buildup why it happened and the repercussions What does our obsession with these feuds say about us? The first season is packed with some pretty messy pop culture drama, but none is drawn out in personal as Brittany and Jamie Lynn Spears. When Brittany's fans form the free Brittany movement
Starting point is 00:10:14 dedicated to fraying her from the infamous conservatorship, Jamie Lynn's lack of public support, it angered some fans, a lot of them. It's a story of two young women who had their choices taken away from them by their controlling parents, but took their anger out on each other. And it's about a movement to save a superstar, which set its sights upon anyone who failed to fight for Brittany.
Starting point is 00:10:36 music or the Wondering App.

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