The Daily Stoic - We Almost Always Regret This | A Week Without Complaining

Episode Date: July 31, 2023

It’s not that we didn’t have a reason. That we weren’t provoked. Or mistreated. We were. We had legitimate reasons to be upset. We had a legitimate grievance.And yet…our response was such a mistake. We come to regret the yelling. We regret the harsh words. How much better would we have been had we been able to, as the great play about Cato put it, look at things through the “calm light of mild philosophy.”To the Stoics, what we did in a fit of passion–be it of lust or envy but most of all out of anger–was almost always the wrong thing.---And in today's Daily Stoic meditation, Ryan discusses the transformation that you will undergo when you recognize what you are complaining about in your thoughts, and then challenge yourself to re-focus💪 If you really want to get serious about conquering your anger, sign up for our course: Taming Your Temper: The 11-Day Stoic Guide to Controlling Anger. It’s 11 days of challenges, exercises, video lessons, and bonus tools based on Stoic philosophy that is aimed at helping you deal with your anger in a constructive manner. Learn more here!✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast. Each day we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoic's illustrated with stories from history, current events, and literature to help you be better at what you do. And at the beginning of the week, we try to do a deeper dive, setting a kind of Stoic intention for the week, something to meditate on, something to think on, something to leave you with, to journal about whatever it is you happen to be doing. So let's get into it. We almost always regret this. It's not that we didn't have a reason that we weren't provoked or mistreated. We were. We had legitimate reasons to be upset.

We had a legitimate grievance. And yet our response was such a mistake. We come to regret the yelling. We regret the harsh words. How much better we would have been if we had been able to as the great play about Kato put it, look at things through the calm light of mild philosophy. To the stokes, what we did in a fit of passion, be it lust or envy, but most of all out of anger was almost always the wrong thing.

It didn't matter if the other person was wrong, if we were relentlessly baited or abused. It didn't matter if we escaped consequences. It was a mistake to be overcome by our passions. Marcus Aurelius would have been cautioned by one of the most terrible moments of his mentor, Hadrian's reign, when aggravated by the incompetence of a secretary, the Emperor stabbed the man in the eye with a stylus. Senica wrote a whole essay on the perils of anger, the most blinding and self-destructive of the passions. When we are angry, we do stupid things. We do impulsive things that we come to regret.

We burn bridges. We stoop to their level. We break trusts. We de-legitimize whatever legitimacy our grievance may have had. We must beware of this madness. We must command ourselves. It's okay to be angry. Just look at the situation in a calm and mild light before you do anything. And as usual, the stoics have some of the smartest and most applicable exercises when it comes to anger. That's why we created Taiming Your Temper, the 10-day Stoic Guide to controlling anger.

10 days of challenges, exercises, video lessons, and bonus tools based on Stoic philosophy. Materials to help you deal with your anger in a constructive manner. We will give you the tools that you need not just to manage your anger, but to leave it in the past so you can focus on what's important, living a virtuous and fulfilling life. You can learn the wisdom of the great thinkers and leaders of history through this course. Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, Abraham Lincoln, even Mr. Rogers, and many others. You'll be able to use our unique exercises to break free from the cage that anger has built around you and see the world and yourself in a new light. Each day you'll be able yourself in a new light.

Each day, you'll be able to watch a new video from me, Ryan Holiday, author of The Ops, goes the way, he goes the enemy stillness is the key, and of course, the daily stoic. As I explain the ideas behind the words and shed light on the path that you're on, but that I am also on, because again, we are all struggling to tame our temper

and we will all be better if we can get closer to that. Being able to control your anger is a difficult but worthwhile goal. We'll take time and effort, won't be free, but by changing your perspective and developing techniques to control your temper, it will ultimately be achievable in life-changing. So take the first step on the path to a calmer

and more fulfilling future, check out Taiming Your Temper, the 10-day Stoic Guide to controlling your anger, you can click the link below or you can just go to dailystoic.com slash anger. Hi, I'm David Brown, the host of Wonder East Podcast Business Wars, and in our new season, two of the world's leading hotel brands, Hilton and Marriott, stare down family drama and financial disasters. Listen to business wars on Amazon music or wherever you get your podcasts. A Week Without Complaining. Epic Tito spoke often to a students about the need to give up blaming and complaining. In fact, he saw it as one of the primary measuring sticks of progress in the art of living. How much of life is wasted pointed fingers,

his complaining ever solved a single problem. Marcus Aurelius would say, blame yourself or no one. This week, try constructive feedback over complaining and responsibility over blame. And if something goes wrong, spend some time reflecting on what the true causes were. Don't waste a minute with complaints in your journal or out loud. But we have three quotes from Epic Titus today about complaints. don't waste a minute with complaints in your journal or out loud. But we have three quotes from Epic Titus today about complaints. He says, you must stop blaming God and not blame any person.

You must completely control your desire and shift your avoidance to what lies within your reason choice. You must no longer feel anger, resentment, envy or regret. That's the discourse is 32. For nothing outside my reason choice, he says, can hinder or harm it. My reasoned choice alone can do this to itself. If we would lean this way, whenever we fail, and would blame only ourselves and remember that nothing but opinion is the cause of a troubled mind and uneasiness, then by God I swear we would be making progress. That's discourse is 319. Then He also says in chrydian 1-3, but if you deem as your own only what is yours? And what belongs to others is truly not yours, then no one will ever be able to coerce or stop you. And you will find no one to blame or accuse. You will do nothing against your will and you will have no enemy. And no one will harm you because no harm can affect you.

It's funny, just as I was sitting here, I was thinking to myself, man, it's so hot. It's hot in my office. I have to turn off the AC when I record. But one of my favorite quotes from Marcus really is about complaining, which I actually also have in sort of fictionalized in the boy who would be king, he says, don't be heard complaining at court, not even to yourself. Right. There are so many parts of Mark's realist's job that we get the sense that he didn't really like. It's kind of an introverted person. He's a good person. He wants to do what's right. He's not an ambitious person in the sense he doesn't want to dominate or win or everything.

And so it must have been so frustrating to be around these obnoxious, annoying, dishonest people, these professional politicians, basically. But he catches himself. He's like, it's not even enough not to complain publicly. And of course, everyone would have indulged his complaints, he's emperor, but he says, don't even complain in your own mind. And that is some higher level shit right there, isn't it, right? To not only be able to stop yourself from complaining, I think it was Will Bowen, he had the no complaint challenge every time, you know, you say a complaint, you have to move the bracelet from one wrist to the other,

and the idea is, can you leave it on one wrist for 30 days? Can you get it in one spot for 30 days? No complaints. But imagine how most of us would fail if even thinking about a complaint, not even verbalizing it disqualified us. But that's the challenge of the Stokes. And I think us. But that's the challenge of the Stokes. And I think Epic Titus, though, is more honest when he talks about just progress. The less blame, the less complaining, the more responsibility you're taking, the more constructive you are, that's what matters. Are you making a little bit of progress every day? Are you moving forward? Are you complaining less? Right? I think that's a fair way to think about it. So I thought the complaint, but I didn't say it that's progress, but maybe next time I can just go, the temperature is what the temperature is. If I want to do this thing, that's what I have to put up with. So

you know, so that's what it is. It doesn't, thinking about it doesn't help me, it doesn't make me any cooler, right? It just makes me frustrated. And that's why we try not to complain. So don't be heard complaining today, not even to yourself. That's the standard we're ascribing to. But could we just make some progress? Could we just blame only ourselves,

where ideally no one, that's progress. Let's do it. Let's work for it. Let's make ourselves a little bit stronger as a result. Hey, Prime Members. You can listen to the Daily Stoke early and ad-free on Amazon Music, download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen early and ad-free with Wondery Plus in Apple Podcasts. When we think of sports stories, we tend to think of tales of epic on the field glory. But the new podcast, Sports Explains the World, brings you some of the wildest and most surprising sports stories you've never heard, like the teenager who wrote a fake Wikipedia page

for a young athlete and then watched as a real team fell for his prank. Diving into his Wikipedia page we turn three career goals into 11, added 20 new assists for good measure. Figures that nobody would, should have believed. And the mysterious secret of a US Olympic superstar killed at the peak of his career. Was it an accident? Did the police screw up the investigation? It was also nebulous. Each week, Sports Explains the World goes beyond leagues and stats to share stories that will redefine your understanding of sports, and their impact on the world. Listen to sports explains the world, on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.

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