This Is The Secret To Success (And A Happy Life) | Always Ask Yourself This Question

It's only fools who fly off the handle, it's the immature who say the first thought that pops into their head, it's the irresponsible who act without thinking. 🪙 The Stoics employed a range of techniques to move past their anger. http://dailystoic.com/angercoin And over the past year, Daily Stoic has been designing a little device to help you apply those techniques to your daily life to help you tame your temper once and for all. | Grab the The Daily Stoic Anger Medallion http://dailystoic.com/angercoin at dailystoic.com/angercoin http://dailystoic.com/angercoin 📓 Pick up a signed edition ofThe Daily Stoic Journal: 366 Days of Writing and Reflection on The Art of Living: https://store.dailystoic.com/products/the-daily-stoic-journal-signed-editionhttps://store.dailystoic.com/ 📖 Preorder the final book in Ryan Holiday's The Stoic Virtues Series: "Wisdom Takes Work":https://store.dailystoic.com/pages/wisdom-takes-work 🎙️ Follow The Daily Stoic Podcast on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/dailystoicpodcast/?hl=en: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoicpodcast 🎥 Watch top moments from The Daily Stoic Podcast https://www.youtube.com/@dailystoicpodcast on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@dailystoicpodcast: https://www.youtube.com/@dailystoicpodcast ✉️ Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail 🏛 Get Stoic inspired books, medallions, and prints to remember these lessons at the Daily Stoic Store: https://store.dailystoic.com/ 📱 Follow us: Instagram https://www.instagram.com/dailystoic/,Twitter https://twitter.com/dailystoic,YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@DailyStoic,TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@daily_stoic?lang=en, andFacebook https://www.facebook.com/dailystoic See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:05Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we bring you a Stoic-inspired meditation, designed to help you find strength and insight and wisdom into everyday life. Each one of these episodes is based on the 2,000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women, help you learn from them, to follow in their example, and to start your day off with a little dose of courage and discipline and justice and wisdom. For more, visit DailyStoic.com.

• 0:56Ryan Holiday?

  This is the secret to success and a happy life. It was offensive. It was stupid. It was unexpected. It didn't need to go this way. It's not something you're going to accept. And what should you do about it, then? How about nothing, at least at first? You see, that's what successful and happy people do. They don't get riled up easily. They have command of themselves and their emotions. A rude remark, a costly error, an outrageous decision, a profound injustice. It's not that they don't care about these things. It's that they don't react immediately to them. Phoenidorus, the Stoic advisor to the young Octavian, famously advised his charge and the future Emperor Augustus

• 1:41Ryan Holiday?

  to count all the letters of the alphabet before reacting to things that made him angry. This is essential advice, because it's only fools who fly off the handle. It's the immature who say the first thought that pops into their head. It's the irresponsible who act without thinking.

• 2:00Ryan Holiday?

  The wise pause and reflect, they consider their options. They take the best path forward. The Stoics employed a range of techniques to move past their anger. And we've been thinking about this a lot over the last year at Daily Stoic. I've found myself getting a little more provoked and triggered than I'd like to be. And I came up with this cool challenge coin that helps me do just that. It's got this shiny mirror on the front so I can catch a glimpse of my reflection, see myself getting riled up. And then at the top, there is the Latin phrase, "Pausa et reflecte."

• 2:43Ryan Holiday?

  Pause and reflect, which is the first thing you have to do when you find yourself getting riled up. Look in the mirror. As Seneca says, "See how rage distorts you beyond recognition, how you don't like what you see there. Sober up." And on the back is an abbreviated quote from Seneca, "That delay is the best remedy to anger, frustration, lust, all the things that seem to take over us." And it's a reference to Athenodorus's advice to Octavian, "To not say or do anything till you've repeated the 24 letters of the alphabet." Because there was only 24 letters in the alphabet then.

• 3:26Ryan Holiday?

  And when you recite that, you can rub your finger across each letter. You can tick it off and you find yourself calming down. The next time you start to get upset, think about how much anger has cost you, right? How it's gotten you in a bad place? Has it ever really made things better? And what if you could stop and pause and reflect? Look in the mirror, take your time and not do the thing you were about to do. That's what the coin is about. I would love for you to check it out. I'll link to it in today's show notes, or you can just go over to dailystoic.com/angercoin. Delay is the remedy, except don't delay to grab this. We just did a limited run of them. We probably will run out, but I think you'll really like it.

• 4:11Ryan Holiday?

  So check that out and pause and reflect. That is the message of today's episode.

• 4:27Ryan Holiday?

  Always ask yourself this question. Much of what we do and say during the course of a week is completely unnecessary. Meetings, material possessions, confrontations, pursuits, pointless distractions and problems. They take us away from tranquility and purpose. And a Stoic cuts through these temptations and obligations by asking a simple question, a question that should lead you in your journaling and thinking this week. It is this: Before speaking, enacting, or buying something, just ask, is this a necessary thing? This is from today's entry in the Daily Stoic Journal, 366 Days of Writing and Reflection on the Art of Living by yours truly, Ryan Holiday.

• 5:12Ryan Holiday?

  You can get it anywhere books are sold. I do it every single morning, including this morning. And you can also buy a signed copy in the Daily Stoic store. But today's quotes, we have one long quote from Marcus Aurelius and one short one from Seneca. Marcus Aurelius says, "It is said that if you want to have peace of mind, busy yourself with little. Wouldn't a better saying be, do what you must and as required of a rational being created for public life? For this brings not only the peace of mind of doing few things, but the greater peace of doing them well. Since the vast majority of our words and actions are unnecessary, corralling them will create an abundance of leisure and tranquility. As a result, we shouldn't forget at each moment to ask, is this one of the unnecessary things?

• 5:56Ryan Holiday?

  But we must corral not only unnecessary actions, but unnecessary thoughts too, so needless acts don't tag along after them." That's our translation from the Daily Stoic in the Daily Stoic Journal. Let me give you Gregory Hayes, which I also really like. He says, "If you seek tranquility, do less, or more accurately, do what is essential, what the logos of a social being requires and in the requisite way, which brings a double satisfaction, to do less better. Because most of what we do and say, and it's not essential. If you can eliminate this, you'll have more time and more tranquility. Ask yourself at every moment, is this necessary? But we need to eliminate the unnecessary actions that follow."

• 6:41Ryan Holiday?

  And then our second quote from Seneca is, "I was shipwrecked before I even boarded. The journey showed me this, but how much of what we have is unnecessary?" And how easily we can decide to rid ourselves of these things whenever it's necessary and thus never suffering the loss. That's Moral Letters 87:1. So you really need to stop and ask yourself this question. Is what I'm doing necessary? Why am I doing? Is it just the way people have always done it? I don't have to do most of the stuff. It doesn't actually move the needle. I was just doing it because that's what you thought you had to do. And to not do it seems scary. And because everyone else was doing it, it seemed reckless not to do it. Right? All the reasons we do things.

• 7:23Ryan Holiday?

  But again, most of what we do and say and think is not necessary. It's not even particularly effective or well thought out. And so to question this is really important. And it's not just like, oh, you're privileged. You have a choice. That's why you're not doing it. It's actually not about privilege at all. In fact, it's the privileged people who can afford to do more unnecessary things, more pointless things. Right? It's actually, at this point in my career, I had the luxury of, you know, taking a lot of time off to, let's say, do press for a book. It was actually earlier in my career that the costs of agreeing to this pointless stuff were much higher, but I wasn't aware of it. I wasn't fully understanding of the opportunity cost, how much this was taking me away from

• 8:05Ryan Holiday?

  writing, how much this was taking me away from relationships, how much this was just taking me away from recovering and refreshing so I could go back to my work from a fresher point of view. And this is what I wanted to leave you with today. Take a minute, stop, ask yourself, is what I'm doing necessary? How much of what I'm doing is unnecessary? And how can I eliminate some of that stuff so I can do the essential things better? Right? I'm doing less, but I'm doing all my stuff better now.

• 8:40Ryan Holiday?

  Hey, it's Ryan. Thank you for listening to the Daily Stoic Podcast. I just wanted to say we so appreciate it. We love serving you. It's amazing to us that over 30 million people have downloaded these episodes in the couple of years we've been doing it. It's an honor. Please, spread the word, tell people about it. And this isn't to sell anything. I just wanted to say thank you.