Losing Your Temper Is a Luxury | Suspend Your Opinions

Ryan talks about why you must keep your anger in check, and reads this week’s meditation from The Daily Stoic Journal. As a member of Daily Stoic Life, you get all our current and future courses, 100+ additional Daily Stoic email meditations, 4 live Q&As with bestselling author Ryan Holiday (and guests), and 10% off your next purchase from the Daily Stoic Store. Sign up athttps://dailystoic.com/life/Try Surfshark risk-free with a 30-day money-back guarantee. Get Surfshark VPN at surfshark.deals/STOIC. Enter promo code STOIC for 83 % off and three extra months free! Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://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. 📢 Share | ⚙️ Manage Subscription

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

• 0:04Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast. Each day, we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, 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.

• 0:35Ryan Holiday?

  Losing your temper is a luxury. There are things that you get upset about, and there are the things that hit you so hard or so frustrating that you find yourself almost in a state of zen-like calm. "I'm not even angry," we say. "I'm beyond mad." It's interesting how the things you do lose your temper about pale in comparison or in seriousness to these other things. You're mad that construction has slowed down traffic. But when United fails to provide a pilot for the flight you've paid a lot of money for, and your trip is now seven hours delayed, you simply accept it and deal with it. You yelled when somebody screwed up at work, but when a truly serious mistake happens, you somehow have the composure to reassure them. In his essay on anger,

• 1:20Ryan Holiday?

  Seneca tells the story of a man who endured a dinner with the emperor who just murdered his son so as to save the life of his remaining son. That seems superhuman, but the reality is that that man probably also regularly lost his temper about the same kinds of things that you do: rude remarks, unnecessary noise, expensive things that don't work. So how is that contradiction possible? Perhaps it's that, deep down, we know these other situations we allow ourselves to get upset about don't matter. It's like how, when we scratch our knee, our pain receptors light up. But if our arm had been torn off, our nervous system would protect us. What a Stoic takes from this biological and psychological quirk is that we do have the power not to freak out.

• 2:04Ryan Holiday?

  We can deal with situations calmly. If we can contain ourselves after a colossal screw-up because we know there is too much work to do, we can contain ourselves when somebody drops an ordinary ball. If we can keep our cool when our life is on the line, we can keep our cool when the stakes are low. We have proof. Losing your temper is a luxury. You're allowing yourself to get upset. You're telling yourself that it doesn't matter. But it does matter, and the stakes are high. So act that way. And of course, if you have an anger problem, or even if you don't have an anger problem, the reality is anger is a problem for all of us. I strongly suggest you check out our tame your temper course.

• 2:45Ryan Holiday?

  It's the best Stoic practices and thinking applied to getting your anger under control, making sure you don't lose your temper, you don't blow up, you don't let the little things bother you more than they need to. These are real practices from real leaders in history who were not simply superhuman and they didn't have tempers. No, they learned how to tame and conquer that anger. You can check that out at dailystoic.com/anger. And of course, if you sign up for Daily Stoic Life, you get a whole bunch of other stuff, but you also get all our courses for free. So you can check that out at dailystoiclife.com.

• 3:19Ryan Holiday?

  Suspend your opinions. And this is from this week's entry in the Daily Stoic Journal, "366 Days of Writing and Reflection on the Art of Living", by yours truly and my co-writer and translator, Stephen Hanselman. I actually do this journal every single day. There's a question in the morning, a question in the afternoon, then there's these sort of weekly meditations. As Epictetus says, "Every day and night, we keep thoughts like this at hand. Write them, read them aloud, and talk to yourself and others about them." You can check out the Daily Stoic Journal anywhere books are sold. You can also get a signed personalized copy from me in the Daily Stoic store at store.dailystoic.com. Epictetus would teach that opinions were the cause of a troubled mind, opinions about the way we think things should be or need to be.

• 4:04Ryan Holiday?

  One of the Stoic words for opinion is dogma. And the practice of Stoicism begins with a relentless attempt to suspend this dogmatic way of living, a cessation of the belief that you can force your opinions and expectations onto the world. We have the power to hold no opinion about a thing and not let it upset our state of mind, for things have no natural power to shape our judgments. It's Marcus Aurelius in Meditations. "Today I escaped from the crush of circumstances, or better put, I threw them out, for the crush wasn't from outside me, but in my own assumptions." It's Marcus Aurelius in Meditations. "There are two things that must be rooted out in human beings: arrogant opinion and mistrust. Arrogant opinion expects that there is nothing further needed, and mistrust assumes,

• 4:49Ryan Holiday?

  under the torrent of circumstances, there can be no happiness." That's Epictetus's Discourses. "Throw out your conceited opinions, for it is impossible for a person to begin to learn that which he thinks he already knows." From Epictetus. This idea of having no opinion is, man, it's so powerful. Epictetus also talks about, you know, can you be content to be seen as clueless or stupid about some things? I mean, look, I don't think ignorance is admirable, but I do think that we often sort of track in real time a whole bunch of information we don't need. We have too many thoughts or judgments about other people's personal lives, the things our neighbors are doing. You know, life is better when you have fewer opinions, because then it just is.

• 5:33Ryan Holiday?

  You have fewer expectations, so you're not disappointed. You also don't take things for granted. And so I think for the Stoics, it's about getting to a kind of a zen-like place where you just see things as they are, and you don't need them to be different, you don't need them to be otherwise, you didn't expect them to be this way or that way. You just went with the flow of it. And, you know, when I, I think this is obviously what social media is designed to make us not do, right? Facebook says, "What are you, what's on your mind? What are you thinking about? What's going on in your life?" Twitter says the same thing. Snapchat and Instagram say, "Take a video of this, share it, let other people know. Give your thoughts, react to this."

• 6:11Ryan Holiday?

  Do you ever feel that much better doing that? Or does it just create new problems for you? Now, did anyone like it? Do people agree? Why is this idiot responding in the comments? Why aren't people understanding? Why aren't they appreciating? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You know, you have the power to have no opinion. That's such a beautiful freeing idea from Marcus Aurelius. And look, he's not saying, "Don't have an opinion about injustice. Don't be involved civically." Of course, that's not what the Stoics think. Their whole lives are a testament to the contrary. But I guess they're just saying, it's like, "Look, if somebody you know is having an affair, that can eat you up inside, it can bother you. Why are they doing this? Why do people do this? Why be disappointed in your fellow humans?" And it's like, "It's none of your business, man. It's not up to you. You're not doing it.

• 6:56Ryan Holiday?

  You know why you're not doing it. So let them do them. They will face the consequences for that. You don't need to get involved. You've got enough to focus on with you. You've got enough that's in your control that you're not focusing on." And so, going through life in a dogmatic way, trying to project and force your opinions on other people is a miserable way to live. It's also a tyrannical way to live. And so, we've got to practice this sort of, I don't want to call it detachment, but it's looking inward instead of outward. And I think that creates a happier life, that creates a better-flowing life. It also gives people the freedom to make their mistakes, to learn their own lessons, to do their own things. Something I'm learning about with my kids as well is like,

• 7:40Ryan Holiday?

  "Look, I can't do all this stuff for them. You do you, man, and I'm here if you need me." And I think that's a good way to live. And so, let's focus on having fewer opinions today. Let's focus on the things that are up to us. Let's leave the things that are not up to us to the other people, to the makers, to the people they are up to. And I think that'll all help us get along, certainly be happier, and certainly have more tranquility. So, if me talking about politics upset you, it's a great opportunity to practice actually exactly what I'm talking about. Just have no opinion. Move on. I don't have an opinion about your opinion. And that's exactly how it should be. All right. Have a good week, everyone.

• 8:23Ryan Holiday?

  Thanks so much for listening to the Daily Stoic Podcast. Again, if you don't know this, you can get these delivered to you via email every day. Just go to dailystoic.com/email. So check it out.