How To Handle A Bad Call | Anger is Bad Fuel

In Super Bowl XLIX in 2015, Seattle Seahawks head coach Pete Carroll made a decision that will be remembered in sports history for decades. The headlines called it “the worst play call in NFL history,” the “dumbest call in Super Bowl history,” and a “terrible Super Bowl mistake.”Carroll would of course disagree with this Monday morning quarterbacking, believing it was the right call based on the numbers and his experience. But there is no disputing that the play did not work. So the more interesting question is: What did Carroll do next? How did he respond to this brutal media onslaught? In short, he owned it.---In today's reading from The Daily Stoic, Ryan discusses why anger is a limited resource, and how relying on it as a fuel source may get you somewhere in the short run, but will eventually backfire in the long run. Check out The Daily Stoic Leadership Challenge to mirror the kind of education that produced historically great leaders like Marcus Aurelius.✉️ 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. 📢 Share | ⚙️ Manage Subscription

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

• 0:03Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast. On Friday, we do double duty, not just reading our daily meditation, but also reading a passage from The Daily Stoic, my book, 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living, which I wrote with my wonderful collaborator, translator, and literary agent, Stephen Hanselman. So today, we'll give you a quick meditation from the Stoics with some analysis from me, and then we'll send you out into the world to turn these words into works.

• 0:40Ryan Holiday?

  How to Handle a Bad Call.

• 0:44Ryan Holiday?

  At the Super Bowl in 2015, Seattle Seahawks coach Pete Carroll made a decision that will be remembered in sports history for decades. With 26 seconds left in the game and the Seahawks down by four, they had the ball on the New England Patriots' one-yard line. Instead of handing the ball to the running back, Marshawn Lynch, the best running back in the NFL at the time, Carroll called a passing play on second down. The Patriots intercepted the ball, and they won the game. The headlines called it the worst play call in NFL history and the dumbest call in Super Bowl history and a terrible Super Bowl mistake. Carroll would, of course, disagree with this Monday morning quarterbacking, believing that it was the right call

• 1:28Ryan Holiday?

  based on the numbers and his experience. But there is no disputing that the play did not work. So the more interesting question is, what did Carroll do next? How did he respond to this brutal media onslaught? In short, he owned it. "I told those guys that's my fault totally," he said after the game. And then later, when given the chance to pass off some of the blame to his offensive coordinator, Carroll refused, saying, "I made the decision."

• 1:57Ryan Holiday?

  This is what a leader does. They make the best decision they can with the information they have, fully aware, as the Stoics would say, that the outcome is outside what is up to us. But while the results of our decision are not in our hands, we pick the ball back up with how we respond to that corresponding success or failure. Do we own it or run from it? Take the blame or share the credit? Big or small, a crime or a bad play call? Every decision lives in the past. And the here and now, they no longer exist, can no longer be touched. All that remains is what you do next. You can take responsibility, you can build on the lessons of your mistake, you can move forward, you can make sure that

• 2:41Ryan Holiday?

  you don't compound the mistake, you can decide how the next part of the story gets written. That is what leadership is all about. And actually, we draw on some lessons from Pete Carroll and a bunch of other coaches. We talked to the GM of one of the greatest franchises in the history of sports, R.C. Buford of the San Antonio Spurs. Military leaders, business leaders, entrepreneurs, a bunch of awesome people in the Daily Stoic Leadership Challenge, which not only did I get a lot out of, I actually just heard from someone on my staff, they're taking the challenge to be better at leading inside Daily Stoic, which I just was total music to my ears. I'd love for you to check out the Daily Stoic

• 3:25Ryan Holiday?

  Leadership Challenge. It's a six-week deep dive into making better decisions, being a better leader. And it's amazing. You can check it out at dailystoic.com/leadership. You can sign up for Daily Stoic Life at dailystoiclife.com and get that challenge and all our challenges for free. But check out the Daily Stoic Leadership Challenge. I'll link to it in today's show notes, and I hope you enjoy the Super Bowl as well.

• 3:57Ryan Holiday?

  Anger is bad fuel. This is today's message from the Daily Stoic. "There is no more stupefying thing than anger, nothing more bent on its own strength. If successful, none more arrogant; if foiled, none more insane, since it is not driven back by weariness, even in defeat. When fortune removes its adversary, it turns its teeth on itself." Seneca on Anger 3:1. As the Stoics have said many times, getting angry almost never solves anything, usually makes things worse. When we get upset, then the other person gets upset.

• 4:38Ryan Holiday?

  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 and a celebrity. The anger at being called fat or stupid has created fine physical specimens in brilliant minds. The anger at being rejected has 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 fuel

• 5:20Ryan Holiday?

  must be generated to keep the machine going, 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 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 costs 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, Still This Is The Key, anger is...

• 6:05Ryan Holiday?

  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 what Seneca was writing about in 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. 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.

• 6:47Ryan Holiday?

  There are innocent people around you, and you don't want to blow up all over them. I tell the story of Michael Jordan in Stillness is the Key. And if you watch his Hall of Fame speech, you can see a guy who manufactured slights his whole career as a source of fuel, as a, as a source of propulsion. And there's no question, it made him great. But there's this moment in, 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 on the varsity basketball team in high school in front of Jordan.

• 7:29Ryan Holiday?

  And it's clear that Jordan has been hanging on to this for like 40 years. And he brings the guy to the talk, like, to the Hall of Fame thing, and he, he rubs it in his face, like, look where I am now. The most accomplished person in the history of that game. 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, Seneca talks about how getting angry is like returning a bite to a dog or a kick to a mule. But that's what we do. The TV remote isn't cooperating, we smash it to pieces, that'll show the remote. But who are you really punishing, man?

• 8:11Ryan Holiday?

  First off, the remote is an inanimate 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 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 wanting to prove people wrong, or prove myself right, or win. My best work came from a place of love, a place of deep interest, fascination. It was a puzzle, not a problem to obliterate. Anger is bad fuel.

• 8:53Ryan Holiday?

  I'm not saying it's not effective, I'm just saying it's long-term. And I think the metaphor 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. Stoic said to be wary of the passions. Marx really said to be free of passion, but 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. I'll talk to y'all soon.