Don't Stuff Emotions Down

“The popular image of the Stoic is of the unfeeling beast. The tough person, gritting, gutting, it out. But this is wrong.”Ryan explains why you must let yourself feel. Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: http://DailyStoic.com/signupFollow 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, where each day we bring you a passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you find strength, insight, and wisdom in everyday life. Each one of these passages is based on the 2,000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women. For more, you can visit us at DailyStoic.com.

• 0:26Ryan Holiday?

  Don't stuff your emotions down. The popular image of the Stoic is of the unfeeling beast, the tough person, gritting, gutting it out. But this is wrong. Just look at a story we have of Marcus Aurelius consumed with grief. After the death of one of his favorite teachers, a young Marcus could barely drag himself out of bed. One of his attendants tried to rouse him from this seemingly un-Stoic state, thinking it was the right thing to do. But Antoninus pious, Marcus's adopted stepfather, steps in and stops him. "Let him be human for once," he said, "for neither philosophy nor empire takes away natural feelings." This is an important counterpoint to the Stoic mythology of the Superman, the unfeeling, the invincible, the immovable philosopher-robot. Of course, a Stoic grieves.

• 1:10Ryan Holiday?

  Of course, they love, favor, get knocked down by life. Stoic gets scared. A Stoic mourns. Stoic worries. Stoic feels. There must have been many such moments in Marcus's tragic life. He lost multiple young children. He lost his wife. He lost Antoninus. He lost Rosticus. He lived and led through a terrible plague. We know he cried then, too. Who wouldn't? If he had stuffed those emotions down, it wouldn't have made him tougher, would have hurt him. It would have been to swallow emotional poison that would have made him more irritable, more vulnerable, vulnerable to the straw that would eventually break the camel's back. No, it was good that he felt those things, processed them, and worked through them. What a Stoic does try to do is not be carried away to excess by any of these natural feelings.

• 1:55Ryan Holiday?

  We try not to be enslaved or destroyed by our feelings. Antoninus intervened and gave Marcus the space to mourn the loss of this teacher, because it was a perfectly reasonable response. Now, if a year later, even a month later, Marcus still wasn't getting out of bed, you can imagine Antoninus would have intervened there, too, but on the same side as the attendant this time. Because to allow death to ruin the lives of the living is not natural or human either. It's okay to let it out sometimes. Don't feel bad if that's what you need. Life can be a bit of a pressure cooker. And like an actual pressure cooker, you've got to hit the release valve every so often so that the whole thing doesn't explode in your face. You're only human, so be human, not just once, but all the time. Let yourself feel.

• 2:42Ryan 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. So check it out, dailystoic.com/email.