This Is The Purpose of Desire | Anger Is Bad Fuel

The Stoics warned us about this endless cycle, not to condemn desire entirely, but to remind us that fulfillment doesn’t come from acquisition. The things we think will complete us rarely do.📔 Pick up your own leather bound signed edition of The Daily Stoic! Check it out at the Daily Stoic Store: https://store.dailystoic.com/💡 Take the first step towards a calmer future by signing up for the course: Taming Your Temper: The 11 Day Stoic Guide to Controlling Your Anger at the Daily Stoic Store: https://dailystoic.com/anger🎙️ Follow The Daily Stoic Podcast on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoicpodcast🎥 Watch top moments from The Daily Stoic Podcast on YouTube: 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, 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.

• 0:05Ryan 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.

• 0:57Ryan Holiday?

  This is the purpose of desire. We worked for it, we waited for it, we risked for it, we lusted after it, we hoped for it, and then we got it. How was it? Underwhelming, fleeting? So quickly, we were starting all over again, waiting more, wanting something different, wanting it again. This is the problem with desire, the Stoics would say. It can never actually be satisfied. In her song with Phoebe Bridgers, Sloppy Jane has a metaphor that if Seneca or Epictetus had lived in the modern world, they would have understood perfectly. This is the nature of desire, a machine built to reach but not to hold. The Stoics warned us about this endless cycle,

• 1:42Ryan Holiday?

  not to condemn desire entirely, but to remind us that fulfillment doesn't come from acquisition. The things we think will complete us rarely do. Instead, the Stoics suggest turning inward towards mastering our wants and finding contentment in the process, not the prize. Reach for what you have, the Stoics say, instead of for something more. Wish for things to happen as they have, and you will, in fact, get what you wish for. True satisfaction lies not in clutching at fleeting rewards, but in appreciating what's already within our grasp.

• 2:26Ryan Holiday?

  Anger is bad fuel. This is today, February 10th, entry in the Daily Stoic. And if you haven't checked out the leather bound edition, you can see that at store.dailystoic.com. Today's quote is from Seneca's On Anger 31, which is a great essay. I highly recommend it. One of his best. "There is no more stupefying thing than anger." Seneca says, "Nothing more bent on its own strength. If successful, none more arrogant; if foiled, none more insane. Since it's not driven back by weariness even in defeat. When fortune removes its adversary, it turns its teeth on itself."

• 3:08Ryan Holiday?

  As the Stoics have said many times, getting angry almost never solves anything. It almost always makes things worse. We get upset, then the other person gets upset. Now everyone is upset and the problem is no closer to being solved. Many successful people will tell you that anger is a powerful fuel in their lives. The desire to prove them all wrong and shove it in their faces has made many a millionaire. The anger at being called fat or stupid has created fine physical specimens and brilliant minds. The anger at being rejected has motivated many to carve their own path. But that's short sighted. Such stories ignore the pollution produced as a side effect and the wear and tear that it puts on the engine.

• 3:49Ryan Holiday?

  It ignores what happens when that initial anger runs out and how more and more must be generated to keep the machine going until eventually the only source left 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 they had every reason to respond to hate with hate, anger with anger. The same is true for us. In fact, it's true for most extreme emotions. They are toxic fuel. There's plenty of that out in the world, no question, but it's never worth the costs that come along with it. Seneca has so many beautiful things that he says about anger in this essay, which again, I very highly recommend.

• 4:32Ryan Holiday?

  He says, "To be angry at someone for doing something," he says, "would you return a bite to a dog or a kick to a mule?" That image of like, "I'm gonna bite a dog or I'm gonna kick an animal that kicked me." It just shows you how like silly anger can be. Like, to try to catch a glimpse of yourself when you're angry, right? Like, if you were a sports coach or an athlete or a public figure and somebody caught you freaking out at someone, or like you caught a glimpse of what you looked like angry, I mean, you'd be like, "What a fool. That guy looks ridiculous." Right? I remember when I worked at American Apparel, Dove would have this sort of seething fits of rage. And I just remember, he looks like a child when he is doing this.

• 5:15Ryan Holiday?

  And it didn't completely cure, but it did disabuse me of the notion that, you know, there's anything glamorous or powerful or whatever about being angry. It's like, "No, you look like a chimp, or you look like a baby." Like, you look like, you don't look dignified. You look the opposite of being dignified. Then I, of course, talk about anger quite a bit in Stillness is the Key. I talk about anger as a fuel. I talk about the Michael Jordan sort of Hall of Fame speech. And he sort of lays out how he has used anger and resentments and slights to fuel his greatness. And there's no question, it got him, Michael Jordan, to a great place. But I thought the most discordant note in the whole thing, you know, there's the thing

• 5:58Ryan Holiday?

  Michael Jordan always talks about, about how he got cut from his high school basketball team or whatever, which he didn't. He wasn't cut. He just didn't make the varsity team as a sophomore or something. But like, he invites the guy that got the spot over him to that speech. And then he goes like, "I just wanted to say to my coach, you were wrong," or something. He's not screaming. Like, that's not the anger that you see in that speech. But it just falls so flat. Everyone in the audience is just like, "This is the greatest of all time. This is a guy who has so much to be happy about." And that's what anger does, though. Seneca says, "If foiled, none more insane." Anger makes us insane. It makes us deranged. It doesn't make us look good or do good.

• 6:43Ryan Holiday?

  And that's why we have to be very, very, very, very careful of it. And always remind ourselves, it is effective in the short term, corrosive and destructive in the long term. Anger makes bad fuel.

• 7:01Ryan 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.