Pod Insights The Daily Stoic | Wondery+ What Does It Change? | How To Stay Unbothered In Chaotic Times About this episode What watching the news these days does to you is indisputable. It disrupts your focus. It disturbs your sanity. It changes your mood. But what does it change in the real world?
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:05 Ryan 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.
0:57 Ryan Holiday? What does it change? It makes you angry. It makes you depressed. It makes you scared. What watching the news these days does to you is indisputable. It disrupts your focus. It disturbs your sanity. It changes your mood. But what does it change in the real world? Well, that's much less clear, isn't it? So why are you subjecting yourself to it? Why do you continue to assume that your duty as a citizen is to watch and read about horrible stuff constantly? Seneca lived during the time of Nero. Epictetus lived in the time of Domitian. Cato's lifetime saw the fall of the Republic. Marcus Aurelius saw the beginning of the decline of the empire.
1:41 Ryan Holiday? They experienced famines and floods and wars and corruption and incompetence. The Stoics were not unfamiliar with the feelings, the dread, the disappointment, the bewildering, and the outrage that we are feeling today. But you know what they also understood? They understood what was in their control and what wasn't, and what made a difference and what didn't. Do you think a Stoic in ancient Rome needed daily updates to know that Nero was deranged? Or that what Caesar was doing was illegal and inexcusable? Part of being a thinking and a decent person is being able to discern what's going on. But part of being a discerning person is also knowing when you know enough, when more information is no longer helpful or even informative.
2:26 Ryan Holiday? You need to know that you probably already know enough. You need to understand that doom scrolling is not helping anyone or anything. Put the phone away. Get to work where you can, on what you can.
2:52 Ryan Holiday? We live in triggering times. Things are frustrating. Things are scary. People are cruel. We are exposed to more information than any time in human history. So no wonder you're upset. No wonder you're distracted. No wonder you're worked up all the time. Who wouldn't be? But this is why Stoic philosophy is so relevant today. Because Stoicism is about mastering your emotions. It is possible, Marx really says in his meditations, to not let this get to you, to not let it get inside your head, to not make you want to give up on your fellow human beings. And it's what we're going to talk about in today's episode. How the Stoics can teach us to master our emotions.
3:33 Ryan Holiday? So we stop overreacting and we can focus on doing the work that desperately needs to be done.
3:44 Ryan Holiday? At the root of all of my problems, when I look back at my life, anxiety, worry, anger, fear, at the root of all of it, was strong emotions that didn't end up making the situation any better. All the things I've been angry about, all the things I've been anxious about, all the things I've been worked up about, did it make one fucking shred of? Difference? No, it didn't. Marcus really says in meditation, the causes of our emotions are often worse than the thing we're worried or emoting about, that anger makes stuff worse, anxiety makes stuff worse. When I look back at my life, I see how these strong overwhelming passions, as the Stoics call them, the things that get us worked up, they weren't helping me.
4:24 Ryan Holiday? They weren't even avoiding the things that I wanted to avoid or bringing me the things I wanted them to bring. No, they were just causing me needless distress, needless worry. They were taking me out of the moment and preventing me from, from having peace, from having any stillness and from being who I wanted to be.
4:45 Ryan Holiday? If you think being a Stoic means has no emotions, you're getting it wrong. It's not that the Stoics had no emotion, it's that they tried to have less emotion, less anger, less greed, less lust, less fear, less ego. And they tried to replace that with something else. Marcus really says, "The key to life is to be free of passion, but full of love. Love for the present moment, love for other people, love for whatever the hand of fate deals you." That's what Stoicism is about. It's not emotionlessness, it's less emotion. And in fact, one of the stories we have of Marcus is him grieving over a teacher that had died and how sad he was because he loved this person dearly. And so, yeah, the Stoics try not to be angry, the Stoics try not to be jealous,
5:31 Ryan Holiday? the Stoics try not to be driven or ruled by emotions, but largely they're trying to avoid the destructive emotions. And what they're trying to put instead in there is compassion, empathy, love and connection. James Walden said, "Hatred has never failed to destroy the person who hated." He said, "This is an immutable law." The question to me is, as you get older, as you go through the world, as you go through life, are you getting more jaded and cynical? Are you getting sick of people? Or are you actually feeling more compassion, more affinity, more connection to them? Stoicism has this idea of the, the circles of concern, right? We start off as selfish, but they say as we go, there are these other rings, other people, animals, the environment.
6:13 Ryan Holiday? And they said, "It's this beautiful madness to pull these outer rings inward." So that's what Stoicism actually is. You should become more caring, more interested, not more detached, more disinterested.
6:29 Ryan Holiday? You ever caught yourself getting really mad while you're driving? It's like you're screaming in your car. They can't hear you. You're ridiculous. You're screaming at yourself. You're making yourself mad. Austin is one of the most frustrating cities in America to drive in. I mean, think of Austin's motto for a long time is, if we don't build it, they won't come. But people came anyway, so there's always ridiculous traffic. People can't understand the roads because they're all new. And then the locals don't want them to be here anyway, so they hate anyone they think is from California. So anyways, I think driving is always a good test of one's Stoicism, of one's philosophy. Or I always love, someone gets angry and so they start driving really dangerously. Like, who is that gonna punish?
7:12 Ryan Holiday? Like, you're gonna die in an accident and that's gonna be punishment for the other person? I'm not sure how that works. So I think at the core of Stoicism is this idea from Marcus really says, you know, the consequences of anger are always worse than what provokes it. Seneca's line, you know, he's like, you wouldn't return a kick to a mule or a bite to a dog. But that's what happens. Someone drives poorly at us or someone's rude to us, and we have to return the favor, even if it literally comes at the risk of our own health. I mean, it's nuts. So the Stoic would hopefully be a kind and a generous and a forgiving driver, certainly a patient driver. Next time you see someone get really upset when they're driving, just realize that that's how bad you look. Like, you look as insane as the frothing at the mouth, veins bulging, you know, screaming,
7:57 Ryan Holiday? flipping people off driver. You are not better than them. And hopefully that shames you into a little bit better behavior.
8:03 Speaker 01 I think it's remarkable that Marcus continually talked about more than anything getting control of his anger.
8:07 Ryan Holiday? And you know he had a problem with it because of how much he talked about it.
8:10 Speaker 01 Yeah.
8:11 Ryan Holiday? Like, he's not talking about, you gotta remember, Marcus, jokes are funny.
8:15 Speaker 01 Right. Come on, man, lighten up a little bit.
8:17 Ryan Holiday? Right. He clearly had a huge problem with it. I think it's probably one of the things he returns to most. Hadrian, the emperor who sets in motion Marcus eventually becoming emperor, there's a story. Hadrian gets mad at a secretary, messes something up, and he picks up a pen and he stabs it in the guy's eye. That's the level of power and indulgence that the Roman emperor could get away with. The story is that he obviously feels bad about it after, and he goes like, I'll give you anything, like, I'm so sorry, I'll give you anything to make it better. And the guy just, can I have my eye back?
8:48 Speaker 01 Can I have my eye back?
8:49 Ryan Holiday? Which is, I think, a poignant reminder that, like, the things that we do out of anger cannot be undone.
8:58 Ryan Holiday? I once told my wife that she was frustrating me and she responded with probably the most frustrating thing you can imagine. She said, "I can't make you frustrated." But to the Stoics, this is totally true because we're responsible for our own emotions. Epictetus says, "If you find yourself offended, realize that you are complicit in taking offense." It takes two to tango. But also, as the Stoics say, things don't upset us, we choose to be upset about them. It's our opinions that are to blame, not the objective situation. So this is a really important thing to remember. No one can make you angry. They can't make you upset. No one can make you feel anything. That's a choice that you make. You're responsible for your own emotions. And I'm telling you that as much as I'm telling myself that, because I forget it all the time. We're responsible for our own emotions.
9:43 Ryan Holiday? Nobody else, no one can make us feel, say, or do anything, least of all frustrated or angry. One of the things Marcus does in meditations is he quotes from playwrights or lines from the theater that particularly struck him. One of my favorites, this is a lost line from the poet Euripides. I think it perfectly captures Stoicism. He says, "And why should we be angry at the world as if the world would notice?" We don't know what this play is from. We don't know the larger context. But it's such a great Stoic line. Getting angry, being pissed off, being resentful, being bitter, the world doesn't care. It doesn't care that you're angry at it, that you're calling it mean names. It is indifferent to you and I. All we can try to do, the Stoics say, is maintain that goodness, preserve
10:26 Ryan Holiday? our character, focus on how we respond. 2,000-year-old advice for when you're insulted, when your feelings are hurt, when you have been criticized. This is also from Epictetus. He says, "You know, when you are offended, when your feelings are hurt, when you let it get to you, you are complicit. You have chosen to take offense." Again, the remark is, someone wrote the article, someone posted the tweet, someone put up the comment, but then you decided that that hurt you, that that hurt your feelings. This is from the great Roman Stoic Cato. He was once punched in the back. Someone bumped into him. Words were exchanged and someone threw a punch. And then afterwards, the person came to apologize and he said, "What? I don't even remember being hit." You can just pretend not to have heard it. You can just pretend that it didn't happen. Marcus really says, "The best revenge is to not
11:11 Ryan Holiday? Be like that. He says it only harms you if it harms your character. So the unfair criticism, the slander, the insult, whatever it is, that hasn't hurt you. But if you degrade yourself in how you respond, if you sink down to their level, then it in fact has hurt you because it has made you worse.
11:33 Ryan Holiday? At the root of so many mistakes, the downfall of so many powerful people is what? It's anger. You never are glad you lost your temper. And in fact, you almost always regret it. One of the early Stoics advised the emperor, he said, "Whenever you feel yourself getting angry, Caesar, don't do or say anything until you've repeated all the letters of the alphabet." Meaning, take a pause, take a minute, don't rush into it, don't react emotionally, calm down. Your temper will not solve this problem. It almost certainly will make it worse.
12:08 Ryan Holiday? People tend to think Stoicism is having no emotions. But what I thought was so genius about Musashi, he's not only not not emotional, or he's so transcended his emotions that he's able to use emotion effectively. And like, I think about this, like, when a basketball coach will get a technical on purpose. If you think it's about stripping emotion out of things, maybe that is part of it, but that's like beginner level. That's like, that's like basic. But the real thing is to be able to understand emotions, process them, and then use them. Or at the very least, understand other people's emotions and be able to manipulate, it's the wrong word, but use those emotions to help them or you accomplish what is supposed to be accomplished.
12:49 Speaker 02 Yeah, I mean, the proper idea to me is sort of a lot of what I meditate about and is in Buddhism, where you don't try to repress your emotions because first of all, you can't. We are emotional animals. And if ever you have tried to repress your emotions, particularly in a state of meditation, you see you have zero control over them, right? They're popping up, you know, it's the way we're wired. So the proper stance is, I'm not going to repress emotions, but I'm going to understand them. I'm going to see them as they occur with a degree of Distance, I'm going to see that I'm angry in this moment. I like to imagine it as if I'm like six inches away from myself. I don't know why that metaphor come up.
13:31 Ryan Holiday? Only six inches? That doesn't seem that far.
13:33 Speaker 02 Well, it's out this side. It's like here. However, that's like a more like a foot, I guess. And I'm looking at what I'm thinking or feeling from that distance, almost from the outside. And I'm still feeling it, but I'm seeing it as if it's from, as if I'm another person. And this is a strange concept.
13:48 Ryan Holiday? Yeah.
13:48 Speaker 02 But you can observe your own emotions while you're feeling them. And then you, they don't have power over you. Then you can say, okay, I'm angry. Why am I angry? So number one, I recognize the emotion. Number two, why am I angry? Is it stemmed from something weeks ago, months ago, or earlier today? And then what do I do with my anger? Sometimes you want to use your anger. You want to channel your anger. So when you're in sports, if you don't have that kind of drive and that anger, when you're in a bet, you know, when you're down by 12 points.
14:18 Ryan Holiday? It's like an extra gear.
14:19 Speaker 02 Yeah.
14:19 Ryan Holiday? You can pull, yeah.
14:20 Speaker 02 There's a little bit of anger and even, I don't know, hatred or something. You just despise the enemy. You're going to crush them. You use that emotion, but as Phil Jackson said, if that emotion controls you throughout 48 minutes of a game, you're useless. You drain yourself. You can't control it.
14:36 Ryan Holiday? You also make mistakes.
14:37 Speaker 02 You make mistakes. So you need to be focused, but you also need to be able to use those emotions.
14:43 Ryan Holiday? Just 30 days left to preorder the new book Wisdom Takes Work. I've been working on this series for six years now. It's finally done. Courage is calling, discipline is destiny. Write thing right now. And now Wisdom Takes Work. We have signed and numbered first editions, bonus chapters. You can even have dinner with me at my bookstore, The Painted Porch. You can grab all the bonuses, everything at dailystoic.com/wisdom.
15:12 Ryan Holiday? You can imagine as Emperor, Marcus Aurelius is getting a lot of bad news all the time, right? Nobody's bringing the good, exciting, fun stuff to the emperor. He's getting the hard decisions. He's getting the bad news. He's hearing of the crises and they're his problem. They're his responsibility. And so I think it's important when we see in meditations, Marcus Aurelius is talking about how you want to be like the rock. He says, be like the rock that the waves crash over and eventually the sea. Falls still around, right? A leader has to keep that even keel. It's not that the Stoics were emotionless, but Marcus tried to be less emotional, right? Because so much was at stake. It didn't matter what he thought. It didn't matter what he felt. It didn't matter that he was frustrated or tired. It didn't matter that he was worried or anxious. He had to be cool and calm and collected. General James Mattis, four-star general in the Marines,
15:56 Ryan Holiday? former Secretary of Defense, would carry Marcus Aurelius with him on his deployments. He would say one of the things he's most worried about, he says, the biggest problem that leaders have in the information age. He says, it's not enough space for reflection, not enough solitude, right? They're too emotional. They're too caught up in the moment. They're doing and doing and doing. They're scrolling and scrolling and scrolling. They're not being like the rock that the waves crash over. They're not letting things sit still. They're not being calm. I think of Kennedy and the missile crisis as a great example of a leader being like the rock, not responding immediately, letting things settle, seeing it clearly, then making a clear, decisive and courageous stand, but not reacting emotionally. And one of the things we can take from Marcus is that leaders can't be emotional in high stakes situations.
16:45 Ryan Holiday? There's a story I tell in Discipline is Destiny about Richard Feynman. One day, it's like 10 o'clock in the morning. He's out for a walk and he feels this pull. Wants to have a drink. He never saw himself as an alcoholic, never had this problem with alcoholism, but he was deeply uncomfortable with this drive, this pull to do something. It was coming from a part of him that he didn't control. The Stoics say that's something you have to be really suspicious of. Seneca says slavery isn't just this legal status. He says, everyone's a slave. He says, someone's a slave to their mistress. Somebody's a slave to money. Someone's a slave to power and attention. And he said, those people might be literally free. They might be powerful. They might be important, but they're not in control. In Discipline is Destiny, I also tell the story of Eisenhower. He was told by his doctor that is smoking it.
17:28 Ryan Holiday? He'd smoked like four packs a day for 40 years. It was hurting his health. He says, okay. And I love this. He says, I gave myself an order to stop smoking. And he stopped smoking cold turkey like that. It's going to be harder for some people, easier for some people. But the point is you've got to give yourself that order. To say who's in charge, this habit, this addiction, this vice that I have, this thing that I want, or am I in charge? I the boss, or is it the boss? And that's what Feynman was reacting to, that's what Seneca was reacting to, that's what Eisenhower's reacting to, and ultimately, that's what Epictetus is reacting to in the same court as Seneca. He looks around and he goes, I'm a slave, but I'm freer than these people because I'm in control of my habits.
18:12 Ryan Holiday? I decide what I do and what I don't do, and we have to give ourselves that power.
18:21 Ryan Holiday? You think you're the first person to live in political dysfunction? You think you're the first person to live in a time when it feels like the world is falling apart? You think you're the first person to live in a time when people are shitty to each other? When there's demagogues in power, when it feels like stuff is falling apart? No, you weren't. The ancient Stoics lived in the time of Nero. You know Socrates, he didn't live in the golden age of Athens. He lived in the time of thirty tyrants. He lived through a great power conflict. People have always lived in difficult times, but you know what they figured out? They figured out you gotta focus on what's in your control. You gotta figure out how to not let the assholes make you an asshole. You gotta do good where you can. You gotta remind yourself what's important.
19:03 Ryan Holiday? You can't follow every news story. You can't be distracted by every outrage. You can't extrapolate everything into the end of the world. You have to ride it out. You have to focus. You have to stay good and stay decent. And then you gotta make a positive difference where you can. You can't give up hope. You have to stand strong. And you have to realize in times like these that there have always been times like these, and people got through it, and you will get through it. Every city has its lessons to teach you. And New Orleans, because it's totally dysfunctional, because everything's old and falling apart, and it's been doing things its way for so many hundreds of years, the lesson is acceptance.
19:47 Ryan Holiday? Like, I guess there's just a giant sinkhole blocking this street. I guess the streetcar is gonna be super late because the driver decided to do whatever. This person Decided to be incredibly rude. This person decided to be a maniac. It's a wonderful, amazing city, but it just teaches you that you're not in control. You don't get to decide the way that it should be. Logic doesn't get to decide the way that it should be. Convenience doesn't decide the way things are going to be. No, it's going to be the way that it is, the way that it's always been, and you have to accept it. Epictetus talks about the art of acquiescence. New Orleans is a city that teaches you the power of acquiescence. Seneca has another line about paying the taxes of life gladly. You pay the taxes that come from being in such a wonderful, beautiful, historic place. Not all of it's going to be fun. Not all of it's going to be easy.
20:32 Ryan Holiday? Some of it's going to be more expensive than you'd like it to be. But that's just how it goes. That's what it is, and that's the lesson it teaches you.
20:42 Ryan Holiday? If you want to keep your Stoicism-inspired journey going, sign up for the Daily Stoic email at dailystoic.com/email. It's one Stoic-inspired email every single day. Wisdom to help you with the problems of life. Stoicism is intended, and you can sign up at dailystoic.com/email. Unsubscribe whenever you want. I'd love for you to join us.
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