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 every day life.

Each one of these passages is based on the 2000 year old philosophy that has guided some

of history's greatest men and women.

For more, you can visit us dailystoic.com.

Beware this madness.

What we do while in the sway of anger, we almost always come to regret.

Whether it was the yelling or the impulsive decision to quit, whether it was the cruel words

or the quiet revenge with the passage of time, we come to see how we were possessed by something,

by our temper, and how it took us somewhere we should not have gone.

The Stoic's wrote often of being wary of the passion of temper, but there are other passions

to beware of too. The philosopher, Democritus, once referred to sex as a mild madness,

how our urge has overcome us, and then afterwards we wonder what possessed us.

Epictetus talked about people who were slaves to their ambition.

Resonius Rufus spoke about how when we do something shameful in the pursuit of pleasure,

the pleasure passes quickly, but the shame endures.

When we feel the rush of emotion, the temptation to do something, whether it is getting upset or

gorging ourselves, we should think about how we're going to feel about those actions after.

The overwhelming logic of the moment, the green lights our mind is flashing us, we can't trust

that. We have to stop and think. We have to practice a little self-discipline. We have to be able

to look for off-ramps. We can see Marcus really is talking to himself about this throughout

meditations. He tries to remind himself what sex really is. He tries to practice empathy for

...