What’s It All For? It’s For This | Stoic Strategies To Control Your Temper

The Daily Stoic

Daily Stoic | Backyard Ventures

Education, 694393, Daily Stoic, Society & Culture, Stoic, Stoicism, Self-improvement, Business, Stoic Philosophy, Philosophy, Ryan Holiday

4.6 • 4.7K Ratings

🗓️ 5 September 2025

⏱️ 36 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Life is difficult. People are obnoxious. Stuff is going to piss you off. But can you keep your cool anyway?

🪙 Carry The Daily Stoic Pause & Reflect Medallion as a reminder to pause. A pause creates space. A pause creates clarity. A pause can change everything. | Grab The Daily Stoic Pause & Reflect Medallion at dailystoic.com/pause

👉 Support the podcast and go deeper into Stoicism by subscribing to The Daily Stoic Premium - unlock ad-free listening, early access, and bonus content coming soon: dailystoic.com/premium

📖 Preorder the final book in Ryan Holiday's The Stoic Virtues Series: "Wisdom Takes Work": https://store.dailystoic.com/pages/wisdom-takes-work

🎙️ 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 Facebook

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we bring you a stoic-inspired meditation
0:11.7	designed to help you find strength and insight and wisdom into everyday life.
0:18.8	Each one of these episodes is based on the 2,000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of
0:24.2	history's greatest men and women to help you learn from them, to follow in their example,
0:33.0	and to start your day off with a little dose of courage and discipline and justice and wisdom.
0:40.3	For more, visitdailystoic.com. What's it all for? It's for this. There was a reason we did that reading. There was a reason we did that journaling. There's a reason we look at those historical examples, listened to those stories of the greats and the not-so-grates. There was a reason we challenged
1:12.8	ourselves against the cold, running up that mountain, lifting those weights, resisting those urges.
1:19.4	We were training for this moment, this moment in time, but also this ordinary moment in our life.
1:25.5	You know the one where it feels like everything is falling apart
1:28.1	and terrible, but also the one where the person next to us is being really, really annoying.
1:33.4	We were training for this argument with our spouse or a friend. We were training for the way
1:38.0	our boss was going to screw us over. We were training for that email. We were training for
1:42.5	being tired and burnt out. We were training
1:45.2	so these things could happen and we could still keep our cool. Seneca relates the story of what
1:50.8	Cato the Younger did when visiting the baths in Rome one day was shoved and struck. Once the fight was
1:56.6	broken up, he simply refused to accept an apology from the offender. I don't even remember being
2:02.3	hit, he said. There's the story of Marcus Aurelius, betrayed by his most trusted general in a coup,
2:08.9	and not even being bothered by it. What did he do? He told his soldiers that this was an opportunity
2:14.3	to teach the Roman people that there was a way even to deal with civil wars.
2:19.5	That's what Stoicism is, right? The ability to look at it all in the calm light of mild philosophy.
2:26.9	The ability to not be rattled or driven into a rage, to not even remember being hit,
2:32.3	to not be provoked into overreaction.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Daily Stoic | Backyard Ventures, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Daily Stoic | Backyard Ventures and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.