Control Your Emotions

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2:30Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoic Podcast. On Sundays, we take a deeper dive into these ancient topics with excerpts from the Stoic texts, audiobooks that we like here or recommend here at Daily Stoic and other long form wisdom that you can chew on on this relaxing weekend. We hope this helps shape your understanding of this philosophy and most importantly, that you're able to apply it to your actual life. Thank you for listening.

3:10Control your emotions. Would you have a great empire? Rule over yourself. Publius Sirius. When America raced to send the first men into space, they trained the astronauts in one skill more than any other, the art of not panicking. When people panic, they make mistakes. They override systems. They disregard procedures and ignore rules. They deviate from the plan. They become unresponsive and stop thinking clearly. They just react, not to what they need to react to, but to the survival hormones that are coursing through their veins. Welcome to the source of most of the problems down here on Earth.

3:53Everything is planned down to the letter, then something goes wrong, and the first thing we do is trade in our plan for a good ol' emotional freakout. Some of us almost crave sounding the alarm, because it's easier than dealing with whatever is staring us in the face. At 150 miles above Earth in a spaceship smaller than a VW, this is death. Panic is suicide. So the panic has to be trained out. And it does not go easily. Before the first launch, NASA recreated the fateful day for the astronauts over and over, step by step, hundreds of times. From what they'd have for breakfast to the ride to the airfield.

4:33Slowly in a graded series of exposures, the astronauts were introduced to every sight and sound of the experience of their firing into space. They did it so many times that it became as natural and familiar as breathing. They'd practice all the way through, holding nothing back but the liftoff itself, making sure to solve for every variable and remove all uncertainty. Uncertainty and fear are relieved by authority. Training is authority. It's a release valve. With enough exposure, you can adapt out those perfectly ordinary, even innate fears that are bred mostly from unfamiliarity. Fortunately, unfamiliarity is simple to fix.

5:14Again, not easy. Which makes it possible to increase our tolerance for stress and uncertainty. John Glenn, the first American astronaut to orbit the Earth, spent nearly a day in space still keeping his heart rate under 100 beats per minute. That's a man not simply sitting at the controls, but in control of his emotions. A man who had properly cultivated what Tom Wolfe later called the right stuff. But you confront a client or a stranger on the street and your heart is liable to burst out of your chest or called on to address a crowd and your stomach crashes through the floor. It's time to realize that this is a luxury, an indulgence of our lesser self.

5:57In space, the difference between life and death lies in emotional regulation. Hitting the wrong button, reading the instrument panels incorrectly, engaging a sequence too early, none of these could have been afforded on a successful Apollo mission. The consequences were too great. Thus, the question for astronauts was not, how skilled a pilot are you? But, can you keep an even strain? Can you fight the urge to panic and instead focus only on what you can change? On the task at hand. Life is really no different. Obstacles make us emotional, but the only way we'll survive or overcome them is by keeping those emotions in check.

6:36If we can keep steady no matter what happens, no matter how much external events may fluctuate. The Greeks had a word for this, apathia. It's the kind of emotional equanimity that comes from the absence of irrational or extreme emotions. Not the loss of feeling altogether, just the loss of the harmful, unhelpful kind. Don't let the negativity in. Don't let those emotions even get started. Just say, no, thank you. I can't afford to panic.

7:10Thanks to Toyota Trucks for sponsoring this episode. When I bought my ranch in 2015 out here in Bastro County, I drove my car about halfway down the dirt road that we live on, thought this isn't going to work, stopped, parked it, walked the rest of the way home, borrowed my wife's car, drove in Austin and bought a truck. What I bought was a Toyota Tacoma. And this truck wasn't just transportation getting me to and from my house. It unlocked a whole different style of living for us, not just on the ranch, but in our little Texas towns. There were places I could go now that I couldn't go before, especially out here in the piney forests, through the fields and on the unpaved roads like the one that I lived in.

7:55We got to go deep into the hill country's wild beauty. We've driven all the way out to East Texas. We've driven across the country. And by we, I mean not just my wife, but both my kids who I drove home from the hospital in that truck. Toyota trucks are built for those who understand that the best adventures happen when you're willing to veer off course, because you never know when you'll end up on a Toyota adventure detour. And of course, this is stoicism too, because every detour, every obstacle is an opportunity. But it's helpful if you can handle the difficulty inherent in that. If you've got the resilience and the right companion to make it wherever the road takes you, discover your uncharted territory.

8:36Learn more at toyota.com slash trucks slash adventure dash detours. This is the skill that must be cultivated Freedom from disturbance and perturbation So you can focus your energy exclusively on solving problems Rather than reacting to them A boss's urgent email An asshole at a bar A call from the bank Your financing has been pulled A knock at the door There's been an accident As Gavin DeBecker writes in The Gift of Fear When you worry, ask yourself what am I choosing to not see right now? What important things are you missing because you chose worry over introspection, alertness, or wisdom? Another way of putting it, does getting upset provide you with more options?

9:26Sometimes it does, but in this instance, no, I suppose not. Well then, if an emotion can't change the condition or the situation you're dealing with, it is likely an unhelpful emotion, or quite possibly a destructive one, but it's what I feel. Right, no one said anything about not feeling it. No one ever said you can't cry, forget manliness. If you need to take a moment, by all means, go ahead. Real strength lies in the control or as Nassim Taleb put it, the domestication of one's emotions, not in pretending they don't exist. So go ahead, feel it. Just don't lie to yourself by conflating emoting about a problem with dealing with it.

10:12Because they are as different as sleeping and waking. You can always remind yourself, I am in control, not my emotions. I see what is really going on here. I am not going to get excited or upset. We defeat emotions with logic, or that's the idea. Logic is questions and statements. with enough of them, we get to root causes, which are always easier to deal with. We lost money, but aren't losses a pretty common part of business? Yes. Are these losses catastrophic? Not necessarily. So this is not totally unexpected, is it? How could that be so bad? Why are you all worked up over something that is at least occasionally supposed to happen?

10:58Well, um, I... And not only that, but you've dealt with worse situations than this. Wouldn't you be better off applying some of that resourcefulness rather than anger? Try having that conversation with yourself and see how these extreme emotions hold up. They won't last long. Trust that. After all, you're probably not going to die from any of this. It might help to say it over and over again whenever you feel the anxiety begin to come on. I'm not going to die from this. I'm not going to die from this. I am not going to die from this. Or try Marcus's question. Does what happened keep you from acting with justice, generosity, self-control, sanity, prudence, honesty, humility, straightforwardness?

11:47Nope. Then get back to work. Subconsciously, we should be constantly asking ourselves this question. Do I need to freak out about this? And the answer, like it is for astronauts, for soldiers, for doctors, and for so many other professionals, must be no, because I practiced for this situation and I can control myself. Or no, because I caught myself and I'm able to realize that it doesn't add anything constructive.

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