When Your Passion Is Master of Your Reason… | We Are a Product of Our Habits

0:00Ryan Holiday: Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key Stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom, into the real world.

0:14When passion is the master of your reason, they lied to you, they cheated you, they hurt you,

0:21Ryan Holiday: they hurt someone, they hurt someone you love. Of course you're hurt. Of course you're angry. Of course, it's consuming your attention. Beware. In fact, we all need to beware because as the Stoics say, this is where trouble comes from, the passions. In Euripides' Medea, we have a copy at the Painted Porch, it's a lovely play that I think everyone should read. He has Medea on the verge of filicide, surprisingly aware of the temporary insanity her anger has created. I am well aware of how terrible a crime I am about to commit, she says. But my passion is master of my reason, passion that causes the greatest suffering in the world.

1:05Ryan Holiday: To the Stoics, passions were diametrically opposed to reason, and the two were battling for supremacy in each of us. When passion wins, we are in trouble. It causes suffering for us and for others. We say things we regret. We jump into things we wouldn't. We make complicated things worse. we do things that can't be undone. This is why Athenodorus famously told the Emperor Augustus to count the letters of the alphabet before he did anything out of anger. He was telling him to pause and reflect, as our challenge coin says, pause and reflect. Think about it. Let reason be your master, not the passion of the moment.

1:46Ryan Holiday: Don't hurt others and yourself. Don't jump in just yet. think about how you'll think about this after. Spare yourself and others suffering. Pause and reflect. Let your passions pass. A pause can change everything. I reach into my pocket these days and I grab the daily stoic pause and reflect medallion. Delay is the best remedy, Seneca says. Athenodorus advised the emperor Augustus to count all the letters of the alphabet before he reacts. And in the front of the coin, there is a mirror. The idea is to really think about what you look like when you react in this moment. You can grab that at dailystoic.com slash pause.

2:32Ryan Holiday: And I think it's a great everyday carry or a reminder to have with you in your house and check it out.

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5:12Ryan Holiday: We are a product of our habits. This comes from this week's entry in the Daily Stoic Journal, 366 days of writing and reflection on the art of living. Journaling, of course, is a critical exercise to the Stoics. It's really hard to separate journaling from Stoicism. Meditations is Marcus Aurelius journaling and talking to himself. And so today's entry comes from the prompt and the sort of meditative part of the Daily Stoic Journal for this week's, and it's all about habits. The Roman Stoics put a heavy emphasis on dealing with habitual behavior in order to make progress in the art of living. The great Roman Stoic educator Musonius Rufus, he's Epictetus' teacher, held that all the theories in the world couldn't trump good habits, and they couldn't overcome bad habits either.

6:04Ryan Holiday: Epictetus followed Musonius in this focus on habit with an eye on not reinforcing bad habits, such as anger, and finding a way to replace them with better ones. We all recognize bad habits when they see them in others, but it's harder to see them in ourselves. So this week, meditate on the habits and recurring behaviors that are holding you back and even ask others around you for their view. And the first quote comes to us from Epictetus. He says, every habit and capability is confirmed and grows in its corresponding actions, walking by walking and running by running. Therefore, if you want to do something, make a habit of it.

6:41Ryan Holiday: If you don't want to do that, don't, but make a habit of something else instead. The same principle is at work in our state of mind. When you get angry, you have not only experienced an evil, but you've also reinforced a bad habit, adding fuel to the fire. Epictetus's Discourses 218. Then he also says, if you don't wish to be a hothead, don't feed your habit. Try as a first step to remain calm and count the days you haven't been angry. I used to be angry every day and now every other day. then every third and fourth. And if you make it as far as 30 days, thank God, for a habit is first weakened and then obliterated.

7:17Ryan Holiday: When you can say, I didn't lose my temper today or the next day or for three or four months, but I kept my cool under provocation, then you are in better health. That's again Epictetus's Discourses 218. And then this is the funny one. He says, what assistance can we find in the fight against habit? Try the opposite. The point is the Stoics thought a lot about habits. They had to, right? It's not just enough to think philosophical thoughts to sort of have high principles or standards, but how do you make them real in your life? How do you turn them into muscle memory, right? An athlete can watch videos, can be coached, can review painstakingly their swing or their shot or their throw, and then they're going to get tweaks and thoughts, but then that has to become habit.

8:05Ryan Holiday: That has to become part of the routine. That's why they sit in the gym and take a thousand free throws or a thousand jump shots. That's why they practice doing this or that so that under immense amounts of pressure, under the stresses of life in the game, they can revert back to that training. They can do what they need to do. And I love this little expression from Seneca about how bad habits, the old way of doing it, first we weaken it, then we obliterate it. You don't just magically do the new thing, you weaken it. And he's saying one way to weaken it is to try the opposite. You know, it's like you have a piece of paper with a crease in it or a bend in it.

8:40Ryan Holiday: You can fold it the opposite way and it kind of flattens it out. I just think that's an interesting way of thinking about it. But look, habits make the man, right? The habits that you do, the things you habitually do day in and day out, that's who you are. Who you say you are, who you want to be, Who cares, right? The habits you habitually do, the choices you regularly make, that's what make you who you are. That's what make you beautiful. As we also talk about from Epictetus, we are a product of our choices, our routines, our habits. As a writer, how does it work? You create a routine. You create a structure.

9:15Ryan Holiday: You follow it every day. Work comes out the other side of that. It's not about fits of inspiration. It's not about genius. And I think this is true for all crafts that one seeks out to master. It's about habit. But I've also found even as a parent, if you want to do good, if you want to manage this or that, you create habits, you create routines, you create structures, and then you stick to it. That's the key. Habits will make you happier. They will give you a better life. I'm not saying they're easy. They're very difficult. But habit is everything. It's also the hardest thing. But let's keep working on our habits.

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