Anger is temporary insanity

here again this week to give you what you are owed to pay you your dues from this week's reading that I've done and sort of the things that I've thought about and that I of course as always want to share with you and this week really I've been thinking about a big one if you want to make serious progress in living a peaceful life what we might call a virtuous life a wise life just a life in which you're contempt and happy and there's no drama no stress then really the best thing you can do

for yourself is to attack that whole big issue of anger because anger if you think about it is the root of so many problems that we just have in daily life and when I say anger there are so many gradients and degrees to it and even the smallest maybe lowest degree of it that we experience and um make other people experience throughout our day really has a big huge impact especially over over long term over over our daily lives over how our minds start to function um and so it's really the best thing we can

do to ourselves to get rid of our constant compulsion and um behavior of getting angry and as always the ancient Greeks um few them anyway have good tips for us really of changing how we think of anger or rather realizing what it really is because once you realize and this goes for any sort of problem or or behavioral issue that you might have once you realize that you're in contradiction once you realize that your actions don't make any sense or that they don't um logically overlap even with your own opinions and what you want to

be then almost immediately immediately you stop doing that behavior I me there's a sort of addiction of of being used to doing a behavior but that's that'll only make it continue for a little while longer but really the biggest thing you can do is to just realize that you're in contradiction and what when are we more in contradiction than when we're angry really and epicus the very famous and and valuable stoic really teacher of stoicism the few teachers that we have called anger temporary Madness or temporary insanity and how well does that in one short

sentence tell you what anger really is look at all the people around you look at yourself look at your past Behavior because when you're in the moment and you're angry you you of course don't realize what you're doing often but look at your past Behavior look at other people around you that are angry when they get angry and realize how they say and do things that not only any other logical person wouldn't say and do but even they themselves would not say and do in a calm moment in a logical moment one where they're not

angry and really how they act like they are they have some sort of mental issue how we act like we have some sort of mental issue in those moments that we're angry we say and do things that make no sense that if someone acted like that at all times we would consider them mad we would consider them insane and there's no way anyone could function in society like that being in that state constantly of course the degree doesn't make it any better just because we're not constantly angry meaning not constantly insane doesn't mean that it

has any place in our lives or that it's necessary or that it's just a part of life intrinsically by necessity because it isn't so once you truly realize when you look at your life and um you see that the things you say and do during during the times that you're angry are really shameful and you always regret you I don't think you've ever been glad of something that you said and did while you were angry even if it was something that you really believed in that you really thought you probably thought afterwards that you should

probably kept it to yourself it would have been better it really didn't help much and an even even bigger point and um even though this is just one of the lesson out of stoicism the the really larger point of stoicism in ancient Greek philosophy helenistic philosophy opes is the idea of not letting a single sense impression pass onto your mind without having first examined it and this of course is works perfectly for anger whenever we feel the rise of anger within us whenever something happens and we react to it angrily we need to put a

buffer in between the sensory imp pul that's coming from the outside and our reaction there needs to be a gap in between and that putting that Gap there or leaving it out really is under our control and it's the entire solution it's all you need to get rid of any sort of anger problem and like I said anything else um apply this to insults for example someone insults you or something does something that is that you consider offensive instead of immediately jumping from The Source from what is happening in the outside world to your reaction

without any Gap take a minute literally sometimes it only takes 10 seconds especially with anger for you to realize what you were about to say and what you were about to do and that anger um was was ridiculous and that you should not do it and you refrain from doing it then and like I said this goes with insults this even goes with sort of any news that might bring you down like something sad something that might be uh that might depress you otherwise you think do I really have to react this way do I

really need to be sad just because this person came to me in in a somber tone and said hey I have some bad news or so and so am I really going to let them interpret the whole world for me or or am I going to take that sense impression that news that behavior that action whatever it is and really look at it from all all angles turn it inside out and look at it and see it for what it really is which is really nothing it's really nothing you don't have to give it that

value you don't have to have it the effect that it may or may not even be its intended effect every single thing you do is a reaction to something inside of you or outside of you and once you realize that your reactions are completely up to you and the way that you can make it easier is just to take a pause between the incoming sense impression and your outcoming words or behavior if you put a pause in between that 10 times out of 10 you will make a better decision on any given topic and so

that's what I just wanted you to think about this week a little bit if you want to read this very discourse uh by epicus get the book um it's something you should be reading anyway I call him one of the Masters and Masters are to be read daily if possible and um I don't remember which discourse it is but you'll easily find it the one on anger and of course all the others are excellent as well and I just want you to think about this this week and this is a sure easy and very quick

way to vastly improve your life to put a buffer between all that comes from the outside and all that goes out from you