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Stoicism, as we have said, is not the elimination of all emotion. It’s the regulation of them. Effectively, as Nassim Taleb has said, it’s the domestication of your urges and impulses and knee-jerk reactions.

It’s OK to be surprised. It’s OK to be scared. It’s OK to be hurt, Seneca said. No amount of philosophy can remove that initial feeling, but what you can work towards is getting to a place where you’re not ruled by these things.

Feeling love? That’s great. Feeling a desire to help others? Or feeling joy? Wonderful. And contrary to belief, there’s nothing in the Stoic texts about crushing those very human feelings. But feeling rage or bitterness? Seneca has a whole book about the dangers of that.

We’re putting in our work on the destructive emotions because we know they not only do us no good, but make us and the world worse. As Ruth Bader Ginsburg once explained,

My mother’s advice was, don’t lose time on useless emotions like anger, resentment, remorse, envy. Those, she said, will just sap time; they don’t get you where you want to be. One way I coped with times I was angry: I would sit down and practice the piano. I wasn’t very good at it, but it did distract me from whatever useless emotion I was feeling at the moment. Later, I did the same with the cello. I would be absorbed in the music, and the useless emotion faded away.

A Stoic isn’t an emotionless robot. They’re also not a body at the whim of every feeling originating from the heart and brain. We are in control. Our ruling reason makes the decisions...The Daily Stoic

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LORDMOGY
18:06 Jan 27 2021

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The keenest minds are the ones that have been whetted by practical experience.

Theoretical knowledge without practical experience might be compared to a large mass of undirected energy. Until it is focused, it is difficult to direct the energy to a useful end. Practical experience is the lens through which the energy of knowledge may be focused and directed toward activities that will provide the greatest benefit. When you learn new concepts or have an idea that has not yet been tested, make it a practice to think through its application carefully before implementation. When you have considered the possibilities, and it still seems to be a good idea — get into action. The only way to get practical experience is to get to work executing your idea...Napoleon Hill Thought for the Day