Sometimes it's righteous. Sometimes it's understandable. Sometimes it's motivating. Sometimes it's a long time coming.
But you know what it always is? It's always ugly—indeed, it is the ugliest of all the emotions, Seneca writes. It distorts. It sullies. It degrades. And unlike the other passions, it comes at the expense not just of ourselves, but others.
There's a great lyric in a Sam Fender song that feels like it could appear in Seneca's famous De Ira essay (our favorite translation here):
That's the thing with anger
It begs to stick around
So it can fleece you of your beauty
And leave you spent with nowt to offer
Makes you hurt the ones who love you
Seneca advises us to look in a mirror when we're angry to see how we've transformed. What we often find is shocking—a face distorted by rage, barely resembling our true selves. This powerful insight is why we designed the front of the Daily Stoic Pause & Reflect Medallion with a mirror finish. It serves as a tool in moments when emotions run high, allowing you to literally see what anger is doing to you before you let it control your actions—and hurt the ones you love most.
Just as easily, we can also see how anger steals our beauty, both inside and out. Like Seneca warned, anger transforms us into something unrecognizable—contorting our faces, tensing our bodies, and hardening our hearts. The person in the mirror during rage isn't our true self, but a distorted version that has been robbed of grace and dignity.
Like our Pause & Reflect Medallion, this course provides practical Stoic techniques to prevent anger from distorting who you truly are. You'll learn to recognize anger's transformative power before it takes hold, preserve your relationships from its poison, and develop the mental clarity to stop its ugly effects before they spread through your life.
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