Do You Have This Too? | Practice Gentleness Instead of Anger

0:05Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we bring you a Stoic inspired meditation designed to help you find strength and insight and wisdom into everyday life. Each one of these episodes is based on the 2 ,000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women to help you learn from them, to follow in their example, and to start your day off with a little dose of courage and discipline and justice and wisdom. For more, visit dailystoic.com.

1:09Tough people could be cut down by disease or events or a tyrant. So yeah, there was a gruffness to the Stoics, a wariness of getting too close or too attached, lest your heart be broken by fortune. But does this mean that the Stoics were unfeeling, utterly disconnected, harsh, and invulnerable? Hardly. In his fascinating biography of Marcus Aurelius, Carried at the Painted Porch, this is by Donald Robertson, Donald takes pains to note a virtue exhibited by Marcus's incredible mother, Lucilla, what he refers to as her natural affection. While the mothers of many emperors before him were ambitious and cruel, Marcus's mother was kind and generous and genuinely loved by her children.

1:57Marcus, Donald writes, came to agree with Fronto, his rhetoric teacher, that generally speaking, those among us who are called patricians are rather deficient in precisely this quality. Both Marcus and Fronto, Donald points out, used the word philostosia, which Paul would use in the Bible when he said that Christians were to be kindly affectionate to one another with brotherly love. The Stoics loved and were loved. They honored their parents. They played with their children. We could use this word to describe Cato's relationship with his brother, who lived very differently than he did, just as it would describe Marcus's relationship with his stepbrother, Lucius Verus, who was also quite different.

2:41The point is that the Stoics were kind. They cared about people, not just the people they were related to, but all humankind. And so must we.

2:58we just took our kids to an outdoor performance the nutcracker they had a snow cone and then uh they went insane in the car ride home and one of the things i try to remind myself when that's happening is that i don't control my kids behavior especially when they're too far gone like that but i do control how i respond right that's stoicism but it's also what dr becky talks about and Dr. Becky is a clinical psychologist and a best-selling author, and she founded Good Inside, which is there to give parents practical, actionable tools for handling those everyday challenges with confidence. My wife introduced me to Dr.

3:35Becky's books. I love them. I've recommended them a million times. I've had her on the podcast. And as it happens, Dr. Becky is hosting two live Q &A events for Good Inside members. I am one of them. She signed me up for it about a year and a half ago. I've loved it ever since. On December 1st, you can join Dr. Becky for her How Not to Raise Assholes event, which is about avoiding entitlement and raising kind, empathetic kids. And on December 15th, she's hosting her How Not to Lose It Over the Holidays event, which I'm sure we could all use. As I said, I'm a big fan of Dr. Becky. She's been a great influence for me as a parent and just as a human being.

4:16And Daily Stoic listeners can join for 15 % off with code STOIC15. You just got to head over to goodinside.com to catch the events. Look, when you're hiring, you don't want just anyone. You need the right person with the right background who can move your business forward. And when I need candidates who match what we're looking for at Daily Stoic for any of my businesses, we trust Indeed sponsored jobs, because when you're hiring, Indeed is all you need. You can give your job the best chance to be seen with Indeed's sponsored jobs. They can help you stand out and hire quality candidates who can drive the results you need.

4:57And according to Indeed, data-sponsored jobs posted directly on Indeed are 90 % more likely to report a higher than non-sponsored jobs because you reach a bigger pool of quality candidates. And you should join the 1.6 million companies that sponsor their jobs with Indeed. People are finding quality hires on Indeed right now. In the minute we've been talking, companies like yours made 27 hires on Indeed. Spend more time interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Less stress, less time, more results now with Indeed Sponsored Jobs. And listeners of this show will get a$75 sponsored job credit to help you get your job, the premium status it deserves at Indeed.com slash Daily Stoic.

5:39Just go to Indeed.com slash Daily Stoic right now to support the show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com slash daily stoic terms and conditions apply. If you're hiring, do it the right way with Indeed.

5:55Practice gentleness instead of anger. It's easy to imagine Marcus Aurelius losing his temper. His responsibilities were vast and his job required him to work with many frustrating, difficult people. As such, he had an acute sense of the problem of anger, knowing just how counterproductive it can be and how miserable it can make its users. He often repeated a simple exercise designed to preserve goodwill for others by simply replacing anger with gentleness. We can't allow ourselves to desert our goodwill, and we must remind ourselves that no one makes mistakes willingly. Each time you feel anger this week, remember Marcus, see how you might replace it with gentleness and write some examples down.

6:38This is from this week's entry in the Daily Stoic Journal, 366 days of writing on reflection in the art of living. I think I'm on my fourth or my fifth way through the book. Every day I do the little prompt and we have some quotes here from Marcus. As you move forward along the path of reason, people will stand in your way. They will never be able to keep you from doing what's So don't let them knock out your goodwill. Keep a steady watch on both fronts, not only for well-based judgments and actions, but also for gentleness with those who would obstruct our path or create difficulties. For getting angry is a weakness, just as much as abandoning the task or surrendering to panic.

7:19That's Marcus Aurelius' Meditations 11.9. Then in Meditations 763, he quotes Plato. As Plato said, every soul is deprived of truth against its will. The same holds true for justice, self-control, and goodwill to others, every similar virtue. It's essential to constantly keep this in your mind, for it will make you more gentle for all. And finally, Meditations 11.18, he says, keep this thought handy when you feel a fit of rage coming on. it's not manly to be enraged rather gentleness and civility are more human and therefore manlier a real man doesn't give way to anger or discontent such a person has strength courage and endurance so let's put aside these sort of gender preconceptions because the stoics are obviously from a long long time ago but i think he's saying it's not impressive to lose your temper to be aggressive to be mean to be domineering to destroy or dunk or own on someone And he's saying that the most impressive thing is to keep under the body, as the Bible says, to keep in self-control, to not lose your temper.

8:26Because to lose your temper is almost invariably to make the situation worse. Not only is it impotent and pointless and never solves the problem, but it usually makes things worse. That's another thing Marcus says. You know, he says how much worse the consequences of anger are than the things that caused it. And I've said this before, but like, I've never lost my temper. and then felt so glad that I did that. Actually, just yesterday, I was going back and forth with this person that we hired to do something, a very expensive person. And they'd been like jerking us around for months. And I finally laid out in very clear, simple language, this is what I want.

9:05This is what has to happen. Stop wasting our time. And then three seconds later, they responded like, well, actually, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Let's get on the phone and discuss. And I've said this before, but I hate getting on the phone, especially with things that don't need to be gotten on the phone about. You know, there's part of me that wanted to write this really angry email. And instead, instead of doing that, instead of calling this person and yelling at them, I called someone I work with and I said, look, I'm calling you instead of yelling at this person. Here's where I am. Here's what I want.

9:36It's obvious that I'm upset. This person knows I'm upset. Why don't you call them and just work out a solution so we never have to talk about this again? Right. Just make this go away. Solve it. I don't need to get the last word here. I just want this to go away. And that's how I try to solve things that are upsetting to me. And I try to have some self-awareness of like, I know what I'm going to do is this. And then what they're going to do is this. And then I'm going to blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then I will be unhappy. And this person probably won't feel any of it because if they were aware of what's happening, we wouldn't be in this mess to begin with.

10:13So that's how I try to think about it. You want to catch yourself before you go through it. You want to use it as an opportunity for the next level. I'm not quite there, as Marcus is saying. Try to respond with gentleness. Where is this person coming from? And that's actually something that I talked about with my partner. We were like, there's got to be something going on with this person because it doesn't make any sense. This is ridiculous. and I suspect that is maybe they're going through a divorce. Maybe their kid is sick. Maybe they, their business is falling apart. Just, you don't know what people are going through.

10:44So to scream at them and yell at them, not only is it probably not going to solve anything, but they're probably overwhelmed already. And that's why you're in this mess. So take a minute. Remember, it's more impressive to be controlled. You don't have to get the last words. You don't have to get angry. Solve the problem. Move on. Practice gentleness instead of anger.

11:08Hey, it's Ryan. Thank you for listening to the Daily Stoic podcast. I just wanted to say we so appreciate it. We love serving you. It's amazing to us that over 30 million people have downloaded these episodes in the couple of years we've been doing it. It's an honor. Please spread the word, tell people about it. And this isn't to sell anything. I just wanted to say thank you.

11:46Look, ads are annoying. They are to be avoided, if at all possible. I understand as a content creator, why they need to exist. That's why I don't begrudge them when they appear on the shows that I listen to. But again, as a person who has to pay a podcast producer and has to pay for equipment and for the studio and the building that the studio is in, it's a lot to keep something like The Daily Stoic going. So if you want to support a show but not listen to ads, well, We have partnered with Supercast to bring you a ad-free version of Daily Stoic. We're calling it Daily Stoic Premium. And with Premium, you can listen to every episode of the Daily Stoic podcast completely ad-free.

12:34No interruptions, just the ideas, just the messages, just the conversations you came here for. And you can also get early access to episodes before they're available to the public. And we're going to have a bunch of exclusive bonus content and extended interviews in there. just for Daily Stoic Premium members as well. If you want to remove distractions, go deeper into stoicism and support the work we do here. Well, it takes less than a minute to sign up for Daily Stoic Premium, and we are offering a limited time discount of 20 % off your first year. Just go to dailystoic.com slash premium to sign up right now or click the link in the show descriptions to make those ads go away.