This is the Part To Love | How a Stoic Deals with Obnoxious People

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.

0:14Ryan Holiday: This is the part to love. The terrible diagnosis, the economic calamity, the trauma you experienced as a young person, the betrayal, the broken heart. Are the Stoics really saying that you should love that? Is that what it means, this idea of amor fati, to love your fate? You have to love that cancer is ravaging your body? You have to love your painful childhood? You have to love that thousands of people just lost their job and you alongside them? No, that's not quite it. Perhaps a true sage could. Perhaps Epictetus could shrug his shoulders and smile through those 30 years of slavery, as Marcus Aurelius apparently did through plagues and floods and funerals?

1:02Ryan Holiday: That's a lot to ask of us mere mortals. The part to love is not the tragedy. The part to love is yourself, yourself in and after the tragedy. Not only are you going to square up and meet this, because what choice do you have, but you're going to become better for it. That's the choice you have, one that not everyone makes. What you are loving is what Admiral James Stockdale said he came to love about his seven and a half years as a prisoner of war in the Hanoi Hilton, the part that he would not, in retrospect, have traded away. His time in bondage offered a chance at greatness, a chance at courage, a chance at justice, a chance at strength, a chance at wisdom.

1:51Ryan Holiday: This thing, whatever you are dealing with is that chance. It's not fair, it's not fun, but it is that chance. And that's what you love. That's what's on the back of the Amor Fati coin that we made now almost 10 years ago, if I'm remembering correctly. And a lot has happened in those 10 years. Not as much as what happened in Marcus Aurelius' reign, and more stuff happened for some of us than others. But the idea was we had to not just bear it, as Nietzsche said, not hide from it, but love it, embrace it. Amor fati is a reminder that those events shaped who we were. They shaped what we've been able to become now.

2:40Ryan Holiday: That's what we don't want to trade away. That's what we want to embrace. And that's the reminder we want to give ourselves now as we're going through stuff here in the present moment. As Mark Sheree says, what you throw on top of the fire becomes fuel for the fire. That's what Amor Fati is about. That's why I have this Amor Fati challenge coin on my desk. I try to spin it around and remind myself when I'm going through stuff. I think you will like it too. Thousands of Stoics all over the world carry one with you and you'd be in good company. I'll link to that in today's show notes.

3:15Ryan Holiday: If you don't know how to deal with people, life is going to eat you alive. People think of philosophy as being these big, abstract, theoretical ideas. But in the ancient world, philosophy was also there to help you deal with other people. This is what we hear the Stoics talking about over and over and over again. How to deal with annoying people, how to deal with obnoxious people, how to deal with people who are cunning and crafty and plotting against us. You're not going to be able to accomplish anything just by yourself in this world. You need other people. You need relationship. You have to collaborate.

3:45Ryan Holiday: You have to accommodate. You're going to have to put up with people that you don't like. You're going to have to get good things out of bad people. I trained for many years under the great Robert Greene, one of the smartest thinkers and strategists about dealing with other people. And that's what we're going to talk about in today's episode. Strategies and tactics for dealing with other people.

4:10Ryan Holiday: This is one of the most famous and misunderstood books of all time. And this is one of the most famous misunderstood passages in it. Marcus Aurelius, the emperor of Rome, writing to himself 2 ,000 years ago, says, When you wake in the morning, tell yourself, The people I will deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, and surly. Now, you think this is stoicism, sort of being pessimistic in advance, managing expectations, being a little bit cynical, but that is actually precisely wrong. Although it is true, we will meet annoying and obnoxious and dishonest and shitty people in the course of the day.

4:43Ryan Holiday: That's not what Marcus Aurelius wanted to remember. He says, they are like this because they can't tell good from evil. But I have seen the beauty of good and the ugliness of evil, and I've recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own. But this is actually the most important. He says, no one can implicate me in ugliness, Nor can I feel angry at my relative or hate him. We were born to work together like feet, hands, and eyes, like two rows of teeth, upper and lower. To obstruct each other is unnatural, he said. To feel anger at someone, to turn your back on him, these are obstructions.

5:17Ryan Holiday: So yes, there will be annoying. There will be obnoxious people. There will be frustrations today. But your job is to work with those people, to manage those frustrations, to not let shitty people turn you into a shitty person, to not let obnoxious people make you obnoxious. Be prepared for it, anticipate it. Don't let it break you. Don't let it ruin you. Don't let it make you bitter or angry or ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, or surly.

5:48Ryan Holiday: Do you think any of this is new? These annoying people, these cruel people, these awful people, the things that are driving you nuts about the world? It has always been like this. Marcus Aurelius' Meditations, a book written almost 2 ,000 years ago. It's the private thoughts of the emperor of Rome, never intended to be published. And what we see in it is how often he is having to deal with annoying people, obnoxious people, dishonest people, demagogues, cheats, frauds, all the things that are happening now he had to deal with. And that's really what stoic philosophy is as a philosophy. It's a philosophy for dealing with a world with those kinds of people in it.

6:25Ryan Holiday: And what Marcus Aurelius decides, what we have to decide, is that these kinds of people, these times that we are in, they are an opportunity. It's an opportunity for us not to be like those people, to not let those people make us like them. And in fact, it is an opportunity for us to be the exception, to be good, to be good to them, to be good to other people, to see everything that's happening as a chance for us to live and act with virtue and excellence and kindness. It's a chance for us to be great. That's, in fact, what he meant when he said the obstacle is the way. When people get in our way, when people are jerks, it's a chance for us to practice all sorts of virtues under pressure, under duress, when we don't like it.

7:03Ryan Holiday: That's what stoicism is as a philosophy. It is a philosophy designed to deal with assholes and jerks and difficult moments in history.

7:15Ryan Holiday: The people you don't like, the people who believe things you don't like, the people that believe things that upset you, you have to remember that they're not wrong on purpose. In meditations, Marx Reelus quotes Plato. Plato said, against their will, their souls are cut off from truth. It might not feel that way. It might feel like they are willfully wrong, but almost certainly they are not. Think about the dumb things that you have believed in the past. Think about the times when you were wrong. Did you think you were wrong at the time? No, you thought you were right. Marx Reelus quotes Plato.

7:44Ryan Holiday: He says, against their will, they are cut off from truth. They're cut off from justice. He said they're cut off from the right path. His famous passage where he laments how obnoxious and annoying people are. He says, why are they like this? He says, because they don't know the difference between doing things the right way and the wrong way. And he says, when you remember this, it makes you more patient with other people. That was what stoicism was designed to help him do. You can't change other people. You can't make them not wrong. You can't make them not annoying. You can work to be more patient and understanding and empathetic to those people.

8:19Ryan Holiday: When you find yourself going through something difficult, when you find yourself across from a difficult person, Epictetus says you want to tell yourself, I've been paired with a strong sparring partner. He says, how else are you going to become Olympic class material if you don't find someone who challenges you, who doesn't test you, who doesn't force you to get better? Mark Surreale's passage about the obstacle is the way, you know what he's talking about when he says the obstacle is the way? Mark Surreale is saying that difficult people are a chance to practice is virtue, forgiveness, patience, creativity, empathy, understanding.

8:49Ryan Holiday: Mark's through this is saying that difficult people are not obstacles, they are opportunity. Difficult situations, difficult people, the Stoics want to remind us, are a chance for us to get better, to do better, to become better. So generally, I get to wear whatever I want, which is usually, if you see me, it's running shorts and a heavy metal t-shirt. But, you know, sometimes we have a fancy guest on I want to dress up or I'm giving a talk and I've got to dress up or I'm going to be on TV and I've got to dress up. And lately I've been wearing a lot of quince. I've loved their sweaters. What I try to do is find staples, like things that I really like and I'll get multiple colors or, you know, I'll just go through that brand or that company's catalog and get a bunch of stuff I like.

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11:30Ryan Holiday: is there such a thing as a world without annoying people without frustrating people without difficult people without dishonest people without shameless people no there isn't they're going to be a percentage of the whole not a large percentage but a percentage of the whole and so one of the things that stoics teach us is that when we come across someone who is any one of those things instead of being surprised instead of being upset we should go yeah this makes sense a certain percentage of people are going to be those people. And here I am bumping into one of those people. It makes sense. It was unavoidable.

12:03Ryan Holiday: It was statistically inevitable. Marx really says that when you remind yourself of this, it helps calm you down, gives you perspective, and it should make you grateful that you are not one of those people, that they actually are a minority, that they don't make up the majority of the whole. So when we deal with difficult people, we go, look, is a world without these people possible? No, it's not. It's not surprising that we met them. And by the way, they're doing their job. That's what they were assigned. That's who they are. That's the part of the whole, the complicated whole cloth fabric of humanity.

12:36Ryan Holiday: That's what they are doing. They are being them. And you're lucky you get to be you, which is not one of those people. You don't have to be like them, but you do have to accept that they exist.

12:52Ryan Holiday: It's not things that upset us Epictetus says it's our opinion about things. We decide that something's rude, we decide something's unfair, we decide something sucks. The event is objective, the story we tell ourselves about it is not. We don't control what happens but we control how we respond to what happens. This is what the Stoics mean when they say the obstacle is the way. We can decide to use this, we can decide to grow from this, we can decide to be made better for this. If you want to feel good, you got to do good. Good fortune is not something that the world bestows on you. There is no such thing as good luck except the good luck that you make for yourself, the good fortune you make for yourself by doing good.

13:32Ryan Holiday: That's why we're here, the Stoics say, for each other.

13:39Ryan Holiday: They didn't have to make that comment. They didn't have to be a jerk. They didn't have to point that out, that they could have done nothing, but they didn't. And so now we have a choice. How are we going to respond? We don't control other people. That's the idea in stoicism, but we control how we respond. Epictetus said that when you find yourself offended, when you get upset, realize that you are complicit in taking the offense. Mark Stroud said, remember, you don't have to turn this into something. Life is hard. People aren't perfect. They don't understand how things are going to be felt or perceived by other people, they're going to keep doing this for as long as they exist.

14:16Ryan Holiday: But we have to decide, are we going to go around being offended all the time, being hurt all the time, feeling slighted all the time, getting worked up all the time? We have control over that. And we can decide not to waste our time getting offended, getting upset. We can focus on what we control, which is who we are in response to the things people do and say to us.

14:42Ryan Holiday: There's only one rule in life, the novelist Kurt Vonnegut said. He said, God damn it, you got to be kind. Now, people maybe don't think of Stoicism as a philosophy built around kindness, but it was. Every person you meet, Seneca said, is an opportunity for kindness. Mark Shrelos talked about being strict with yourself, yes, but tolerant with others. And some of the most beautiful stories in Stoicism are Mark Shrelos' kindness is understanding his compassion for his brother, who is very different than him. Cato, the same thing. Yes, Stoicism is this stern philosophy. Yes, it demands a lot from ourselves.

15:13Ryan Holiday: One of the things it demands is that we be kind and gracious and forgiving of others. That's the one thing the world needs, Seneca reminds us. Because we're all flawed, broken people, we have to have grace and kindness for each other.

15:32Ryan Holiday: You can hold your breath until you're blue in the face, but they're going to keep on doing it. That's what people do. People do what they're going to do. And people have done this for as long as there have been people. This is what the Stoics remind us. We don't control other people. We control how we respond to other people. You know, that's what Mark Sreelis' famous quote about how the obstacle is the way is actually about. It's not about career obstacles. It's not about health obstacles. It's not about global events. It's how do we respond to jerks? How do we respond to frustrating people? How do we respond to people when they don't do what we want?

16:08Ryan Holiday: And the first thing is we got to remind ourselves that they do what they want. They're not here to do what we want. We have to focus on the thing that is in our control, which is who we are, which is what we do, which is our attitude, our emotions, our opinions, how we treat other people. Marcus Aurelius is the most powerful man in the world. But you know what that famous quote about the impediment to action, advancing action, what stands in the way becomes the way. The quote that has come to mean how obstacles are opportunities. Do you know what kind of obstacles he's talking about? He's talking about annoying people.

16:39Ryan Holiday: He's talking about difficult people. He's talking about that person that's frustrating you right now. And the reason they're frustrating you is because you think there is a way they're supposed to be acting. You think there's something they're supposed to be doing. People do what they do. Our job is to focus on us, to focus on how we respond, to focus on doing what's right, to focus on what we're supposed to be doing and to stop trying to control other people.

17:05Ryan Holiday: So the famous passage from Marcus Aurelius where he's talking about how the obstacle is the way. Do you know what kind of obstacles he's talking about? He's not talking about natural disasters. He's not talking about losing your arm. He's not talking about any of that. He's talking about people. He's talking about assholes. He's talking about jerks. He's saying that people are our proper occupation. So they actually can't impede us. They can't get in our way. They can't actually cause us trouble because all the things they do are opportunities for us, opportunities for us to practice virtue, courage, and discipline, and justice, and wisdom.

17:39Ryan Holiday: We can have intentions, and people can cause problems and disruptions. They can get in the way of what we are trying to do, but they present us new opportunities to try new things. Let's try to see these frustrating, annoying, obnoxious people in our lives, not as problems or frustrations or even obnoxious at all, but actually as opportunities, opportunities for us to be kind or opportunities for us to be patient, opportunities for us to be creative, opportunities for us to teach and opportunities for us to learn. That's what Mark Sturelius means when he says the obstacle is the way.

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