The Daily Stoic - Do You Want To Be Less Angry?

Episode Date: June 18, 2019

The best way to make sure you are always offended and upset is to be on the lookout for things to be offended by and upset about. The sharper your ears and eyes, the larger your dragnet for information, the more likely you are to find something that pisses you off. And yet this is what most of us do: We have Google Alerts for our names or our businesses. We check our @mentions on Twitter. We ask our friends, “Oh really, what does so-and-so say about me when I’m not around?” We’re like water-diviners with our ability to read tone and body language, able to sense even the slightest sign that we should dig into something. Of course we’re going to be angry! How could we not be?Seneca reminds us: “It is not to your benefit to see and hear everything. Many injuries ought to pass over us; if you ignore them, you get no more injury from them. You want to be less angry? Ask fewer questions.” He would have liked the piece of marriage advice that Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has always held close: "In every good marriage, it helps sometimes to be a little deaf." Because true in marriage, true in life: If you want to have less conflict, ask for it less. Forgive more. Stop trying to listen for things you don’t want to hear. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoke podcast early and add free on Amazon music. Download the app today. Welcome to the Daily Stoke. For each day, we read a short passage designed to help you cultivate the strength, insight, wisdom necessary for living good life. insight, wisdom necessary for living good life. Each one of these passages is based on the 2000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women. For more, you can visit us at dailystowach.com. Do you want to be less angry? Few people have studied the life and writings of Seneca as deeply as James Rom has. Rom is the author of the great biography of Seneca,

dying every day. A translation of Seneca's various thoughts on death, how to die, and his newest work, how to keep your cool, presenting one of Seneca's most timely essays on anger. Each of us should take a minute to think back, even in just the past week, to the times we've been angry or short-tempered and think, has this actually served me well?

The answer is very, very rarely, yes. Anger Asenica says, always makes things worse. He writes, no plague has cost a human race, more dear. But it's a hard emotion to combat. It's natural, often almost instinctual. In our interview with James, we wanted some real practical tips about managing our anger. So we asked him what he thought Sennaka's best piece of advice on the matter was. He said, my own favorite is summed up in the quote, Do you want to be less angry? Be less aware. Anger starts from noticing too many subtleties

of the way others interact with us. In many cases, we do better not to notice the slights and microaggressions that can drive us nuts if we let them. Will oneself to ignore such warnings, a practice many long married couples will instantly recognize. Today, when you feel that anger start to boil up, someone cuts you off in traffic, your computer glitches when you just can't afford it to.

The waitress messes up your order despite very careful instructions. Stop, step back, and ask yourself, what if I didn't pay any attention to that? What if I hadn't noticed? What I still be bothered? What I need to be this angry? It brings up Marcus' great quote, you don't have to turn this into something. It doesn't have to upset you,

because you don't even have to be aware of it. Please check out the Daily Stoke store where we sell products that we ourselves use that are designed to take these stoke lessons to the next level. Just go to DailyStoke.com slash store. Hey, Prime Members, you can listen to the Daily Stoic early and add free on Amazon Music, download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen early and add free with Wondery Plus in Apple podcasts.