The Daily Stoic - How To Live in an Imperfect World | Practice Gentleness Instead of Anger

Episode Date: July 15, 2024

We are in an imperfect world populated with flawed people. We ourselves are flawed. We can’t afford to feel or act superior. We have too much work to do, there is too much good we can do.���We designed The Daily Stoic Leadership Challenge: Ancient Wisdom For Modern Leaders to mirror the kind of education that produced historically great leaders like Marcus Aurelius. Check it out: store.dailystoic.comGet The Daily Stoic Leadership Challenge: Ancient Wisdom For Modern Leaders & all other Daily Stoic courses for FREE when you join Daily Stoic Life | dailystoic.com/life📚 Pick up at copy of All the King's Men: A Pulitzer Prize Winner by Robert Penn Warren at The Painted Porch | https://www.thepaintedporch.com/📓 Grab a signed edition of The Daily Stoic Journal: 366 Days of Writing and Reflection on The Art of Living: https://store.dailystoic.com/🎟 Ryan Holiday is going on tour! Grab tickets at ryanholiday.net/tour✉️ Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Get Stoic inspired books, medallions, and prints to remember these lessons at the Daily Stoic Store: https://store.dailystoic.com/📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to the daily Stoic early and ad free right now. Just join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple podcasts. I've been writing books for a long time now and one of the things I've noticed is how every year, every book that I do, I'm just here in New York putting right thing right now out. What a bigger percentage of my audience is listening to them in audiobooks, specifically on Audible. I've had people had me sign their phones, sign their phone case because they're like I've listened to all your audiobooks here and my sons they love audiobooks we've been doing it in the car to get them off their screens because audible helps your imagination soar. It helps you

read efficiently, find time to read when maybe you can't have a physical book in front of you and then it also lets you discover new kinds of books, re-listen to books you've already read from exciting new narrators. You can explore bestsellers, new releases. My new book is up, plus thousands of included audio books and originals, all with an Audible membership.

You can sign up right now for a free 30-day Audible trial and try your first audio book for free. You'll get right thing right now, totally for free. Visit audible.ca to sign up. Welcome to the Daily Stoic podcast. for free, visit audible you happen to be doing. So let's get into it. How to live in an imperfect world. The world of virtue and rationalities that the Stoics read and wrote about, this was not the world they lived in. They lived, as Cicero said, not in the utopia of Plato's Republic, but in the dregs of

Romulus. That's what Rome was, an imperfect place, a real place with real people with real problems. It would have been easy for the Stoics to become cynical about this. It also would have been easy for them to turn away in disgust, as the Epicureans largely did. It would have been nicer in Epicurus' garden, that's for sure. Much nicer than the grimy streets of Rome or the snake pit of the Imperial Palace. We might have predicted Marcus Aurelius of all people to be like this. Marcus

didn't want to be emperor. He wanted to be a philosopher. So he must have been led by this impulse. He could have been holier than now. In the amazing and must read 1946 novel, All the King's Men, the character Adam Stanton is like this. Because he is a romantic, Jack Burton, the narrator explains, he has a picture of the world in his head, and when the world doesn't conform in respect to the picture, he wants to throw the world away, even if that means throwing out the baby with the bath, which it always does mean. It is remarkable, then, that Marcus Surilius did not do this. In fact, he specifically counseled himself to avoid the disappointment that Cicero had

pointed out. Don't go around expecting Plato's Republic, he said. While Adam Stanton was throwing the baby out with the bath, Marcus Surilius was writing, if the cucumber is bitter, throw it out. If there are brambles in the path, go around. He was saying that as a politician, as a leader, he had to be pragmatic and realistic.

He had to work the situations he was in, make the most of them. And that's what life is all about. That's what leadership demands. We are in an imperfect world populated with flawed people. We ourselves are flawed. We can't afford to feel or act superior. We have too much work to do. There's too much good we can do.

And if we don't do it because we're cynical or because we retreat to more pleasant pastures, who are we seeding the field to? For thousands of years, the Stoics have not only been leaders but the resource for other leaders like George Washington and John Adams and Admiral James Stockdale. That's who they turn to for advice and guidance. Basically, the Stoics show us that leadership

is in a position but a process. And it's that process that we tried to build the ancient wisdom for modern leaders course around the daily Stoic guide to leadership. Becoming a better leader for your team, family, business, platoon, it makes us better, it makes the people around us better. And you can realize your potential as a leader if you sign up right now. I'll link to that in today's show notes. But remember, if you join Daily Stoic Life at DailyStoicLife.com, which is filled with all sorts of leaders, just like yourself, you get this course and all the daily stoic courses for free. I think it's definitely worth it. So check that out.

Practice 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. This is from this week's entry in the Daily Stoic Journal, 366 Days of Writing on Reflection and 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. For instance, tomorrow's prompt is

to what service am I committed? July 17th is where have I abandoned others? Can I mind my own business and not be distracted? This is a great question to meditate on each day and write about. And we have some quotes here from Marcus. As you move forward along the path of reason, people will stand in your way. meditate on each day and write about. 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 sound, so don't let them knock out your goodwill. Keep a steady watch on both friends, 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. That's Marcus Aurelius' Meditations 11.9. Then in Meditations 7.63 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, and every similar virtue. It's essential to constantly keep this in your mind,

for it will make you more gentle for all. Meditations 1118 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 that 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. 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. Because 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.

He says, how much worse the consequences of anger are than the things that caused it. And I've said this before, but I've never lost my temper and then felt so glad that I did it. 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, this 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. And so, you know, there's part of me that wanted to write this really angry email. And 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 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. It'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 gonna do is this, and then what they're gonna do is this, and then I'm gonna blah, 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. So that's how I try to think about 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's 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. Their business is falling apart. Just, you don't know what people are going through. So to scream at them and yell at them, not only is it probably not gonna 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 say it. You don't have to get the last word. You don't have to get angry. Solve the problem. Move on. Practice gentleness instead of anger. I'm heading over to Australia in a couple weeks. I'm going to be in Sydney on July 31st. I'm gonna be in Melbourne on August 1st. Then in November, I'm doing Vancouver and Toronto, London, Dublin, Rotterdam, all awesome cities

I'm really excited to go to. If you wanna come to those talks, they're open to the public and you can grab those tickets at RyanHoliday.net slash tour. If you like The Daily Stoic and thanks for listening, you can listen early and ad free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple podcasts. Prime members can listen ad free on Amazon Music. And before you go, would you tell us about yourself

by filling out a short survey on Wondery.com slash survey. Hi, I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of Wondery's podcast, American Scandal. We bring to life some of the biggest controversies in US history, events that have shaped who we are as a country and continue to define the American experience. We go behind the scenes looking at devastating financial crimes, like the fraud committed at Enron and Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme. American Scandal also tells marquee stories about American politics.

In our latest season, we retrace the greatest corruption scheme in U.S. history as we bring to life the bribes and backroom deals that spawned the Teapot Dome scandal, resulting in the first presidential cabinet member going to prison. Follow American Scandal on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge this season American Scandal Teapot Dome early and ad free right now on Wondery Plus. And after you listen to American Scandal, go deeper and get more to the story with Wondery's other top history podcasts, including American History Tellers, Legacy, and even the Royals.