The Daily Stoic - Do You Have This Too? | Practice Gentleness Instead of Anger

Episode Date: July 15, 2025

There was gruffness to the Stoics. A wariness of getting too close or too attached, lest your heart be broken by fortune. But does that mean the Stoics were unfeeling?📓 Pick up a signed edition of The Daily Stoic Journal: 366 Days of Writing and Reflection on The Art of Living: https://store.dailystoic.com/📖 Preorder the final book in Ryan Holiday's The Stoic Virtues Series: "Wisdom Takes Work": https://store.dailystoic.com/pages/wisdom-takes-work🎙️ Follow The Daily Stoic Podcast on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoicpodcast🎥 Watch top moments from The Daily Stoic Podcast on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@dailystoicpodcast✉️ 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.

Welcome 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 DailyStstoic.com. Do you have this, too? They were tough.

They knew that life was tough. They knew that a fragile person would not survive. They also knew back in the days of ancient Rome that life was fragile, that even tough people could be cut down by disease or events or a tyrant. So yeah, there was a gruffness to the Stoics, a weariness 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 the book 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. Marcus, 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 Franto, Donald points out, use the word phyllostosia, 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. The point is that the Stokes were kind. They cared about people, not just the people

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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 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 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, 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 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 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.

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, 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. There's part of me that wanted to write this really angry email. And instead of doing that, instead of calling be gotten on the phone about. 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.

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 it. You wanna catch yourself before you go through it. You wanna use it as an opportunity for the next level. I'm not quite there as Marcus is saying, is 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 gotta 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 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 get the last word.

You don't have to get angry. Solve the problem, move on. Practice gentleness instead of anger. that over 30 million people have downloaded these episodes in the couple 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.