The Daily Stoic - How To Adjust To Difficult People | Becoming An Expert In What Matters

Episode Date: April 14, 2025

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For more visit dailystoic.com. How to adjust to difficult people. It would be nice if it weren't this way, if they weren't rude, if they didn't make things complicated, if they didn't gossip and spread rumors behind our backs. But as we said recently, a world without such people is impossible. And it's impossible for those people to be anything different. So does that mean you just have to accept

and put up with abuse? A stoic is just supposed to be a doormat? No, not at all. In meditations, my favorite translation being the Haze one, which I'll link to, Marcus Aurelius likens these difficult people to cheaters in the ring, to boxers who bite and scratch. He talks about how in response we ought to keep our guard up. We have to be careful not to give them opportunities to catch us by surprise or unprotected. And elsewhere, he speaks of avoiding false friends.

His point is that although we can't make selfish or obnoxious people not exist, we can limit our interactions with them. We can choose not to set ourselves up to be hurt or disappointed. When people show us who they are, we ought to believe them. They are the way they are. They have to be that way.

We don't have to offer them soft targets. We should not expect figs in winter, the stoic said. To that we can add that we should not be surprised when someone does exactly what they always do. In fact, expecting them to be any different would make us the impossible one. Becoming an expert in what matters. This is today's entry in the daily stoic April 14th. Believe me, Seneca says in On the Shortness of Life, it's better to produce the balance sheet of your own life than that of the grain market. The things that people manage to become experts in,

fantasy sports, celebrity trivia, derivatives and commodities markets, 13th century hygiene habits of the clergy. We can get very good at what we're paid to do or adapt at a hobby we wish we could be paid to do. And yet our own lives, habits, and tendencies might be a complete mystery to us. Seneca was writing this important reminder to his father-in-law who as it happened was for a time in charge of Rome's granary. But then his position was revoked for political purposes. Who really cares, Seneca was saying. Now you can focus that energy on your inner life.

At the end of your time on this planet, what expertise is going to be more valuable? Your understanding of matters of living and dying or your knowledge of the 87 bears? What will help your children more, your insights into happiness and meaning or that you followed breaking political news every day for 30 years? What will help your children more, your insights into happiness and meaning, or that you followed breaking political news every day for 30 years? I've said

this before, but obviously being an informed citizen in a democracy is really important. But people seem to think that being an informed citizen means watching a lot of MSNBC or Fox News or spending a lot of time on Twitter. But what you see with these folks is they know a lot of trivia, but they fundamentally don't understand human nature. They fundamentally don't understand right or wrong or virtue or the things that actually matter in life. Heraclitus said something like this.

He says, you know, these people study all these books for all these years, and they fail to realize that day and night are one. What I take from that is he's saying is that they're missing the big picture, they're missing the eternal deep truths of life in exchange for the trivia. You know, they run a great business, they understand these events in fiction or art or sports or whatever it is, but they've fundamentally not come to grasp the truths of existence.

And I think even what I love about Stoicism is that Stoicism isn't big, arcane abstract questions, but practical ones. It's about understanding the balance sheet of one's life, as Seneca was saying. It's about understanding their self, understanding their emotions, understanding people. I think what Seneca is saying is that we often understand everything but ourselves. We ask all the little questions instead of the couple big questions,

like why am I here? What's important to me? What's right? What's wrong? And that's such a shame. to me what's right, what's wrong. And that's such a shame. Philosophy is supposed to be practical. Philosophy is supposed to push us to understand ourselves and humans, right? Like the amount of people that focus on this or that and then just fundamentally don't understand how psychology works or fundamentally understand how like the very system of government works, they're just tied up in stuff, right? And they haven't thought about what the thing they're talking about would actually mean. So we talked about this before about how certainty and arrogance is the root of real ignorance.

And I also think it goes for what are you gonna choose to know about trivial ephemeral things things are going to probe the deeper questions. Are you going to probe yourself? You're going to look inward. Marcus really says, throw away your books. You know, he says this in meditations. And I don't think that meant, you know, then go watch the gladiatorial games. I think he meant throw away your books and sit there and think, sit there and get in touch with yourself, sit there and really examine, think about

the things you've already learned. That's what we're talking about. And it's just another sort of deeply powerful question from Seneca as the Stoics tell us always become an expert in the things that matter focus on the things that matter ask the questions that really matter. Lead the trivia and nonsense to everyone else. Hey, it's Ryan. Thank you for listening to the Daily Stoic podcast.

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