The Daily Stoic - You Don’t Need To Be So Reachable | Practice Gentleness Instead of Anger

Episode Date: July 19, 2021

“Before telephones, before email, before the constant and instant forms of communication we all take for granted, mail was the lifeline of the world. When a mail ship would pull into port in Seneca’s time, anxious and eager citizens would rush to the shore so that they could tear open the letters that brought news and money and the answers to the questions they had sent.”Ryan explains why Stillness is the key, and reads this week’s meditation from The Daily Stoic Journal, on today’s Daily Stoic Podcast.Athletic Greens is a custom formulation of 75 vitamins, minerals, and other whole-food sourced ingredients that make it easier for you to maintain nutrition in just a single scoop. It tastes great and gets you the nutrients you need, whether you're working on the go, fueling an active lifestyle, or just maintaining your good health. Visit athleticgreens.com/stoic to get a FREE year supply of Liquid Vitamin D + 5 FREE Travel Packs with subscription. Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: http://DailyStoic.com/signupFollow 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.

Hey, prime members. You can listen to the Daily Stoic podcast early and add free on Amazon music download the app today Welcome to the Daily Stoic podcast each day. We bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics Illustrated with stories from history Current events and literature to help you be better at what you do. And at the beginning of the week, we try to do a deeper dive, setting a kind of stoke, intention for the week, something to meditate on, something to think on, something to leave you with, to journal about whatever it is you happen to be doing.

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of Vitamin D plus five free travel packs today. You don't need to be so reachable. Before telephones, before email, before the constant and instant forms of communication we all take for granted, mail was the lifeline of the world. When a mail ship would pull into Port Ensenicus time, ancient and eager citizens would rush to the shore so that they could tear open the letters that brought news and money and the answers to questions they had sent. Senaqa writes with the amusement of this impulse, writing to Lucilius about how he liked to

sit up above the port and watch as people sped with such frantic energy to get information that was already days and weeks late, just a few minutes earlier. I felt great pleasure in my laziness, he said, because although I was soon to receive letters from my friends, he wrote, I was in no hurry to know how my affairs were progressing abroad or what news the letters were bringing. For some time now, I have had no losses nor gains either. Even if I were not an old man, I could not have helped feeling pleasure at this. But as it is, my pleasure was far greater. It's remarkable how well this insight stands up some 2,000 years later. And how much we are still like those people. Talk to someone today about why they sleep with

their phone next to their bed and they'll tell you, well, I don't want to miss a call. But can't you hear it from the next room also? And wouldn't it be better not to be tempted to check your email in the middle of the night? Well, well, well, well, well. And still this is the key. There is a story about Napoleon's habit of actively delaying the opening of his mail. Why would he do such a thing? Because most issues resolve themselves and he wanted to let times sort them out for him. We would do well to emulate him as well as Seneca. There's no need to rush. We don't need to be so reachable. In fact, humans survive for hundreds of thousands of years without DMs or texts or Slack channels, you'll be fine, slow down, let it come to you.

Enjoy this moment, enjoy the stillness, life is too short to rush through. 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 Stoke 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. 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. 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 their path or create difficulties. Forgetting 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 763, 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. Then finally, Meditations 11, 18, 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 like, 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 and very clear simple English.

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, blah, let's get on the phone and discuss. And I've said this before, by hate getting on the phone,

especially with things that don't need to be gotten on the phone about. And so 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 be, 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 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 they're kid is sick. Maybe force, maybe their kid is sick, maybe they're business is falling apart. Just you don't know what people are going through. So to scream it then 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, 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. Thanks so much for listening. If you could leave a review for the podcast, we'd really appreciate it.

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