Don't Complain, Respond!

“We live in a time when people who hear opinions they dislike think they can demand those opinions be unsaid or never repeated. How dare you criticize _______! Why did you have to go and get all political? You’ve offended me. You’re wrong! Shut up! Unfollow!”Ryan explains how you should respond when faced with differences of opinion.***If you enjoyed this week’s podcast, we’d love for you to leave a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps with our visibility, and the more people listen to the podcast, the more we can invest into it and make it even better. Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: http://DailyStoic.com/signupFollow Daily Stoic:Twitter: https://twitter.com/dailystoicInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoic/Facebook: http://facebook.com/dailystoicYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/dailystoicTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@daily_stoic See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info. 📢 Share | ⚙️ Manage Subscription

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:04Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we bring you a passage of ancient wisdom, designed to help you find strength, insight, and wisdom in everyday life. Each one of these passages is based on the 2,000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women. For more, you can visit us at DailyStoic.com.

• 0:26Ryan Holiday?

  Don't complain, respond. We live in a time when people who hear opinions they dislike think that they can demand those opinions be unsaid or never repeated. How dare you criticize, blank. Why did you have to go and get all political? You've offended me. You're wrong. Shut up. Unfollow, unsubscribe. Almost never do these responses include what people who aren't in the right usually include in their offending opinions, an evidence-based reply, carefully considered facts, an articulate counterargument. Instead, they just want to shut down the conversation altogether.

• 1:08Ryan Holiday?

  They want to bully the other person into conforming with their worldview, as if yelling or being mean is a sufficient proxy for being right. Needless to say, this is not how the Stoic responds to things they dislike or disagree with. Remember, Marcus Aurelius appreciated people with different points of view. He didn't worry about being proven wrong because he thought that changing his mind was a good thing. Epictetus wasn't easily offended either. He knew that it took two to tango, and that it's impossible to be offended without our consent. The Stoics were not bullies, neither were they snowflakes. They trained in rhetoric, they trained in logic from childhood on. When they were challenged or when they disagreed, do you know what they did?

• 1:51Ryan Holiday?

  They responded cleverly, creatively. They responded with kindness and concern, even to people who they believed were totally wrong or even arguing in bad faith, because they knew that truth came from civil discussion. They knew that there was no such thing as keeping politics out of it, because life is politics.

• 2:10Ryan Holiday?

  They certainly didn't so identify with their political party, or their beliefs, or their reputations, that they couldn't handle criticism or feedback, or the prospect of having to change the former in light of the latter, which is what we need to go back to practicing lest we risk watching wisdom and growth and civility cease entirely right before our very eyes. Hey, it's Ryan. Thanks so much for listening. If you could leave a review for the podcast, we'd really appreciate it. The reviews make a difference, and of course, every nice review from a nice person helps balance out the crazy people who get triggered and angry anytime we say something they disagree with. So if you could rate this podcast and leave a review on iTunes, that would mean so much to us, and it would really help the show.

• 2:54Ryan Holiday?

  We appreciate it, and I'll see you next episode.