You Don’t Need To Be So Reachable | Practice Gentleness Instead of Anger

“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. 📢 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. 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 Stoic 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. So let's get into it.

• 0:34Ryan Holiday?

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• 1:18Ryan Holiday?

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• 1:39Ryan Holiday?

  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 in Seneca's 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. Seneca writes with bemusement 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

• 2:24Ryan Holiday?

  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.

• 3:09Ryan Holiday?

  In stillness 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 time 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.

• 3:53Ryan Holiday?

  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, and 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,

• 4:36Ryan Holiday?

  "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. 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

• 5:20Ryan Holiday?

  or create difficulties. For getting angry is a weakness, just as much as abandoning the task or surrendering to panic." That's Marcus Aurelius's 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.'" And 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."

• 6:04Ryan Holiday?

  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. 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.

• 6:48Ryan Holiday?

  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, you know, 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

• 7:32Ryan Holiday?

  need to be gotten on the phone about. And so I was, you know, there's part of me that wanted to write this really angry email. And instead, 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.

• 8:13Ryan Holiday?

  And I try to have some self-awareness of like, I know what I'm going to do is this. And then what they're going to do is this. And then I'm going to 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 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 is 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 it. Of course, maybe their kid is sick.

• 8:57Ryan Holiday?

  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 going to 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. 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.

• 9:42Ryan Holiday?

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