This Is How a Wise Man Responds to Triggers | Focus On the Present Moment

“There’s a story in the Talmud about a man betting his friend four hundred zuzim that he couldn’t provoke the famous rabbi Hillel into anger. The friend accepted the wager and settled on an ingenious and failproof strategy for pissing someone off: Asking really, really dumb questions.”Ryan discusses the practice and humility that it takes to control your temper, and reads this week’s meditation from The Daily Stoic Journal, on today’s Daily Stoic Podcast. This episode is brought to you by Athletic Greens. 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 and receive 5 free travel packs with your first purchase.***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/dailystoicSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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

• 0:05Ryan Holiday?

  Bienvenidos al Daily Stoic Podcast. Cada día, te traemos una meditación inspirada por los antiguos estoicos, ilustrada con historias de la historia, eventos actuales y literatura para ayudarte a ser mejor en lo que haces. Y al principio de la semana, intentamos hacer un profundizado, estableciendo una especie de intención estoica para la semana, algo para meditar, algo para pensar, algo para dejarlo contigo, para journalizar sobre lo que estés haciendo. Así que vamos a entrar.

• 0:34Ryan Holiday?

  Así es como un hombre sabio responde a los activos. Hay una historia en el Talmud sobre un hombre que apostó a su amigo que no podía provocar al famoso rabbi Hillel en irse de enojo. El amigo aceptó el premio y se comprometió a una estrategia ingeniosa y fiable para molestar a alguien. Haga preguntas realmente, realmente dudas. Hillel estaba lavando su cabello cuando el hombre llegó y preguntando qué podía hacer por él. Hillel fue golpeado con la primera pregunta. ¿Por qué los ojos de algún grupo extranjero se han vuelto oscuros? "Mi hijo, has hecho una gran pregunta", respondió Hillel. "Es porque viven en lugares suaves". El hombre dejó, esperó una hora y regresó con otra pregunta. "¿Por qué los cabezas de los babylonés están redondas?"

• 1:18Ryan Holiday?

  Se fue y regresó una vez más. "¿Por qué los pies de los africanos están largos?" Hillel respondió a cada pregunta como si fuera la primera. Una y otra vez, el hombre regresó, cada pregunta más pointless y más extraño que la última. Pero Hillel solo se sentó y dijo: "Haga todas las preguntas que tengas que hacer. ¿Eres el Hillel que se llama Nasi de Israel?", dijo el hombre finalmente. "Si es tú, no habrá muchos como tú en Israel". Y luego explicó que la paciencia de Hillel le costó el dinero del apostar. "Ten cuidado con tus ánimos", avertió Hillel. "Es valioso que pierdas dinero y luego más dinero, pero Hillel no se volverá enojado", dijo. Hillel creía en lo que creían los estoicos, que perder el tempero de uno era una vía y que otras personas no nos pueden hacer ira. "Elige molestar".

• 2:03Ryan Holiday?

  Hillel sabía que había personas obnoxious en el mundo y que dejarlos llegar a nosotros no solía resolver nada. La única respuesta correcta fue Patience, good humor, and good faith. If someone asked you to write your name, Marcus Aurelius said, would you clench your teeth and spit out the letters one by one? If he lost his temper, would you lose yours as well? Or would you just spell out the individual letters without getting stirred up or meeting anger with anger? That's what Hillel did well. He answered every question, even though they were dumb, and he didn't let the situation trigger him or upset him. He tamed his temper, just as you can, with practice, with humility, with graciousness. Focus on the present moment. Marcus Aurelius ruled at a particularly turbulent time.

• 2:48Ryan Holiday?

  Wars erupted on multiple fronts, terrible plagues ravaged Rome. His rule was certainly one of constant, unrelenting pressure, but he never let it overwhelm him. From the Stoics and from the example of his adopted father, the Emperor Antoninus Pius, Marcus found a coping strategy in always sticking close to the present moment and the duties at hand. When our own stress boils over, we can remember his practices and exercises to stick with what is in front of us, not everything that it might mean. At every moment, keep a sturdy mind on the task at hand. As a Roman and as a human being, stick, doing it with strict and simple dignity, affection, freedom, and justice, giving yourself a break from all other considerations.

• 3:31Ryan Holiday?

  You can do this if you approach each task as if it is your last, giving up every distraction, emotional subversion of reason, and all drama, vanity, and complaint over your fair share. You can see how a mastery over a few things makes it possible to live an abundant and devout life. That's Marcus Aurelius in Meditations. Were you to live 3,000 years or even a countless multiple of that, keep in mind that no one ever loses a life other than the one they are living, and no one ever lives a life other than the one they are losing. The longest and the shortest life then amount to the same, for the present moment lasts for all and is all anyone possesses. No one can possess either the past or the future, for how can someone be deprived of what is not theirs? And that's Marcus Aurelius's Meditations again. And then this is one of my favorite quotes from Marcus.

• 4:16Ryan Holiday?

  He says, "Don't let your reflection of the whole sweep of life crush you. Don't fill your mind with all the bad things that might still happen. Stay focused on the present situation and ask yourself why it is so unbearable and can't be survived."

• 4:31Ryan Holiday?

  You know, that's pretty good advice for 2020. You know, the people who, when is this going to be over? What's going to happen next? I'm scared. What's the news? Those are the people that had trouble making it, right? But those of us who sort of locked in and just, what do we have to do today? That's where we made progress. That's how we endured and survived. I remember I was sitting on the porch with Richard Overton, who died, you know, almost two years ago now. And he was at that time, one of the oldest men in the world. There's like 112. I remember asking, I said, Richard, how do you do it? You go day by day? And he says, ah, no, man. He says, day by night. You know, for him, if he survived the night, that was a successful day.

• 5:13Ryan Holiday?

  And, you know, it was, it was touch and go. There's a, there's a great, it's a great poem that says, I'm forgetting who it's by. Oh, Dylan Thomas, he says, you know, every night it's touch and go. Look, the, the future is uncertain. That's by definition, the future is unknown. It, it unfolds before us. And, and because of all the directions it could go, some of them are inevitably not what we want. And they're scary and intimidated and worrisome. And, and yeah, Seneca talks about premeditatio malorum, thinking of the evils in advance. I think he, he means that specifically and generally, but, but that's about being prepared for what might happen. Once you've done that, saying you gotta zoom in and focus on what's in front of you. That's today, right?

• 5:58Ryan Holiday?

  You know, 2020, as far as what happened in 2020, I mean, there have been decades where fewer things happened, right? Or centuries in some cases, it feels like. But, you know, the way you get through that is you wake up and you do what you gotta do. I mean, I think kids have helped me with this, where it's like, look, all right, got them up, gotta do the morning routine. And I'm gonna go to work, I'm gonna do what I have to do, then I come home, then we're gonna play. Then it's dinner, you know, then it's the after dinner chores and then it's starting the bedtime routine and then you get them to bed and then, you know, everything that happens from there, if you survived, is a bonus. And so I think just that routine is helpful for focusing on the present moment. But I think Marcus's point of concentrating on the task before you like a Roman is just,

• 6:43Ryan Holiday?

  you know, it's beautifully said. And if we could do that today, who knows what's, what was in the news yesterday? You know, what the speculation about what's going to happen next is, nobody knows. Nobody knows, not even me. And, and you know, as I'm, as I'm recording this a few, you know, weeks in advance, I know even less, but I'm not worried about it. Marcus Reus has another great quote, he goes, "Yeah, you're worried about the future." He says, "But you'll meet the future with the same weapons that you have now. So let's focus on what's in front of you right now. Let's use those weapons where they're most effective. Let's have the most impact where we can right now. Let's tackle this problem. Let's not work on this problem with our eye towards the next problem and the next problem and the next problem and then what's going to happen when that next one doesn't work and blah, blah, blah, blah."

• 7:27Ryan Holiday?

  You know, it's so easy to start spiraling and, and it doesn't help, doesn't make you happier, it doesn't make things better. So let's zoom in and, and look, do the Stoics sometimes talk about zooming way out and seeing the big picture? Yes, but right now we're talking about zooming in because zooming in is an effective tool. It's what I want you to be thinking about today. So get out there, get after it, but stay focused. Concentrate like a Roman, keep your mind at the task at hand. Do it with strict and simple dignity, affection, freedom, justice. Give yourself a break from all other considerations. As Marcus says, "Approach this task as if it is your last. Giving up every distraction, emotional subversion of reason. Give up the drama and the vanity, all the complaints.

• 8:10Ryan Holiday?

  Master these few things and that will give you a good life." Talk soon.

• 8:16Ryan Holiday?

  We say here at Daily Stoic, like, "You might not have an anger problem, but anger is a problem for all of us." And the idea of controlling our tempers, not losing our tempers, is a constant theme throughout the Stoic writings. We built this Taming Your Temper Challenge. It's 10 or so days of really great Stoic exercises that will help you from losing your cool, help you tame your temper, conquer your anger. It's really great. I love it. It's something we're really proud of. You can check it out at dailystoic.com/anger. There's great stuff in there. We've heard from so many people who've gotten a bunch out of it. Peter Attia, who I'm a big fan of, shot me a note somewhat recently about how much he enjoyed it. So anyways, check it out, dailystoic.com/temper.

• 9:00Ryan Holiday?

  And remember, if you're a Daily Stoic Life member, you get all the challenges and courses for free. And you can sign up there at dailystoiclife.com.