Do You Have This Too? | Practice Gentleness Instead of Anger

There was gruffness to the Stoics. A wariness of getting too close or too attached, lest your heart be broken by fortune. But does that mean the Stoics were unfeeling?📓 Pick up a signed edition of The Daily Stoic Journal: 366 Days of Writing and Reflection on The Art of Living: https://store.dailystoic.com/📖 Preorder the final book in Ryan Holiday's The Stoic Virtues Series: "Wisdom Takes Work": https://store.dailystoic.com/pages/wisdom-takes-work🎙️ Follow The Daily Stoic Podcast on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoicpodcast🎥 Watch top moments from The Daily Stoic Podcast on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@dailystoicpodcast✉️ Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Get Stoic inspired books, medallions, and prints to remember these lessons at the Daily Stoic Store: https://store.dailystoic.com/📱 Follow 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.

• 0:05Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we bring you a Stoic-inspired meditation, designed to help you find strength and insight and wisdom into everyday life. Each one of these episodes is based on the 2,000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women, help you learn from them, to follow in their example, and to start your day off with a little dose of courage and discipline and justice and wisdom. For more, visit DailyStoic.com.

• 0:55Ryan Holiday?

  Do you have this too? They were tough. They knew that life was tough. They knew that a fragile person would not survive. They also knew back in the days of ancient Rome that life was fragile, that even tough people could be cut down by disease, or events, or a tyrant. So yeah, there was a gruffness to the Stoics, a wariness of getting too close or too attached, lest your heart be broken by fortune. But does this mean that the Stoics were unfeeling, utterly disconnected, harsh and invulnerable? Hardly. In his fascinating biography of Marcus Aurelius, Carried at the Painted Porch, this is the book by Donald Robertson, Donald takes pains to note a virtue exhibited

• 1:40Ryan Holiday?

  by Marcus's incredible mother, Lucilla, what he refers to as her natural affection. While the mothers of many emperors before him were ambitious and cruel, Marcus's mother was kind and generous and genuinely loved by her children. Marcus Donald writes, "Came to agree with Fronto," his rhetoric teacher, "that generally speaking, those among us who are called patricians are rather deficient in precisely this quality." Both Marcus and Fronto, Donald points out, use the word philostogia, which Paul would use in the Bible when he said that Christians were to be kindly affectionate to one another with brotherly love. The Stoics loved and were loved.

• 2:25Ryan Holiday?

  They honored their parents. They played with their children. We could use this word to describe Cato's relationship with his brother, who lived very differently than he did, just as it would describe Marcus's relationship with his stepbrother Lucius Verus, who was also quite different. The point is that the Stoics were kind. They cared about people, not just the people they were related to, but all humankind. And so must we.

• 3:03Ryan Holiday?

  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.

• 3:45Ryan Holiday?

  This is from this week's entry in the Daily Stoic Journal, 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, 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..." 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 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.

• 4:30Ryan Holiday?

  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, 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. 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.

• 5:15Ryan Holiday?

  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. 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 it.

• 5:56Ryan Holiday?

  Actually, just yesterday, I was going back and forth with this person that we hired to do something, a very expensive person. And they've 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 need to be gotten on the phone about. 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.

• 6:40Ryan Holiday?

  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 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.

• 7:24Ryan Holiday?

  You want to 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 my partner. We were like, there's gotta 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 their kid is sick. Maybe they, 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 get the last word. You don't have to get angry. Solve the problem. Move on.

• 8:09Ryan Holiday?

  Practice gentleness instead of anger.

• 8:15Ryan Holiday?

  Hey, it's Ryan. Thank you for listening to the Daily Stoic Podcast. I just wanted to say we so appreciate it. We love serving you. It's amazing to us that over 30 million people have downloaded these episodes in the couple of years we've been doing it. It's an honor. Please, spread the word. Tell people about it. And this isn't to sell anything. I just wanted to say thank you.