Pause and Reflect…Before You Regret | When Someone Is Rude, Respond Like This

We have an impulse. We have a provocation…and before we act, we should consider it. How is this really going to go? 🪙 Carry The Daily Stoic Pause & Reflect Medallion https://store.dailystoic.com/pages/anger-medallion as a reminder to pause. A pause creates space. A pause creates clarity. A pause can change everything. | Grab The Daily Stoic Pause & Reflect Medallion https://store.dailystoic.com/pages/anger-medallion at dailystoic.com/pause http://dailystoic.com/pause 🎟️ DAILY STOIC LIVE https://www.dailystoiclive.com/| Ryan Holiday is coming to a city near you https://www.dailystoiclive.com/! Grab tickets here https://www.dailystoiclive.com/ | https://www.dailystoiclive.com/ 🎙️ AD-FREE https://dailystoic.supercast.com/| Support the podcast and go deeper into Stoicism by subscribing to The Daily Stoic Premium https://dailystoic.supercast.com/ - unlock ad-free listening, early access, and bonus content: https://dailystoic.supercast.com/ https://dailystoic.supercast.com/ ✉️ FREE STOIC WISDOM https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail | Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail See 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.

• 0:00Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help you bring those four key Stoic virtues—courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom—into the real world.

• 0:14Ryan Holiday?

  Pause and reflect before you regret. At the moment, it felt like a good idea. When you were upset, it made sense. While you were anxious, it seemed like it would help. But now, afterwards? Not so much. The flaws are obvious. The consequences are clear. The hangover is real. The stakes no longer seem so high. Pausa et reflecte. You pause and you reflect before you do something you regret. This is the basis of Stoicism. We have an impression. We have an impulse. We have a provocation.

• 0:58Ryan Holiday?

  And before we act, we should consider it. We ask ourselves, how is this really going to go? How is this actually going to play out? What happens after the email is sent? The words have been spoken? Or the justified action is taken? Then what? We weigh not just how we'll feel in the immediate aftermath, but the day after, and the month after, and the year after, and even the rest of our lives. And this is especially important when we are in positions of power or leadership or prominence, because our choices impact others, because our kids are watching, because we cannot afford to be rash, or rude, or reckless. Pause and reflect before you regret.

• 1:43Ryan Holiday?

  And look, this is easy to say and also easy to forget. I carry a physical reminder of it with me for this very reason. Athenodorus told Augustus, the first emperor of Rome, that he needed to count all the letters of the alphabet before he did or said anything out of anger. And that's really great advice. And it's what we have inscribed on the back of our Pause and Reflect medallion. And in the front of the coin, there is a mirror. The idea is to really think about what you look like. What do you look like when you react in this moment? I think it's a great Stoicism reminder, and you can grab that at dailystoic.com/pause. Check it out.

• 2:30Ryan Holiday?

  Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. Obviously, I wrote The Obstacles Away about this idea of how do we turn difficulties to our advantage? But if you notice, if you look at the intro of that book, the quote, right? There's an ellipses in there. I sure took out a piece of it to make it more general than maybe a closer reading I make it seem. So when Marcus Ruse is talking about obstacles and difficulties, do you know what he's talking about? He's talking about rude people. He's talking about difficult people. And that's what I wanted to do a deep dive into in today's episode. It is a constant throughout life.

• 3:12Ryan Holiday?

  Jerks, assholes, rude people, people who don't understand social cues, people who attack you, unfairly criticize you, cause problems for you, people who like chaos, people who are cruel. This is just a fact of existence. And it was true in Marcus's time, and it's true in our time. And in today's episode, we're going to take something that we put together on the Daily Stoic website. We do these sort of deep dive articles. We did one on some Stoic tips for handling rude people, put together by the Daily Stoic team. And then this is narrated by Kat Pechik. If it resonates with you, pass it along to a friend

• 3:56Ryan Holiday?

  or a family member who's got a rude boss in their life, who's dealing with a jerk of a neighbor. It's an opportunity. We don't have to let it get to us. Can't let it change us. Can't let it suck up too much of our mental bandwidth. We just got to stay focused. We just got to do our job. And hopefully, this deep dive will help you deal with some rude people in your life. Enjoy.

• 4:19Speaker 01

  Today, the name Karen has rapidly become the catch-all term for unhinged, incredibly rude people. The person who calls the manager on a waiter for messing up an order. The person who screams at a person in the street for something menial and unimportant. And while this terrible behavior may well be on the rise, documented in its ubiquity through smartphones, reality is that rude people have always been with us. In Lives of the Stoics, we mention the famous Nero, often referred to as the worst of the Roman emperors in antiquity. By the end of Nero's reign, he had ordered the death of his mother, murdered his wife—according to some accounts, his second wife as well—and even one of the Stoic pillars, Seneca.

• 5:03Speaker 01

  Nero was the embodiment of evil. Now, the people we come across on a daily basis may not reach Nero's level of evil, but they are little tyrants themselves, seeking to control the uncontrollable and bend the world to their own suppleistic worldview.

• 5:21Speaker 01

  Is a world without these people possible? Perhaps. Likely? Not in our lifetimes. So the question is, how do we deal with them without compromising our character? Below, we answer that question with five Stoic tips for dealing with the worst kind of people.

• 5:41Speaker 01

  Give people the benefit of the doubt.

• 5:45Speaker 01

  I have seen the beauty of good and the ugliness of evil, and have recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own. Marcus Aurelius.

• 5:56Speaker 01

  Marcus Aurelius, who theoretically had the power to ban rude people from his presence, kicked off each day instead by preparing for them, reminding himself that his fellow humans were often selfish, rude, and annoying. The point was to not let it catch him by surprise, so he would be indignant and shocked by it. But there's another part of the exercise, spending a few seconds trying to understand and sympathize with the people who behave this way. As David Foster Wallace would say in his famous "This is Water" speech, "We want to avoid the immediate and unconscious impulse to take people's rudeness personally. We want to avoid the assumption that they are trying to hurt us, that they mean to act so selfishly."

• 6:40Speaker 01

  Most days, if you're aware enough to give yourself a choice, you can choose to look differently at this fat, dead-eyed, over-made-up lady who just screamed at her kid in the checkout line. Maybe she's not usually like this. Maybe she's been up three straight nights holding the hand of a husband who is dying of bone cancer. Or maybe this very lady is the low-wage clerk at the motor vehicle department, who just yesterday helped your spouse resolve a horrific, infuriating red tape problem through some small act of bureaucratic kindness. Of course, none of this is likely, but it's also not impossible. It just depends what you want to consider. If you're automatically sure that you know what reality is and you are operating on your default setting,

• 7:23Speaker 01

  then you, like me, probably won't consider possibilities that aren't annoying and miserable. But if you really learn how to pay attention, then you will know that there are other options. It will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, hot, slow, consumer hell-type situation is not only meaningful, but sacred, on fire with the same force that made the stars: love, fellowship, the mystical oneness of all things, deep down.

• 7:53Speaker 01

  Think of that when you're stuck in the checkout line today, or when you're caught in traffic, or when someone does something that really pisses you off, that makes you think, what's wrong with this person? You have no idea what their reality is. You have no idea what they've been through. And how much more empathetic and patient might you be if you did? Or better, if you gave them every benefit of the doubt?

• 8:17Speaker 01

  This is the best revenge.

• 8:20Speaker 01

  You don't have to turn this into something. It doesn't have to upset you. Things can't shape our decisions by themselves. Marcus Aurelius.

• 8:32Speaker 01

  We do not want to give you the impression here that a Stoic merely accepts everything in life. The Stoics were not passive weaklings. They just knew how absurd the need to get even is. "Best to take the opposite course," Seneca wrote. Would anyone think it normal to return a kick to a mule or a bite to a dog? When someone hurts us or pisses us off, that's exactly what we do.

• 8:58Speaker 01

  That's why when someone insulted Cato, he pretended not to hear it. When someone said something offensive to Epictetus, he told himself that if he got upset, he was as much to blame as they were. He also joked that if they really knew him, they'd be even more critical. When someone attacked Marcus Aurelius's character, he reminded himself, the best revenge is to not be like that.

• 9:24Speaker 01

  And that's what you must remind yourself also. You don't have to have an opinion. You don't have to turn things into bigger things. You don't have to be like that.

• 9:35Speaker 01

  Step outside of yourself. Think of substance in its entirety, of which you have the smallest of shares, and of time in its entirety, of which a brief and momentary span has been assigned to you, and of the works of destiny, and how very small is your part in them. Marcus Aurelius

• 9:57Speaker 01

  We have all fallen victim to the heat of the moment. Someone cuts us off on the freeway, or speaks to us rudely, or is simply unpleasant to be around. In these moments, we become so irritated and so emotional that it's hard to recognize ourselves in the mirror. We become someone else entirely, consumed with a belief that we've been wronged in some way. In these situations, it's helpful to zoom out, to take the view from above, as Marcus Aurelius wrote.

• 10:27Speaker 01

  The Stoic principle of sympathy is our best friend in dealing with unpleasant people. It's the idea of seeing the bigger picture. In the heat of the moment, when faced with a rude person, there's this compulsion to get even or to put someone in their place. But this isn't us talking, it's our inflated sense of self-importance. And it's not worth damaging our character.

• 10:52Speaker 01

  Strive to be indifferent.

• 10:56Speaker 01

  To live a good life, we have the potential for it, if we learn to be indifferent to what makes no difference. Marcus Aurelius

• 11:05Speaker 01

  Emotions are powerful. There is a reason why most of us tend to give in to them. But the price we pay for stooping down to another person's level is far greater than if we learn to control ourselves. We always talk about control in Stoicism, and it is almost always in relation to controlling ourselves rather than other people.

• 11:28Speaker 01

  In Lives of the Stoics, we told the origin story of Zeno, the founder of the great philosophy we practice today. Zeno began his study of philosophy as a young man, under the famous cynic Cradis. The story goes that after Zeno endured a nearly fatal shipwreck, he wandered through the city of Athens with a great deal of anxiety. He was constantly worried about what others thought of him, and Cradis knew just how to fix that. One day, Cradis asked Zeno to carry a clay pot full of lentil soup through the busy crowds in the Potter's district. Zeno was worried about standing out and tried to conceal the pot underneath his cloak. Cradis took notice and promptly walked up to Zeno, smashed the pot of soup with his

• 12:11Speaker 01

  staff, and washed as it splattered all of Zeno's cloak and undergarments. "Courage, my little Phoenician," said Cradis, "it's only a little soup."

• 12:22Speaker 01

  Seneca would say that it's obviously better to be rich than poor, tall than short, but the Stoic was indifferent when fate actually dealt out its hand on the matter. Because the Stoic was strong enough to make good of whatever is thrown their way. This has to be top of mind whenever we deal with people. Expectations that people will always treat us with respect will inevitably lead to disappointment. Instead, we ought to prepare ourselves for reality. We should choose each day, as Marcus once said, "to be unharmed." So as long as we remain indifferent to what others say, we can't be.

• 13:02Speaker 01

  Accept that rude people are inescapable.

• 13:06Speaker 01

  When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself, "The people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, and surly." Marcus Aurelius

• 13:19Speaker 01

  It's remarkable to think that even as an emperor, Marcus dealt with rude and arrogant people. It illustrates the most important point of all: that rude people have always existed, and they are everywhere.

• 13:35Speaker 01

  So you have to ask yourself, Marcus wrote, "Is a world without shameless, or stupid, or mean, or insensitive people possible? No, of course not." "Then don't ask the impossible," he says. "There have to be shameless people in the world. This is one of them. The same for someone vicious, or untrustworthy, or with any other defect. Remembering that the whole world class has to exist will make you more tolerant of its members."

• 14:04Speaker 01

  The bottom line is, we have to accept that there will always be unpleasant people. We have to take the high road and respond to rudeness with indifference and empathy. How hurt must someone be to inflict rudeness on another? How insecure are they to belittle or insult someone whom they do not know? This is the mindset we must adopt. Anything else, getting even, getting angry, or getting physical, it only makes the world a worse place. As Stoics, we're charged with doing the opposite.

• 14:41Speaker 01

  What it comes down to is remembering that you have a choice. "Every event has two handles," Epictetus said, "one by which it can be carried, and one by which it can't. If your brother does you wrong, don't grab it by his wronging, because this is the handle incapable of lifting it. Instead, use the other, that he is your brother, and that you were raised together, and then you will have a hold of the handle that carries."

• 15:09Speaker 01

  So now you know there are always two handles. Which one will you choose to grab?