so obviously a lot has changed over the last 2,000 years one thing that hasn't changed since the time of Zeno or senica or epicus or Marcus realas is people as human nature there were annoying people then there are annoying people now and that's what we're going to talk about in today's episode stoic strategies for dealing with people particularly difficult frustrating obnoxious and annoying people some psychopath near where I live decided that my road was a good place for them to dump two dead dogs and two dead goats maybe they couldn't afford to dump it maybe
they were doing something highly illegal I don't have time to think about it that's one of the the things in meditations Markus talks about he says don't delve too much into what lies underneath what are you going to do about it every time I drive by it I'm complicit in it after a certain point by allowing it to continue the other thing I'm going to do is one of the most powerful things in meditations he says the best revenge is to not be like that and then in another passage of meditations Mark 3 says be
careful not to treat human beings the way that inhumanity treats human beings the point is don't be changed by the shittiness the cruelty the arbitrariness the selfishness of other people but I can decide not to be implicated in it I can decide not to be changed by it for the worst but most of all I can choose not to be the kind of person that drives by it over and over and over again and just lets it stand which is what I'm doing today famous quote from Mark cus the impediment action advances action with stands
and the way becomes the way and funny it's actually in book five of meditations what Mark really is talking about is people he says in a sense people are our proper occupation our job is to do them good and put up with them but when they obstruct our proper tasks they become irrelevant to us like sun and wind and animals he says our actions may be impeded by them but there can be no impeding our intentions or our dispositions because we can accommodate and adapt the Mind adapts and converts to its own purposes the obstacle
to our acting the impediment to action advances action what stands in the way becomes the way so when he's saying the obstacles the way he's specifically talking about difficult people he's saying that people are an opportunity to practice virtue difficult people most of all what these people are is a chance for you to try to do things differently I think it's a wonderful phrase that people are our proper occupation we are put here for each other we are social Political Animals As the Ancients would say and our job is to figure out how to work
with people to get things out of them to not be corrupted by them to not be broken by them to not let them turn us into or sons of not to let them change us in a negative way but actually when we deal with difficult frustrating or annoying or obnoxious people as Marcus Ru starts book two of meditations lamenting all the things that people are going to do people are there for is to present us opportunities to grow and change and learn and do good for them and the world five rules from the stoics that
will help you handle rude and difficult people in your life first and foremost let's give them the benefit of the doubt Marcus says you have to recognize in the wrongdoer a nature similar to your own they are us we are them two accept that rude people are a part of life they are inescapable wake up in the morning and tell yourself I'm going to see rude people I'm going to see idiots I'm going to see selfish people it's a fact of life you can't go around being surprised when you see something you knew you were
going to see three the best revenge to the stoics is living well Mark Celia says the way you get even is by not being like that for try to be indifferent we want to live a good life Marcus aelius says and then be indifferent to what makes no difference if other people suck if other people get away with being awful is that going to change us is that going to make us want to be different no it doesn't matter five we want to zoom way way way out when you see things from a distance out
of an airplane window it becomes so much smaller you don't take these people so seriously and then you move on and you focus on what's up to you people suck it's just a fact act and one of the fascinating things about markus's meditations is how often he returns to this very theme he opens the book with a catalog of the kind of people you're going to meet in the day frustrating people jealous people stupid people dishonest people uh aggressive people it's just a fact even his famous passage about how the obstacle is the way the
impediment to action advances action you know what he's talking about he's talking about difficult people he's not saying you write them off he's not saying you cut them out he's not saying you give up on Humanity he's saying saying that difficult people are an opportunity to be kind to be patient to be good to get the most out of them the obstacle is the way even is about this very idea difficult people exist and we have to put up with them and figure out a way to work with them and we have to rise to
the occasion of the people that we interact with Marcus aurelus was a guy who met his fair share of jerks but he said you know what you're supposed to do when you meet a jerk you say to yourself is a world without without shamelessness without jerks possible he says no Then this is one of those people they are playing that role and when you can start to see people even the frustrating annoying obnoxious people that you meet in your life as playing a role assigned to them a role that someone has to do that there
there is no version of the Earth where there are not annoying obnoxious awful people right then you can accept them you can tolerate them you can also understand right that they are in a minority was inevitable that eventually you would bump up against one of these people and now you have and it's no more and no less than that thank you to betterhelp for sponsoring this video a longtime supporter of the daily stoic and I think what they do is important in relation to stoicism cuz there's this image this stereotype of the invulnerable stoic the
person who never needs help who never asks for help this is something the stoics themselves very explicitly push back on in meditations Markus serus talks about how we're like soldiers storming a wall we have to ask an a comrade for help he says so what if you need help if you want to talk to someone so what in fact I think it's a positive good I think it's something you should do better help is the world's largest therapy service and it's totally online I do my therapy online for that reason it's hard enough to find
time to spend an hour with someone talking about your stuff to add a drive and traffic and getting there early and getting back it's just a giant pain it's better to do it remotely let better help connect you with a therapist right now all from the comfort of your own home visit betterhelp.com / daily sto right now or choose daily sto from the dropdown to get a special discount when you start right now Marcus aurelius's reminder is a life-changing one he says you don't need to have an opinion about this he says you always have
the power of having no opinion if it's pointless gossip if it's trivia if it's something that doesn't concern you if it's something you have zero control or influence over just let it be don't have an opinion you don't have to say it's positive or negative epic tieta says it's not things that up set us it's our opinions about those things it's our judgment about those things so we have the power to not think about it to tune it out to focus on what really matters to try to put our energy and Our intention on where
we can make a difference on where we do have control and if other people want to be concerned with them if other people want to be riled up or have opinions about them if it's their job to do it leave it to them meanwhile you let it float on by like the clouds and you stick with what's up to you in book 11 of meditations Marcus talks about something that must have been very common for him which is that people didn't like him people cursed him they criticized him they questioned his Integrity his commitment all
these things so in book 11:13 he says someone despises me that's their problem mine he says not to do or say anything despicable he says someone hates me their problem he says mine and this is the prescription of sto he says mine is to be patient and cheerful with everyone including them ready to show them their mistake not spitefully or to show off my own self-control but in an honest upright way that's what we should be like inside he says and never let the gods catch us feeling anger or resentment I just think that's a
beautiful kind of Jiu-Jitsu of it is like look if someone doesn't like you that's their problem that's something they're carrying around it doesn't affect you if you didn't know about it you wouldn't think about it at all and the important thing is you don't let it change you you don't let it affect you don't let it make you like them you just lock on to what you have to do and you try to be patient and kind you try to think better and do better for other people than in fact they might ever even think
of doing for you if you do anything that matters people will have really strong opinions about you that's just like a fact of life if you don't like that don't do anything and we can imagine that people had strong opinions about Marcus reles and senica and epicus anyone that's ever put themselves out there in the realm of ideas or in the in the arena of life people have criticized you have to be able to tune that out Mark says we love ourselves more than than other people yet for some reason we care about their opinions
more than their own I love I'll get criticized for my books the person be like oh he did X Y and Z as a criticism but it's like that's exactly what I was trying to do and you realize oh not only is this person's opinion like not worth listening to if you heard it properly you'd see that they were actually complimenting you so you you have to you have to be able to to tune out what other people say and do you have to focus on what you do that's what the Stokes say to develop
kind of an inner scorecard where you understand what you were trying to do how you judge or measure your success and it can't have anything to do with critics with doubters with haters with your parents with your spouse it it has to be based on your own understanding of what you're trying to do of who you're trying to be as a person that's what matters and that's what you measure Yourself by one of the things we have to strive for as stoics is to have better boundaries sto talk about being self-contained about not being rattled
by what's happening outside of managing your own crap of controlling the inner Citadel your own soul not vomiting your stuff onto other people that's part of it but also not allowing other people to vomit all over you their problems their issues their their lack of self-control the things they want from you you have to sort of keep up some defenses you also have to be strong enough confident enough self-controlled enough polite enough to say I don't really want to do that I'm not comfortable with that I don't like that I'm not okay with that here's
what I am willing to do instead to me boundar is really about being a responsible mature communicative adult who sets The Rules of Engagement for your own life for your interactions with other people and if you can't do that as they say a country Without Borders is not a country a person without boundaries isn't a [Music] person Marcus aelius reminds us to meditate often on the interconnectedness of everything in the world he talks about at night when you see the stars he says imagine yourself running alongside them imagine yourself up there whenever I watch a
sunset whenever I people watch whenever I look at some beautiful piece of scenery I I try to think about Humanity as one giant whole I try to think about all the generations that have ever lived all the ones that will ever come and I try to remind myself that we're all connected we're all part of this we're all one enormous organism as the St try to remind us what's bad for that organism is bad for us we're all connected we're all part of this we all share this now try to never forget that I hope
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