Pause and Reflect…Before You Regret | When Someone Is Rude, Respond Like This
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What is the core Stoic premise of 'Pause and reflect before you regret'?
Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key Stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world. 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. Posa 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, 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. 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 slash pause. Check it out. 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 ellipsis in there. I sort of took out a piece of it to make it more general than maybe a closer reading might make it seem.
So when Mark Cerullo 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. 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
Why should we consider long-term consequences before reacting in anger?
If it resonates with you, pass it along to a friend 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 it.
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.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What is the core Stoic premise of 'Pause and reflect before you regret'?
0:00–3:54
2
Why should we consider long-term consequences before reacting in anger?
3:54–8:35
3
How did the Pause & Reflect medallion and Athenodorus's advice illustrate this practice?
8:35–12:12
4
Why focus this episode on rude and difficult people as everyday obstacles?
12:12–18:00
Speakers
1 identifiedMore from The Daily Stoic
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