The Stoic Insult Roadmap: The Emotional Self-Defence Guide

Welcome to my session on the Stoic approach to navigating insults. In a world where words wield power and social dynamics can often feel like a minefield, understanding how to gracefully handle insults is invaluable. Drawing upon the wisdom of ancient Stoic philosophers, this talk will not only delve into the nature of insults but also offer practical strategies to respond with resilience and equanimity. As you immerse yourself in this session, you'll be equipped with tools to transform potential emotional turmoil into moments of introspection and growth. Perfect for those seeking to fortify their emotional well-being, this talk is a bridge between ancient wisdom and modern challenges, ensuring that you emerge more centered and empowered.

Transcript

So today we're going to be talking about insults,

And so let's begin this with an open question.

When was the last time you experienced an insult?

And maybe we might want to define what an insult is.

So there are different types of insults.

So an insult can be very obvious and direct,

Like you are,

Insert insult.

An insult could be a slight,

So,

You know,

Like a ruffling of the nose or not complimenting you when you've made an effort for something.

An insult could be ignoring you,

Blanking you,

You know,

That's a sign of disrespect.

You could call that a form of an insult.

In fact,

Bullying is often the most hurtful when we get the silent treatment,

You know,

That can be miserable social isolation.

That's essentially people saying,

Like,

You have so little value,

You don't even enter into our perception.

You know,

We can't even detect you because you have that little amount of value.

There are lots of different ways that you can be insulted,

Could be snubbed for a job promotion as well.

You know,

There are lots of different ways.

When was the last time you were insulted?

You might be wondering,

Why did the ancient Stoics put so much of an emphasis on how we can learn to overcome insults,

Right?

Because they were very wise individuals,

And you'd think that they would care more about,

You know,

How do we navigate death and fame and,

You know,

What should we do in life to make the most out of it?

But the Stoics talked a lot about insults,

Like,

How do we deal with difficult social situations?

And you have to ask,

Well,

Why would they care so much?

And the answer is,

Because getting insulted hurts so much and threatens our social status so much that people have literally become clinically depressed over certain types of social insults.

People have even taken their own lives,

You know.

Getting insulted or getting bullied really matters,

Because our life,

Our survival depends on it.

Not so much anymore,

But we've evolved from hunter-gatherers,

Right?

So 100,

000 years ago,

We were hunter-gatherers.

We lived in tribes of about 150 to 200 people.

And if you were exiled from the tribe,

Then you would face certain death,

Right?

Because you'd have to survive in the wilderness on your own.

But let's say that you weren't exiled.

Let's just say that you were ridiculed and your status was kind of mocked,

And you were put at the bottom of the social hierarchy in that tribe.

What kind of food would you have had?

What kind of relationships?

Your actual survival and likelihood of reproduction would have heavily depended on how well you could have gained social status in the tribe.

And so we evolved to be very good at getting social status,

Right?

Receiving compliments,

Receiving validation from people,

And feeling a strong distaste towards people attacking us and getting insulted.

It sounds kind of crazy now,

You know,

When you see people who have road rage and they get into fights over small things that happen on the road.

If you were to go back a thousand years ago,

In certain cultures,

A slight to one's social reputation could have resulted in a duel to the death.

That's how important your pride might have been in certain cultures.

You know,

And there were historical examples of people having duels over insults,

Small insults,

Because they got into this headspace where if you attack my social status and I don't do anything about it and people see that,

That shows weakness and that takes away all of the perks of having high social status in this tribe,

In this environment.

If you look at,

You know,

Our evolutionary past,

The more you would have cared about social status,

The more likelihood you would have had to survive and to reproduce.

If you didn't care about it,

Then you might've been at the bottom of the hierarchy of your tribe and then you might not have eaten,

You might not have got access to mates.

So we've been hardwired through hundreds of thousands of years of evolution to deeply care about our place in the tribe that we're in.

And that's why insults can really hurt,

Even though they appear to be just words.

A lot of times we get insulted when we're younger.

School is a place where I think pretty much everyone has had their fair share of pain and social attack.

I certainly did.

And if you think back to your school years or your teenage years,

Obviously you were establishing your identity at that point,

Going through a lot of changes.

You potentially were a bit more vulnerable and also kind of competitive as well with other people.

Did you receive any bad insults when you were younger?

And when you recall them now,

Do they still carry a sting or do you feel like you've overcome it?

You can look back at those times and,

You know,

Have complete acceptance for it.

A lot of us actually carry around this trauma in our system that when we think back to those school days,

It can reactivate it and it can be painful.

So insults,

Not only are they intense,

They can also last a long time.

So there's a lot to it.

I have some strategies for dealing with insults in real time,

Right?

So what do you do when someone actually attacks you in some way?

But before I get into that,

I'd like us to look at the Stoic view of insults from a meta perspective.

I call this a meta frame.

So rather than the strategies we use to deal with insults in the moment,

How can we think about insults more generally?

And I hope that there'll be some ideas in this that will be useful to you over the next few weeks and months.

I'd like to start with a quote by Epictetus.

Epictetus was the writer of the Handbook,

The Stoic Handbook.

He was also the creator of the Discourses of Epictetus,

A big influence on Marcus Aurelius.

And the name Epictetus means acquired.

He was originally a slave,

Had his leg broken by his master,

Eventually became freed and went on to become a legendary philosophy teacher.

And he says,

And this is counterintuitive.

A lot of us might get kind of confronted by this idea.

We can discuss it.

Remember,

It is not enough to be hit or insulted to be harmed.

You must believe that you are being harmed.

If someone succeeds in provoking you,

Realize that your mind is complicit in the provocation,

Which is why it is essential that we not respond impulsively to impressions.

Take a moment before reacting and you will find it easier to maintain control.

So that's an interesting statement that he makes there.

What do you think about that?

Remember,

It is not enough to be hit or insulted to be harmed.

You must believe that you are being harmed.

Do you agree with that or disagree with that?

It doesn't mean that it's easy to not feel harmed.

But the thought experiment I like to give is,

Imagine I introduced you to someone and I explained that they had a particular kind of health issue where when they would give insults,

That actually meant that they really liked you,

Right?

And they couldn't help it.

It was just the way that their mind worked.

And you meet them for the first time and they insult you.

That's not going to land the same way,

Right?

So the context is different.

And because the context is different,

You are not playing as much of a role in the provocation,

Which is huge,

Right?

And that's the starting point of this.

So let's go through some of the frames of how the Stoics saw insults.

So the first one is,

They always looked,

When it came to other people,

To see if they shared the same values as them.

So there are people in your life,

Right?

Like friends,

Colleagues,

Co-workers.

You don't like the same music.

You don't like the same films.

You don't like the same books.

You don't like the same food.

You don't have the same values about what constitutes a good life.

You don't have the same values about what constitutes good parenting,

Good relationships.

Your values are completely different.

And yet they can come along and tell you something about you and it hurts.

Why would it hurt when you have completely different values,

Right?

It doesn't really make sense.

If anything,

It could actually be a good thing that they are insulting you because they love all these things that you don't like and they hate all these things that you love.

So it could actually be the case that them not liking you is actually a good thing.

So the Stoics would not see every comment from every person equally.

They used their values and the values of other people as a compass to see what to pay attention to.

With social media,

This has kind of become lost,

Right?

Now we post something and we pay attention to the number of likes.

You know,

Do I get 50 likes,

100 likes,

20 likes?

That's the thing that counts rather than who is liking what I'm posting.

What values does each individual share?

And it could be the case that if you saw things this way,

That one person could equal 100 likes,

You know,

And 50 people could equal one like because you just don't share the same values as them.

And so you almost don't,

You didn't create the post for them.

You didn't put the picture up for them.

And this can really trip us up.

And so as a starting point,

Now as you go through about life,

If someone slights you,

Insults you,

Ask that question.

What does this person value?

Okay?

And if this person has the same values as you,

Maybe you can actually learn from their insult.

Maybe see it as feedback.

Maybe see them as a mentor.

But if this person has different values from you,

Then it could actually be a good thing that they disagree with something that you're doing.

So the next one is praise neutrality.

So as I said,

We've evolved to become very good at getting validation.

And we've evolved to become very good at building our social status in whatever tribe we find ourselves in.

From a young age,

You see children.

I have a four-year-old doing drawings and saying cute things and riding his bike well.

And it's like,

He's getting very good at getting attention and getting praise,

Which is amazing,

Right?

That's part of healthy development.

But at what point in life do we learn the skill of not needing it?

Which is a skill,

Right?

We can learn the skill of getting praise from people.

But how much time and effort have you spent learning the skill of not needing praise from people?

It's a different skill.

You know,

The skill of being your own witness,

Getting praise from yourself.

When you do something epic,

Being able to compliment yourself and value that above something external or someone external from you.

And the ancient Stoics would say that that's an important life skill,

To learn to not need praise from other people.

So if someone comes and they give you a lovely compliment,

It's okay to let that in and to see where they're coming from and to share in that good feeling.

You know,

There's a strong connection there.

But you almost don't want to become dependent on it where I need this person's compliment for me to feel complete,

For me to feel whole.

You know,

If they didn't compliment me,

I'd feel crushed and broken.

And so Marcus Aurelius talked about this idea of,

You know,

If you have a diamond and you call the diamond a name,

It doesn't stop the diamond from being a diamond.

Whether you praise it or insult it,

It stays the same.

And so the ancient Stoics kind of tried to become like that,

Where whether they get insulted or whether they get praised,

They always went back to this simple fact of like,

I am who I am,

I know who I am.

And while I'll take feedback and I'll take praise,

I don't need that.

Diane says,

This point,

I haven't needed praise for 10 years.

I generally feel if most people compliment me,

Then I'm going the wrong way because I don't want to be heading where the rest of the general population are going.

Yeah,

That's awesome.

Yeah,

So sort of,

I think Oscar Wilde said,

Everything popular is wrong,

Something like that,

Right?

Sort of,

Yeah.

And what you're doing there is you're looking,

You're using the value compass that I've just talked about.

You're looking at like,

What are the general values of people?

Do I share those values?

Should I care about those values?

And ultimately,

The best thing that we can do is we get clear about what we value and live according to those values.

The third frame is contempt for contempt.

So the Stoics would look at the intention behind someone who's giving the insult or the slight.

And they would just ask the simple question,

Is this malicious?

Is this person actually trying to hurt us?

Sometimes people can be not very mindful.

Sometimes we show someone something that we've created and they don't give us much attention or they don't give us the praise that we're looking for.

That's not malicious.

You know,

That's just them being busy or caught up in their own thing or being self-absorbed.

Being malicious is like,

I'm out to get you.

I want to punish you in some way.

I want to hurt you.

I want to see you in pain.

And the Stoics had a lot of contempt for people who express contempt.

Not contempt towards them as humans,

But just contempt for that kind of energy,

That kind of pattern.

And so they would almost always disregard that kind of energy.

Like if someone's coming at you with this malicious energy,

If you spot that,

You almost want to just close off immediately,

You know,

And just sort of be like,

Oh,

I don't see anything productive in kind of letting that energy in.

The next one is the idea of endless approval.

So the Stoics had this cool way of thinking about appetite or desire.

So they categorized desires into two main types,

Natural and unnatural.

So a natural desire would be something that can come to an end,

Right?

So if you're hungry and you eat food,

You feel full.

It's at the end.

If you're freezing cold and you get warm,

You sit by a fire,

You get warm again,

Right?

And the cold feeling ends.

It's a natural desire.

There are certain appetites or desires that are unnatural in the sense that there's no actual end to them.

One of those is approval.

So let's just say you build your social status up,

You get lots of friends,

You feel really popular,

You feel really important.

At what point do you hit the limit?

Same as wealth.

You can always become richer and richer and richer and buy more things and have a more lavish lifestyle.

And the Stoics would be very skeptical about pursuing those types of desires.

So instead of chasing this endless approval from other people,

They would say,

Like,

Why don't you just get a few friends or a few relationships that are very important to you and,

You know,

Help those relationships to really flourish and to feel full,

Like turn those unnatural desires into natural ones.

The next frame the Stoics had was frankness of shortcomings.

This was actually a big one for me in developing my own confidence and overcoming my own social anxiety.

When I was more insecure and more anxious,

I would almost like try to avoid looking and thinking about the parts of me that I didn't like.

And,

You know,

The old classic self-help phrase,

Whatever you resist persists.

When you don't look at the dragon,

The dragon grows scarier.

This is like the exposure model in treating anxiety.

When we avoid things,

The things that we avoid become scarier.

And one of the best ways to develop confidence is to just be okay with who you are.

Now,

You might think,

Well,

How do I become okay with who I am?

You have to look at who you are.

You know,

You have to face your shortcomings and look at them,

You know,

With a pinch of salt,

With a bit of laughter.

This is why sometimes having friends that can call you out and point out funny things about you,

That's a really good way to practice this acceptance of your shortcomings.

And something I've noticed in life,

Which has been interesting,

Is some of the most confident people I've ever met are the ones that have friends that tease them the most.

You know,

It's almost like this sense of like,

You can say anything to me and I've become desensitized to it.

You know,

I'm okay with it.

This is not insults,

You know,

This is like the love of a friendship,

You know,

Just like friendly teasing,

Like a back and forth kind of banter.

And that can really help you build up.

So you could write.

.

.

Everyone has things they don't want to look at,

Whether that's your physicality,

Things to do with your body,

Your face,

Things to do with your personality,

Certain things that you kind of,

You don't want to lean into.

And let's just say,

How do you feel looking at yourself on camera or listening to yourself in voice notes?

Does that make you kind of cringe a little bit?

Or are you comfortable with that?

Because I used to not like listening to myself,

Not like watching myself on video.

I would want to look away and it would be very uncomfortable because I just wasn't okay with myself,

Right?

And it's that kind of,

Oh,

I don't want to.

.

.

I don't want to accept that that's how things are.

So yeah,

Becoming more okay with your shortcomings and almost like a comedian who welcomes hackles.

That's like a really healthy perspective.

And as we progress in our ability to deal with insults,

You might actually find that you become almost like an insult connoisseur where someone says something to you that's a bit cutting.

You almost like want to savor it,

Remember it,

Make a note of it and show how well you can deal with it.

This completely takes the power away from the insult.

The Stoics refused to see themselves as victims under any circumstance.

They're just,

That was fundamental to their philosophy.

They were never victims in the deepest sense.

Not that they,

Everyone could theoretically be a victim of a situation,

But as an identity,

They never wanted to identify as being a victim who was unable to problem solve or deal with a particular situation.

And so one of the most empowering aspects of Stoicism is this idea of the psychological immune system.

We get vaccinated to build up our immune system so that when some other kind of virus or infection comes,

We've strengthened up to it.

You can also do the same things psychologically.

And they had a technique called premeditation of adversity and they would almost like vaccinate their mind and practice dealing with setbacks in their own mind.

So when they happened in the real world,

They'd be ready for it.

Here's something that Epictetus said about getting insulted that shows his level of frankness with shortcomings.

If anyone tells you that a certain person speaks ill of you,

Do not make excuses about what is said of you,

But answer,

He was ignorant of my other faults,

Else he would not have mentioned these alone.

So he's saying that if anyone speaks ill of you,

If anyone says anything bad of you,

Instead of fighting or resisting it,

Say,

Well,

You could have said 100 other things.

You clearly don't know me that well.

I have a lot more faults than that.

He's kind of humorously approaching the insult with wit and accepting that he's not a perfect human and he doesn't need to be.

And Epictetus is not doing this to try and make other people laugh and get other people's approval.

He's doing it because he's taking the power back into his own hands,

Right?

Someone's come along and they've attempted to mess with his wellbeing.

He's saying to them,

Not only are you not going to mess with my wellbeing,

I'm actually going to use that attempt to make myself feel better than I was feeling previously.

So I'm going to take that insult and I'm going to use it to actually feel even happier now.

And I'm going to do that by making myself laugh.

The Stoics were not a sort of,

In the dictionary means like stiff upper lip,

Like you do not have any emotion.

People think of Dr.

Spock.

The Stoics,

That's the name of a philosophy,

Right?

Just like there was a school of philosophy called the Cynics.

It's just the name of the school.

There were also a school of philosophy called the Skeptics,

Different from the dictionary definition.

The whole reason why the Stoics were called the Stoics is because they met on the Stoa Poikile.

That's the place.

And it was just a painted porch.

The Stoics understood that a lot of our suffering comes from a poor grasp on reality.

And this is something that cognitive behavioral therapists understand.

In other words,

The way that we think about the world,

If it's distorted,

That can lead to more anxiety and more depression and more suffering.

Classic example would be you're in a social situation and you start thinking other people don't like you.

A CBT,

A cognitive behavioral therapist would say,

Well,

You might be mind reading.

You don't actually know what other people are thinking.

You're jumping to conclusions.

You're catastrophizing.

You're blowing things out of proportion.

You're minimizing the positive.

That person invited you here.

You're minimizing that and saying that they don't like you all of a sudden with very little evidence.

And when you kind of dial in your thoughts and get a better grasp of reality,

What you'll find is that suddenly your anxiety starts to go and suddenly your depression starts to go.

And so they weren't just people that lived in their heads.

They just recognize that the types of thoughts that we have play a major role in the emotions we feel.

And there's actually a psychological difference between feelings and emotions.

So,

And the Stoics knew this too.

This is also something that comes from modern psychology.

A feeling is that knee-jerk reaction,

Right?

So like something loud happens or something scary happens.

You feel a pang of fear.

But that emotion that comes like 10 seconds later,

That's a combination of the feeling plus a perception,

Right?

And the perception comes from the way that you're thinking about it.

You know,

Are you saying that it's the end of the world?

Are you telling yourself that you're going to die?

Are you telling yourself that there's a solution?

Like,

How are you thinking about that?

That mixes in with the feeling and creates the emotion.

The Stoics also had a lot of intuitive exercises as well.

So they had things like the view from above exercise where they would take a step outside of their small selves and like imagine reality from up above.

And that is like,

You essentially take a trip up into the cosmos.

So it's not really in your head.

You feel all those feelings of getting distance from your insecurities and anxieties down inside of yourself.

And you see things from a different perspective.

Also Marcus Aurelius,

He wrote a book called Meditations,

Which was never meant to be published.

If you read that book,

He has constant passages about compassion and kindness and tolerance.

You know,

He's a person that could have anyone exiled,

Killed,

Imprisoned.

But he didn't,

Right?

And he was always trying to rein himself in.

You might have seen popular TV shows about kings and thrones and queens,

Right?

And you can see the power,

Power does the people.

Marcus Aurelius lived with that power,

You know,

For many,

Many years.

And what he was doing was using Stoicism to help himself become more grounded,

Make the right decision.

So yeah,

It sadly gets mischaracterized as this philosophy that is very hyper-rational and had no heart and had no compassion.

But the key doctrine for Stoicism was how can we use reason for the betterment of society?

In other words,

How can we use this thing that human beings have,

The ability to think through problems,

To make everyone flourish and live a better life?

You know,

Not just ourselves.

So those are some frames on Stoicism from up above.

But let's talk about what we can do in the moment.

Okay,

So going back to that quote by Epictetus that I started with.

Remember,

It is not enough to be hit or insulted to be harmed.

You must believe that you are being harmed.

If someone succeeds in provoking you,

You realize that your mind is complicit in the provocation.

A thought experiment that really drives this home,

If you're struggling to grasp that.

If you've ever done any kind of weightlifting before or any kind of exercise,

And you know that you feel that kind of lactic acid build up or the pain in the muscle.

When we're exercising,

We associate that pain with health,

Right?

Like we're actually becoming healthier and stronger and fitter.

And that pain becomes a source of pleasure in a way.

It becomes something that we enjoy.

If you were to wake up in the middle of the night with the identical pain you feel in a weightlifting session,

You would probably have a panic attack,

Right?

You'd like go,

You'd absolutely freak out.

It would be catastrophic,

Unbearable.

Because the context is completely different,

Right?

So like same physical sensation in terms of just the pure feeling,

But because we're thinking about it differently,

We have a different frame around it.

It feels completely different.

And the same is true with an insult,

Right?

Like so someone insults you,

You tell yourself like that is absolutely harmful fact.

It's like,

Don't be so sure about that.

The fact that you are telling yourself it is harmful,

The storyline in your own mind,

You're playing a role in being harmed.

And when we realize this,

We can actually start to take more control and start to cultivate more emotional mastery.

So let's go through some actual strategies and techniques.

So the first one is,

I just call it truth,

Okay?

So someone comes along and they insult you.

The first thing you can ask is,

Is this true?

Is what they're saying true?

And you actually look for the truth.

So I'm going to give you an insult now so you can play around with this.

So I can't see you obviously,

But I'm just going to give you a generic insult.

You don't work hard enough,

Right?

Something like that.

Ask yourself,

Is it true?

And just really try to find the truth in it.

Is it actually true or false?

And if it's true,

Then it's not an insult,

Right?

It's self-evident.

Yeah,

Okay,

I don't work hard enough.

You're right.

I could work harder,

Self-evident.

And if it's not true,

Then it's not true.

So why would you get insulted by it,

Right?

So like you can look for the truth in it.

The next one is ignorance.

So sometimes people can say things that are not nice or attempt to hurt us,

But they lack the important information or the important data about it.

So let's just say that you are practicing a martial art and this is something that I've experienced before,

Right?

So I practice Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and sometimes I encounter people that don't know anything about it.

And they might say things that almost like dismiss it or downgrade it.

In a way,

And rather than feel triggered by that,

I just go,

Well,

Hang on a second.

They probably don't know much about it and that's fine.

Why would they?

Why have they gone out of their way to research this?

And so rather than getting upset about their misunderstanding,

I have two choices.

I can either just be okay with it or I can try to educate them,

Right?

So it's actually a case that they're ignorant rather than a bad person.

So you can always ask that question when someone's coming at you with an insult.

Is it true?

And then you can also ask,

Is this person lacking important information?

You know,

Like if someone could come up to you and say that you're a terrible person,

Right?

Say you lost your temper for 20 seconds,

You're a terrible person.

It's like,

Well,

This person has seen 20 seconds of me.

They haven't seen the last like 20 years where I've been really trying to control my temper and be a good person.

So,

You know,

Should I really let that in?

This person is lacking data.

UB says,

What if you have a personality like me where I tend to absorb or believe what people say about me and tend to agree and blame myself?

I think it comes from having a strong personality and knowing oneself better.

I think any of these ideas that I'm sharing,

What I'm giving you now is knowledge,

But what you really want to cultivate in the end is skill.

So let's just say that I sat down with you and I taught you the basics of wood carving,

Right?

Or something like that,

Or making knives out of steel or painting,

Right?

I taught you the basics and you understood it,

Right?

You got the knowledge.

Does that mean that you can go off and do it tomorrow to a high level?

No,

It means that you have the blueprint to go and practice it and then eventually over time,

You'll develop the skill.

So all skills start as knowledge,

But we want to cultivate the skill.

One of the issues I see a lot in general self-development and spirituality is that people consume a lot of knowledge,

But they don't transmute that and turn that into skill.

And that's why practices like meditation are really good because it's actually skill building.

You're actually practicing,

Training a skill.

We can read books on Buddhism that can be amazing and I love that,

But there's a certain point where it's like,

Why don't you sit down on the meditation cushion and meditate for 30 minutes and do that every day and develop that skill,

Mindfulness and practice it.

So that's what I'd like for you to do.

Take some of the knowledge here and start applying it.

Okay,

So the next one is source.

So if someone insults you,

We can look at,

Well,

Who is insulting me?

Like,

What does this person value?

What kind of person is this?

Should I take this person seriously?

Maybe it's even a good thing that they're insulting me.

The next one is compassion.

And this is a really powerful one.

So a lot of times people who give insults are suffering in some way,

Right?

We all know this.

Think back to the times when you've been the most insecure or miserable or depressed,

You've probably not been the best person to other people.

You know,

When we are suffering,

We tend to lash out,

We're not happy and we're just not good to be around.

Well,

Someone who's in pain is more likely to insult us.

Someone who's insecure and not happy is more likely to insult us.

If they felt very secure and very content and liked who they were,

They'd probably find it easy to have compassion.

You know,

You might think,

Well,

What about psychopaths?

Well,

Psychopaths and sociopaths are essentially like constantly bored,

If you look at the research on that,

And also miserable and can't find anything that really kind of satisfies them.

They can't find fulfillment.

So yeah,

That actually isn't true.

It's not like psychopaths are actually content all the time.

So yeah,

Maybe we should look at the person who's insulting us and show them some compassion.

Maybe they're actually going through a hard time and maybe we can actually,

It takes,

Yeah,

I wouldn't recommend this as like the first move,

But if you feel ready for it,

Maybe you can actually just,

You know,

Ask them how they're doing,

You know,

And find out a bit more about them,

Maybe try and help them,

Providing you don't sacrifice your own wellbeing in the process.

The fifth strategy is the choice to not be insulted.

So this is one of those stoic ideas that is so simple,

Almost so obvious that we would dismiss it,

Right?

Maybe you came here and you're like,

Show me the really fancy insult tactic that can help me never feel pain when I get insulted again.

Well,

What if I told you that one of the things you could do is just decide to not be harmed,

To not be hurt by it?

So what does this look like?

The next time someone comes to you with an insult,

You just say to yourself,

This is none of my concern.

I will not let this mess with my wellbeing.

And then you just change the channel in your mind and you move on.

I'd really recommend giving that a go.

It sounds so obvious and so simple,

But you can actually do that.

I've done it.

I've been practicing that a few times.

If someone comes to me with like a negative comment or like a malicious kind of piece of feedback,

And I understand that this comment has the potential to hurt me or mess with me,

I will actually just say,

Stop.

I'm going to delete that from my kind of perception.

And I will go through a process of like,

Delete.

And that's it,

I'll move on.

Like as if it didn't exist.

Rachel,

I work with a psychopath who torments me daily.

I couldn't bear to ask her how she's doing.

Absolutely,

Yeah.

So a psychopath is what I would consider to be a dangerous personality.

So in my course,

I differentiate between three types of relationships or people.

So a code red is what I would consider to be a toxic person.

A code orange would be a difficult person or a troubled relationship.

And a code yellow would be a misaligned relationship where you just don't quite click.

A truly toxic individual,

Someone with a legitimate personality disorder,

That type of individual,

You kind of want to stay away from,

Right?

Like they have the serious potential to damage you,

To hurt you properly,

To ruin your life,

To cause massive chaos and destruction for you.

So if you're entangled with someone like that,

I would take a slightly different approach than just like someone like randomly insulting you or someone who's just a difficult individual who's insulting you.

Some individuals can be just super dangerous.

And you should kind of treat them as the psychological version of a lion.

And be very cautious around them.

Lance,

That's hard though,

Because it can linger with you after you ignore it.

It can,

Yeah,

It absolutely can.

So I would say practice it and see if you can truly overcome it.

And if that doesn't work for you,

Then don't use that method.

I suppose it depends on the severity of the insult as well.

But as I said,

This is all about skill building.

So if you've tried doing that once and it's lingered,

It's like,

Well,

You know,

Did you develop skill in that,

Right?

You know,

Like,

Have you tried,

Like maybe try doing it 10 times and then you kind of,

Your physiology,

Your nervous system will kind of get used to that.

Maybe you can practice mindfulness and develop your own way of doing it.

But yeah,

I really want to emphasis this idea of repetition and skill building with these techniques.

Yubi says,

I've also noticed that when I replay the insult in my mind or to another person,

I get more and more angry,

Upset.

Yes,

Absolutely.

Anger is a big topic for Stoics.

So this is something that I've understood from Sam Harris.

So neuroscientist,

Philosopher,

Meditation teacher.

He says that the half-life,

And the Stoics would agree,

For any emotion is actually just seconds.

But we tend to keep that emotion alive for sometimes minutes or hours or even days or even weeks by the replaying of it or the kind of seeking the few.

And we've all felt like this.

You know,

When you get angry,

You tend to want to,

You tend to have this gravity where you want to almost become more angry,

Right?

You want to kind of replay that in your mind.

I remember during COVID times,

I went to the supermarket and someone was rude to me who worked there and they told me to go in this other aisle and I couldn't do this,

So I could do that.

And I felt like I was kind of being moved around like cattle or something like that.

You know,

I kind of,

I just felt like very disrespected by this person.

And I could feel like immediately the storylines kicking in and how,

You know,

Thoughts of what I wanted to say and revenge,

You know,

Just like,

You know,

What would be the perfect comeback?

And I just felt like outrage and I just wanted to replay it.

I didn't actually want to not feel angry.

I actually wanted to feel even more angry,

Right?

Because anger,

Like all emotions,

Does have some positive benefits to it.

You know,

Anger is something that could be useful if a boundary is crossed,

You know,

It kind of activates us,

It makes us confident,

It makes us speak up.

But then I just realized that it just wasn't worth it.

And I could see that my wellbeing was being affected by this.

And I just decided right then and there that I just wasn't going to be affected by it anymore.

And I just got in my car and I just thought,

Well,

What am I going to do today?

That's going to be nice.

And,

You know,

I tried to actually like show some compassion towards that woman,

Try and see where she's coming from and just sort of,

You know,

Use different ways of thinking to kind of almost like feel a sense of like love towards that person.

You know what I mean?

Like,

You know,

Maybe that's how she's,

That's just her personality.

You know,

It's not necessarily her fault.

Maybe that's how the people that she was around treated her like that.

And that's just her patterns and ways of communicating.

So we can always find that frame that helps us to not feel that insult.

But we have to sometimes be creative.

And,

You know,

If I could choose to either be angry and loop stories in my mind or actually feel compassion and have a nice evening,

I would choose the nice evening.

But sometimes you need to stop and have a little bit of mindfulness and choose love.

Having a four-year-old,

You know,

Like on an almost daily basis,

There's tantrums and power battles.

And the four-step process that I use for dealing with these types of,

You know,

High tension situations is,

You know,

Step one,

Breathe.

Like stop,

Breathe.

Like stop whatever you're doing and just like,

Just stop.

Like you don't need to do anything.

Just take a second and just reset.

And then the next one is choose love,

Right?

So like find a frame that fills you with some sort of love.

Because ultimately it is,

You do love this person.

You know,

If someone that you love has triggered you,

Find a way to get back to love.

Then look at your thoughts.

And sometimes a maxim can be useful.

The Stoics are also big fans of maxims.

And so the maxim that I bring to mind is,

He needs my love most when he deserves it the least.

So that's the frame,

Right?

So whenever I feel like he doesn't deserve love,

That's actually when he does deserve it the most.

And then it's just a case of reconnecting.

And you can do that with grownups too.

So I see some really good comments coming in.

So the next one and the final one is appreciation.

And this is,

You can always find a way to become appreciative no matter what is happening.

Friedrich Nietzsche had this concept called amor fati,

Which means love of fate.

And let's just say we're all living this life now.

We can go through the rest of our lives lamenting over things that we didn't get and the situation that we're in and the person that we are.

We can do that.

And then we just go through life and then we act that way and then we die.

Nietzsche believed that the formula for greatness in a human being is to love everything about your life exactly as it is right now.

It doesn't mean that you don't want to choose different paths forward or change certain things,

But you just develop this sensation of,

I choose this.

I choose this life.

I choose where I am.

Love of fate,

Yeah,

Amor fati.

And it's ultimately a choice.

It's a scary choice.

Can you do it?

Can you do it?

But to him,

That was the formula for greatness.

And what that taught me is that you can become appreciative for anything.

You know,

Any feeling that you have,

Any difficult situation that you have,

You can find ways to use that as a springboard to more gratitude,

Okay?

So if you get insulted by someone,

If you experience a social slight,

One of the ways that I am appreciative of that is that I would like to bit by bit overcome insecurities.

So my thinking is that if I can handle this emotionally,

If I can work with this,

That's actually in the end gonna make me stronger.

So I can find something to be appreciative about that.

So there's a lot of different techniques,

But the one thing that I love the most,

The one technique that I love the most,

I call it the EEL method.

And this combines a lot of the frames and ideas.

And the method is embrace,

Exaggerate,

And laugh.

That's the kind of,

The one that I'd have you practice with first.

So the next time you get insulted,

Fully embrace the insult.

Like let it in.

Don't fight it.

Don't resist it.

Don't get defensive.

Don't argue.

Then exaggerate it for your own benefit.

Exaggerate it to make it funny and bizarre and surreal.

And then genuinely laugh.

Like find a way to generate positive emotions from within to make yourself laugh.

Let's go back to that epic Titus quote.

He is talking about the EEL method there.

If anyone tells you that a certain person speaks ill of you,

Do not make excuses about what is said of you,

Right?

So don't make excuses about what is said of you.

So he's saying embrace it.

But answer,

He was ignorant of my other faults,

Else he would not have mentioned those alone.

Exaggerate.

Say like there's actually more going on here.

And then find a way to genuinely laugh.

I do this a lot.

Like if someone,

I mentioned the example in my most recent course.

If someone said to me that my stoic podcasts are so bad that it makes them laugh,

Something like that,

Right?

They're so awful,

I just listen to them and laugh.

Like,

Okay,

Embrace it.

Like,

Ha,

Okay,

Whoa,

Wow.

Like that's interesting.

I embrace it.

Exaggerate it.

Like,

Okay,

My podcasts,

My stoic podcasts are so funny because I'm actually trying to get them to rank in the comedy section because I've always wanted to be a comedian,

Right?

Exaggerate it.

And then just like,

Lighthearted chuckle,

Dismiss,

Okay?

And when you do this,

A few things happen.

First of all,

You're actually stopping the other person from having the satisfaction of being mean because you're actually saying like,

You're not mean right now because you just made me laugh.

You generate positive emotions from within because you see it as an opportunity to self amuse,

To amuse yourself.

You practice the ability to work with your shortcomings and not take yourself too seriously.

So when you become skilled,

And again,

That word skill,

When you become skilled at using the EEL method,

You actually become skilled at embracing your shortcomings.

Someone insults you,

Exaggerate it.

Make it even funnier.

Make it even more absurd.

And then finally,

You become more skilled at generating positive emotions from within,

Which is a skill.

It's an amazing skill to have.

Can you sit there right now in a quiet room on your own and make yourself feel good and make yourself laugh,

Make yourself chuckle,

And make yourself feel awe or gratitude?

You know,

Can you use your mind in that way?

That's actually a very great skill to have,

But it's not something that everyone can do first try.

It takes practice.

And we call this self amusement.

Yubi says,

I loved what you just said just now.

I feel so bad is because I take it personally.

Maybe it's best to let go of ego and think it didn't affect me.

Yeah,

So things always hurt more when you take them personally,

That's for sure.

In cognitive behavioral therapy,

One of the distortions is personalization,

Right?

So you just,

You make it about you more,

Right?

Like if people said the things they say to you to someone else,

You know,

You could respond to it and go,

That was a nice thing to say,

But you wouldn't let it in as this terrible thing that happens.

And that's actually a technique that the Stokes used.

Whenever something bad happens,

They would imagine the same thing happening to a friend.

All right,

So let's just say that my car gets stolen,

Right?

Like you imagine your friend's car getting stolen.

It's not good,

Right?

It's not a good thing.

What would you say to that friend to console them,

To help them?

Could you speak like that to yourself?

Like,

That's a good idea,

You know?

But instead what we might do is go like,

Why does this always happen to me?

I'll never get a new car.

I can't afford this.

I don't know what I'm going to do,

Right?

You start spinning these stories in your head.

That just doesn't help.

Does it make the other person angrier if they are serious when you laugh?

That's a really good question.

Okay,

So my answer to this question is a bit advanced because I'm very kind of well-studied in social dynamics and these types of things.

Like I've gone out when I was overcoming my social anxiety and tested a lot of these ideas in different social situations,

Traveled around and met a lot of people.

And I've been insulted many times and I've worked with this in life situations.

And human beings have this thing called backwards rationalization,

Where we will often act a certain way.

Depending on the outcome,

We will look back and rationalize what happened.

If you're having an interaction with someone and you say something to them and they start laughing,

Right?

Like you make them laugh,

You will backwards rationalize that you were funny.

Even if in the moment the experiencing self was trying to be mean,

If they start laughing,

You'll backwards rationalize that you were being funny.

So it's actually less likely that they'll even believe that they were trying to insult you in the first place.

You're actually gonna be nudging them to backwards rationalize that they weren't actually mean because nobody really wants to see themselves as mean.

You know what I mean?

One of the things the best actors say whenever they play someone who's truly evil is that when they get into that character,

They don't think of themselves as evil.

The most evil people in history didn't think of themselves as evil,

Right?

They thought that they had certain values that they wanted to express.

So if you genuinely laugh when somebody is trying to be mean,

You're almost giving them this little nudge of like,

You wouldn't be a mean there,

You're just trying to make me laugh.

There may be exceptions to the rule and maybe the other person will get angry,

Right?

I can't speak for every social situation,

I guess it depends.

But my view on,

If you're talking about like if someone's gonna be confrontational with you,

If someone's being very confrontational with me,

I try to be non-reactive.

So I'm neither,

I'm not emotional in either direction.

So I'm not going to be submissive and back down,

But I'm also not gonna be like aggressive and confrontational.

I'm just gonna be like steady and just relaxed,

Like just try to be like in the middle.

And you're essentially like not putting any the kind of survival mode energy,

Fight or flight into the mix.

So they don't take it on.

Yeah,

Non-reactive.

Like being out and stuff,

I've been pushed by people.

I've just turned to them and just,

Like confident,

Just like maybe just look at them in a non-aggressive way and just say like,

Please don't push me.

You know,

Something like that.

But not trying to look for a fight or not kind of backing down and being afraid,

But just sort of steady.

Ubi says,

My eight-year-old son definitely gets angry when I laugh.

When he says,

You're the meanest mom.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I can relate to that.

Very good advice.

I need to regulate my emotions and be non-reactive.

Yeah,

It's difficult.

It is difficult to be non-reactive.

And that's one of the things that I do is I try to focus on preparation.

You know,

The prevention is better than cure.

And that's what they say.

And stoicism works really well as a preventative medicine.

So that would include starting the day with a bit of journaling,

Starting the day with a bit of stoic meditation or whatever type of meditation you do.

Try to get the right thoughts in your mind.

Let's just say that I'm,

The school holidays are coming up soon.

And I know that I'm going to be doing,

You know,

With my son for 12 hours.

And it's going to be a lot of fun,

Right?

It's going to be,

We're going to go to the park.

We're going to go to soft play.

We're going to do lots of really fun things.

But I'm also aware that there's going to be power battles and challenges and things that he's not going to like.

And things that he's going to ask for that I won't be able to give,

Right?

There's all of that coming.

And if I start the day thinking,

Right,

I know that's probably going to come.

And when it does come,

Here's how I'm going to think about it.

Here's what I'm going to do.

You're like preparing your mind for it.

You're not thinking negatively,

Right?

You're not like manifesting anything negatively.

You're just going,

These are the facts of the situation.

Knowing this in advance,

How do I want to respond to that?

And it sounds so simple.

But if you do that,

You'll be able to deal with things much better than if they catch you off guard or by surprise.

Same as if you've ever been driving and someone cuts you off and it comes as a shock,

Right?

Maybe you get triggered by it.

Well,

Imagine if that morning you thought to yourself,

I could get cut off today.

Things like that happen on the road.

And if it does happen,

I'm just going to accept it and go on my way.

Suddenly the same thing happens and you've already thought about it and you're not so ruffled.

So yeah,

Psychological forethought or premeditation of adversity,

As the Stoics called it,

Was super useful.

Reviews

This was very helpful, thanks! Yesterday someone called me forgetful behind my back, this helped me convert the experience into a more resilience promoting paradigm. Thank you!

Loved this!

I wish I knew at least some of these methods since I was a teenager...or even 10 years ago...but I will try to apply as much as I can from now on. Thank you.

Some valuable advice that I must apply in my life. Thank you.

Thank you. Lots to learn and practice from life.

Very helpful. There was a lot to take in. I will be listening to this again. .