You Are Responsible For How They Make You Feel | Watch Over Your Perceptions

Welcome to the daily stoic podcast designed to help bring those four key stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world. You are responsible for how they make you feel. It wasn't a nice thing to say. It wasn't a good thing to do. They suck for doing it. Perhaps they're a person to steer clear of, like the metaphorical or perhaps literal boxer that Marcus Aurelius talked about, the one who gouges and bites in the ring. But you know what? It's still your fault if it makes you feel bad, if it provokes an angry response from you in turn. At the core of stoicism is this idea that our emotions are our responsibility. No one can make us frustrated. No one can offend us either, Epictetus said, not without us being complicit in the taking of offense. Our job, as we have said many times here, is to pause and reflect after someone says or does something. It's to ask ourselves who this person we're about to let in our head is, whether we really need to consent to the injury of the second arrow. We can shrug this off. We can move on. We can focus our mind elsewhere. We can decide not to be like them. That's our responsibility. What I try to do when I hear the thing, when I see the thing, when I get the email about the thing is I try to pause and reflect. Right? That's what stoicism is. It's I see this. I have this feeling. Do I trust this feeling? Do I like what this feeling is evoking in me? Is this feeling true? Seneca said we should look in the mirror, see what that expression looks like on us. That's what, obviously, what we built the daily stoic pause and reflect medallion around. It's a little reminder to have in your pocket. If you have a little problem with your temper, which I think we all do, it's just a great reminder. It's got all the letters of the alphabet on the back. The stoics were saying that you wanna count those letters before you react, before you put the blame on the other person for how they made you feel. Just a little moment there to pause and reflect and consider who is responsible for what. I love this thing. I carry it with me always, and, I think you might benefit from doing the same. You can grab that at store.dailystoic.com. I'll link to it in today's show notes. So the performance superhighway of your body are your blood vessels. You have 60,000 miles of blood vessels in your body that deliver oxygen and nutrients to every cell. That's your cardiovascular system. You've got 60,000 miles of blood vessels that deliver oxygen, nutrients to every cell in your body. And this is why elite athletes and longevity experts invest directly in their cardiovascular systems because supporting healthy blood flow is critical for …