December 3, 2023 • 27 mins
Ever felt like setbacks are life's way of warning us? Or perhaps you view them as an opportunity to seek help and empathy? Brace yourself for an enlightening conversation as we dissect the world of Stoic Philosophy and its profound impact on our lives. We kick off with an inspiring daily devotion from the book "The Daily Stoic," followed by a deep dive into "The Stoic Challenge," offering strategies to minimize the inevitable setbacks we all face. We underscore the importance of living each day fully and using philosophical tools to improve our lives and prepare for death.
We continue the conversation by examining our reactions to setbacks and their effect on our lives. We ponder on whether setbacks are just life's warnings or opportunities to gain empathy and help. The chilling reality is that our responses to setbacks often determine their impact on us. By developing a strategy to handle setbacks, we can avoid escalating the situation by frustration and anger. We also reflect on a chapter from my book on the significance of managing frustration and dealing with setbacks effectively. And no matter how sensitive we are to setbacks or how long it takes us to recover, we emphasize the importance of maintaining a healthy approach to handling them to ultimately enjoy life. So, buckle up and get ready to change your perspective on life, setbacks, and everything in between. Don't forget to visit the LJ Voice Project website for more awe-inspiring podcast episodes and our blog.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
And welcome back.
I'm your host, lauren Johnson,and we're back here in War of
the Mind, and today we're goingto start off by doing a daily
devotion reading.
It's out of the book of theDaily Stoic.
It's titled Don't Mind Me, I'mOnly Dying Slow.
(00:28):
Let each thing you would do orsay or intend be like that of a
dying person.
Marcus Aurelius, meditations211.
Have you ever heard some askwhat would you do if we found
out tomorrow that you had cancer?
The question is designed tomake you consider how different
(00:52):
life might be if you weresuddenly given just a few months
to live.
There's nothing like a terminalillness to wake people up.
But here's the thing youalready have a terminal
diagnosis we all do.
As the writer Edmund Wilson put,death is one prophecy that
(01:14):
never fails.
Every person with a deathsentence, each second that
passes by, is one you'll neverget back.
Once you realize this, it willbe.
It will have profound impact onwhat you do, say and think.
(01:34):
Don't let any, don't letanother day take away an
ignorance of the reality thatyou're dying in person.
We all are.
Can today be the day we stoppretending otherwise?
That was yesterday's reading, sofor today's reading, it's
(01:56):
called the philosopher as anartisan of life and death.
Philosophy does not claim toget a person any external
possession.
To do so would be on its field,as wood is to carpenter, bronze
to.
The sculptor saw our own livesand the proper material in the
(02:18):
art of living by a pictus.
Philosophy is not some idlepursuit appropriate only for
academics or the rich.
Instead, it is one of the mostessential activities that a
human can engage in.
It is its purpose, as HenryDavid Thoreau said a few
(02:42):
thousand years after your pictus, is to help us solve the
problems of life, not onlytheoretically but practically.
This aligns nicely with theCicero's famous line to
philosophize is to learn how todie.
(03:05):
You're not reading these quotesand doing these thought
exercises for fun.
Though they may be enjoyableand help lighten up, their aim
is to help you sculpt andimprove your life.
And because of all of us haveput have but one life and one
(03:27):
death.
We should read, we should treatthe experience like a sculptor
with his chisels carving untilno paraphrase Michelangelo, we
set free the angel in the marble.
We're trying to do thisdifficult thing living and dying
as well as we can, and to dothat we must remember what we've
(03:54):
learned and the wise wordswe've been given.
I don't know what you all takefrom that, but I'd say so those
are some pretty powerful words.
Like I said, I've been readingsome of them stoic books and
(04:21):
meditations lately and it'samazing, like I said, how stuff
that happened and was said backthousands of years ago are still
applying to today and modernstoics is getting more popular
(04:43):
and popular.
And I do have this one bookI've been reading.
It's called the stoic challengeof a philosopher's guide to
becoming tougher, calmer andmore resilient by William B
Irvine.
And one thing I wanted to hit ontoday is because yesterday we
(05:08):
were talking about a lot of mysetbacks in life and how other
people can go through setbacks,and you know it's all how we all
, how we handle it.
You know this goes into, has awhole chapter on setbacks and
(05:33):
how many setbacks.
Experience depends, as I havesuggested, on how much foresight
you possess.
The days of a thoughtlessperson are likely to be filled
with the obstacles that a failfail to anticipate and, as a
result, he is likely to findlife both frustrating and unfair
(05:57):
.
Were he not so thoughtless, hewould fathom the reason for his
misfortune.
Thoughtful people, by contrast,minimize the number of setbacks
(06:20):
they experience by learning howthe world works and then using
this knowledge to plan theiractivities in the day.
No matter how carefully theyplan for their future, though,
life occasionally will deal downa setback.
(06:42):
The computer of their, thecomputer of their fully fueled
and recently serviced hybridvehicle developed a glitch,
thereby bringing it to a haltduring rush hour on the freeway.
(07:03):
If you're reading these words,you're doubtless a thoughtful
individual who spends time andenergy thinking ahead in order
to prevent foreseeable setbacks.
But have you also spent timeand energy developing a strategy
(07:26):
for minimizing the emotionalharm done to you by foreseeable
setbacks?
And that was one thing I didn'thit on yesterday is the ability
we're not gonna we're not gonnatotally avoid setbacks in life,
(07:48):
and that's one thing I forgotto hit on yesterday is the
setbacks are still gonna comeand you might not be the be the
most resilient person, butlearning how to become resilient
(08:09):
allows you to minimize thesetbacks.
If you understand what I'msaying and I think that's huge,
because if, if you, for example,you know this this next week I
have to have my shoulderreplaced.
(08:30):
Now there's three billionsetbacks.
I'm playing through my mind.
One the surgery is a setback.
But then there's three otherthings that are playing in my
mind that could be a setback orpossibly happen and that's where
(08:50):
I'm planning ahead to minimizethe setback in case it were to
happen.
So I mean, I'm already doing itand not even really realizing
I'm doing it and that's.
You know, what I'm trying toget across to some of the youth
(09:10):
and people is setbacks are okay.
We learn, we grow, we keepfighting and it's gonna make us
a better person.
You know, we can learn a lotfrom studying from other
people's responses to setbacks.
(09:32):
Such study is facilitated bypeople's willingness to share
their setback stories.
You know a lot of people don'twant to share their stories
because of shame, guilt, thatold pride.
Sometimes there's simple act ofgreeting someone how are things
(09:54):
going?
We'll trigger one.
Likewise, the comment to afriend that your water heater
sprain leak might elicit areciprocal setback tale.
So did mine last year.
I was kind of reading some ofthis setback chapter.
People are also inclined to topwhatever setback tales share
(10:20):
with them.
When we tell them what we gotsick after eating at a
restaurant, they might respondby telling us it's considerable
detail About the time they weresick for three days after eating
a taco stand in Tijuana, mexico.
There are also people who don'tjust mention setbacks.
(10:42):
They have experience, but theytalk about them almost
exclusively, and in the process,they rejuvenate the anger
triggered in them by thosesetbacks.
Such individuals, needless tosay, are not the most agreeable
companions.
Nevertheless, when youencounter them, you should pay
(11:05):
close attention to do yousometimes respond to setbacks
the way they do, and if so,they're a way for you to
overcome this tendency.
If you can, your days will gomuch smoother and you might, as
a result, find you're enjoyingyour life as never before.
(11:31):
Sometimes we share setbackstories as kind of a public
service.
We hope that by telling othersabout a setback, we can warn
them of an obstacle that theytoo might encounter, and by
telling people how we respond tothat setback, we can help them
deal with it.
Despite our warning, they fallvictim to it.
(11:53):
In other cases, people who tellus about setbacks want our help
.
Another stranger who tells usher purse was snatched, leaving
her without any cash, creditcards or ID.
In yet other cases, someonewill tell us setback stories in
(12:14):
the hope that we will join themin their fight against social
injustice that gave rise to thatsetback.
People also tell setback storiesin an attempt to impress us
with all their resilience in theface of setbacks and their
ingenuity and findingworkarounds for them.
(12:38):
Others have the oppositemotivation for telling setback
stories.
They seek not our admirationbut our pity.
They might, in particular, wantus to reassure them that it
isn't their fault and thatthey're they experienced the
(12:59):
setback they did.
An unfair world is instead toblame.
How many of you have metsomebody like that where it's
never their fault, blameeverybody else for everything
bad happening in their life?
I mean, I know individuals likethat and you know.
(13:26):
This is a good chapter becauseit summarizes and talks about
like a lot of what we talkedabout yesterday in the previous
episode.
Watching people being setbackcan be deliciously rewarding, if
, at any rate, we think theydeserved to be setback.
(13:50):
Suppose, for example, yourabusive boss is your abusive
boss is summarily fired by hisboss just to set last.
Watching people overcomesetbacks can also be
entertaining.
This is one of the reasonspeople have an interest in
spectator sports.
(14:11):
We love to see the team we arerooting for imposed setbacks on
the opposing team and baseballbatters are struck out, players
are injured, games are lost.
We also love watching ourfavorite team recover in a
heroic fashion from a setback isexperienced.
(14:34):
Remove the setbacks from sports, and they would become as
boring as watching someone mowthe lawn.
When we aren't watching sports,we might spend our time reading
a novel, or our interest inliterature can also be explained
in part by our fascination ofset with setbacks.
(14:55):
Novels are full of them, andwith good reason.
A novel in which two charactersfall in love on their first
meeting, get married, neverfight, live happily ever after
would be a commercial failure.
Authors realize this andtherefore go out of their way to
(15:16):
confront characters withobstacles.
As a result, their characters.
Relationships don't runsmoothly, hearts get broken,
their lives are also filled withdrama.
They might contract an illnessor be victim to a crime.
Same rule applies to cinema.
(15:40):
Most people don't attempt towrite short stories, novels or
screenplays, thinking it wouldrequire a degree of creativity
they lack that they lack.
Ask them to describe a recentsetback, though, and they and
you might trigger their creativejuices.
They might add elements andcharacters to their setback tale
(16:05):
in attempt to make the setbacksound less foreseeable and more
challenging than it was.
By doing this, they make theirown solution to that.
Setbacks seem all more amazing,and if they failed to find a
solution, they make a failuremore understandable.
(16:28):
Another time our creative juicesflow is when we are asleep.
We dream about strange things,some good, some bad.
One thing that makes bad dreamsbad is the setbacks we
experience in them.
We might Be unable to findthings we need, we prevented
(16:52):
from seeing people we need tosee, or unable to do the things
we need to do, such as shout outa word of warning to the loved
one who is imminent danger.
A single dream might contain achain of setbacks.
Just when we think we found asolution, another setback
(17:13):
prevents us from implementingthe solution.
When our dreaming selvesfinally conclude that a setback
is insurmountable suppose thedragon that has been blocking
your path through the woods haslaid his reptilian claws on us
(17:34):
we often respond by waking up,and on doing so, we will likely
feel compelled to share ourdream world setbacks with
friends and relatives.
The setbacks we experience whileawake cannot likewise be
eliminated simply by opening oureyes.
(17:56):
It is therefore important thatwe develop an effective strategy
for dealing with them.
Unfortunately, the strategythat many employ isn't just
ineffective, it'scounterproductive.
It results in them becomingfirst frustrated and then angry,
(18:21):
which substantially increasesharm done.
That increases the harm done,done by the setback, and it's
kinda like what we talked aboutyesterday.
You know, instead of gettingangry, it's okay to get
frustrated, but you know, someindividuals get fueled up so bad
(18:47):
that they get frustrated and itturns to anger and it just
festers and builds, and builds,and builds until it explodes.
Different people respond tosetbacks in different ways.
Some people are quite sensitiveto them.
(19:09):
Even a minor setback will havesignificant impact on their
emotional state, and afterexperience it, they won't bounce
back quickly.
They might feel impact,incapable of finding a
workaround for the setback, orthey might play the role of the
(19:31):
victim and complain to anyonewho will listen how unfair is
that they were setback in thismanner.
They might go on to arguebecause of their victimization,
they shouldn't have to come upwith a workaround, someone else
(19:54):
should have to do it for them.
Most of us, though, are tougherthan this, where we respond to
the setbacks we experience notby feeling helpless and defeated
, but by feeling frustrated.
In many cases, the response isinvoluntary.
Now, I didn't realize this whenI read this the other day about
(20:24):
the response being involuntary.
We no more choose to getfrustrated in the face of a
setback than hay fever suffererchooses to sneeze when pollen is
in the air.
It's just what we do.
So, again, frustration is aninvoluntary reaction to the
(20:46):
setback or something badhappening.
There's, however, an importantdifference between sneezing and
getting frustrated.
Sneezing removes whatever isirritating our sinuses, thereby
makes us feel better.
Getting frustrated, on theother hand, often makes us feel
better.
Getting frustrated, on theother hand, often begets to
(21:11):
anger.
This is unfortunate, sinceanger is incompatible with
happiness.
Indeed, anger can be thought ofas an anti-joy.
Consequently, gettingfrustrated and response to a
setback only makes things worse.
Unfortunately, any anger weexperience is likely to be
(21:34):
contagious.
This is because we often directour setback, trigger anger, at
someone else, and when weexpress our anger to that person
, he or she could very wellrespond by returning it.
In other cases, we share ouranger not with the person who
(21:55):
made us angry, but with theinnocent bystander.
We do this, in part, because weseek to validate our anger.
We want this person to assurethat that we have every reason
to be angry.
Better still, we want thisperson to commit to commiss.
(22:16):
We want this person to becomeangry with us.
We want them, in other words,to get angry as well, so they
can share our wretchedness.
Of course, if it was foolish forone person to get angry about
something, it is twice asfoolish for two people to do so,
(22:39):
especially if the second personisn't directly affected by
whatever it was that made theperson angry.
Along these lines, suppose thatafter I've experienced a
setback, friend tells me thatshe feels bad about it.
Maybe she doesn't literallyfeel bad.
(23:00):
All she's trying to say is thatshe wishes I hadn't had a
setback.
This behavior would beperfectly understandable.
Suppose, however, that sheliterally does feel bad.
Suppose, in particular, thatshe is angry and sad by having
(23:26):
been setback.
This is the last.
In a Stoic-like the guy readslike myself would want, I might
ask a friend for advice onfinding a workaround for a
setback, but I would never askor expect a friend to be angry
or sad, sad about my beingsetback.
(23:50):
This sort of commisscommiseration turns a setback
for one person into a setbackfor two without helping the
first person overcome thesetback.
In other words, it only makesmatters worse.
(24:10):
So that's a little update onwhat I was talking about
yesterday with the setbacks.
So I just wanted to kind ofread that chapter to you guys,
just so you kind of know what Iwas talking about with how it's
okay to be frustrated, but it'show we handle it.
(24:33):
Just like in everything in life, it's how we handle it.
We're always gonna havesetbacks, like we said yesterday
.
So I'm your host, laurenJohnson, here on War of the Mind
, and go ahead and check us outon our website at
ljvoiceprojectcom.
(24:54):
We got some a lot of stuffadded on there.
Our blog is also on there,along with our past episodes of
War of the Mind, so go ahead andcheck that out.
Otherwise, you can find us onFacebook, twitter, instagram
under ljvoiceproject, and withthat, I'm your host, and keep
(25:20):
hope alive.
And welcome back.
I'm your host, lauren Johnson,and we're back here in War of
the Mind, and today we're goingto start off by doing a daily
devotion reading.
It's out of the book of theDaily Stoic.
It's titled Don't Mind Me, I'mOnly Dying Slow.
(00:28):
Let each thing you would do orsay or intend be like that of a
dying person.
Marcus Aurelius, meditations211.
Have you ever heard some askwhat would you do if we found
out tomorrow that you had cancer?
The question is designed tomake you consider how different
(00:52):
life might be if you weresuddenly given just a few months
to live.
There's nothing like a terminalillness to wake people up.
But here's the thing youalready have a terminal
diagnosis we all do.
As the writer Edmund Wilson put,death is one prophecy that
(01:14):
never fails.
Every person with a deathsentence, each second that
passes by, is one you'll neverget back.
Once you realize this, it willbe.
It will have profound impact onwhat you do, say and think.
(01:34):
Don't let any, don't letanother day take away an
ignorance of the reality thatyou're dying in person.
We all are.
Can today be the day we stoppretending otherwise?
That was yesterday's reading, sofor today's reading, it's
(01:56):
called the philosopher as anartisan of life and death.
Philosophy does not claim toget a person any external
possession.
To do so would be on its field,as wood is to carpenter, bronze
to.
The sculptor saw our own livesand the proper material in the
(02:18):
art of living by a pictus.
Philosophy is not some idlepursuit appropriate only for
academics or the rich.
Instead, it is one of the mostessential activities that a
human can engage in.
It is its purpose, as HenryDavid Thoreau said a few
(02:42):
thousand years after your pictus, is to help us solve the
problems of life, not onlytheoretically but practically.
This aligns nicely with theCicero's famous line to
philosophize is to learn how todie.
(03:05):
You're not reading these quotesand doing these thought
exercises for fun.
Though they may be enjoyableand help lighten up, their aim
is to help you sculpt andimprove your life.
And because of all of us haveput have but one life and one
(03:27):
death.
We should read, we should treatthe experience like a sculptor
with his chisels carving untilno paraphrase Michelangelo, we
set free the angel in the marble.
We're trying to do thisdifficult thing living and dying
as well as we can, and to dothat we must remember what we've
(03:54):
learned and the wise wordswe've been given.
I don't know what you all takefrom that, but I'd say so those
are some pretty powerful words.
Like I said, I've been readingsome of them stoic books and
(04:21):
meditations lately and it'samazing, like I said, how stuff
that happened and was said backthousands of years ago are still
applying to today and modernstoics is getting more popular
(04:43):
and popular.
And I do have this one bookI've been reading.
It's called the stoic challengeof a philosopher's guide to
becoming tougher, calmer andmore resilient by William B
Irvine.
And one thing I wanted to hit ontoday is because yesterday we
(05:08):
were talking about a lot of mysetbacks in life and how other
people can go through setbacks,and you know it's all how we all
, how we handle it.
You know this goes into, has awhole chapter on setbacks and
(05:33):
how many setbacks.
Experience depends, as I havesuggested, on how much foresight
you possess.
The days of a thoughtlessperson are likely to be filled
with the obstacles that a failfail to anticipate and, as a
result, he is likely to findlife both frustrating and unfair
(05:57):
.
Were he not so thoughtless, hewould fathom the reason for his
misfortune.
Thoughtful people, by contrast,minimize the number of setbacks
(06:20):
they experience by learning howthe world works and then using
this knowledge to plan theiractivities in the day.
No matter how carefully theyplan for their future, though,
life occasionally will deal downa setback.
(06:42):
The computer of their, thecomputer of their fully fueled
and recently serviced hybridvehicle developed a glitch,
thereby bringing it to a haltduring rush hour on the freeway.
(07:03):
If you're reading these words,you're doubtless a thoughtful
individual who spends time andenergy thinking ahead in order
to prevent foreseeable setbacks.
But have you also spent timeand energy developing a strategy
(07:26):
for minimizing the emotionalharm done to you by foreseeable
setbacks?
And that was one thing I didn'thit on yesterday is the ability
we're not gonna we're not gonnatotally avoid setbacks in life,
(07:48):
and that's one thing I forgotto hit on yesterday is the
setbacks are still gonna comeand you might not be the be the
most resilient person, butlearning how to become resilient
(08:09):
allows you to minimize thesetbacks.
If you understand what I'msaying and I think that's huge,
because if, if you, for example,you know this this next week I
have to have my shoulderreplaced.
(08:30):
Now there's three billionsetbacks.
I'm playing through my mind.
One the surgery is a setback.
But then there's three otherthings that are playing in my
mind that could be a setback orpossibly happen and that's where
(08:50):
I'm planning ahead to minimizethe setback in case it were to
happen.
So I mean, I'm already doing itand not even really realizing
I'm doing it and that's.
You know, what I'm trying toget across to some of the youth
(09:10):
and people is setbacks are okay.
We learn, we grow, we keepfighting and it's gonna make us
a better person.
You know, we can learn a lotfrom studying from other
people's responses to setbacks.
(09:32):
Such study is facilitated bypeople's willingness to share
their setback stories.
You know a lot of people don'twant to share their stories
because of shame, guilt, thatold pride.
Sometimes there's simple act ofgreeting someone how are things
(09:54):
going?
We'll trigger one.
Likewise, the comment to afriend that your water heater
sprain leak might elicit areciprocal setback tale.
So did mine last year.
I was kind of reading some ofthis setback chapter.
People are also inclined to topwhatever setback tales share
(10:20):
with them.
When we tell them what we gotsick after eating at a
restaurant, they might respondby telling us it's considerable
detail About the time they weresick for three days after eating
a taco stand in Tijuana, mexico.
There are also people who don'tjust mention setbacks.
(10:42):
They have experience, but theytalk about them almost
exclusively, and in the process,they rejuvenate the anger
triggered in them by thosesetbacks.
Such individuals, needless tosay, are not the most agreeable
companions.
Nevertheless, when youencounter them, you should pay
(11:05):
close attention to do yousometimes respond to setbacks
the way they do, and if so,they're a way for you to
overcome this tendency.
If you can, your days will gomuch smoother and you might, as
a result, find you're enjoyingyour life as never before.
(11:31):
Sometimes we share setbackstories as kind of a public
service.
We hope that by telling othersabout a setback, we can warn
them of an obstacle that theytoo might encounter, and by
telling people how we respond tothat setback, we can help them
deal with it.
Despite our warning, they fallvictim to it.
(11:53):
In other cases, people who tellus about setbacks want our help
.
Another stranger who tells usher purse was snatched, leaving
her without any cash, creditcards or ID.
In yet other cases, someonewill tell us setback stories in
(12:14):
the hope that we will join themin their fight against social
injustice that gave rise to thatsetback.
People also tell setback storiesin an attempt to impress us
with all their resilience in theface of setbacks and their
ingenuity and findingworkarounds for them.
(12:38):
Others have the oppositemotivation for telling setback
stories.
They seek not our admirationbut our pity.
They might, in particular, wantus to reassure them that it
isn't their fault and thatthey're they experienced the
(12:59):
setback they did.
An unfair world is instead toblame.
How many of you have metsomebody like that where it's
never their fault, blameeverybody else for everything
bad happening in their life?
I mean, I know individuals likethat and you know.
(13:26):
This is a good chapter becauseit summarizes and talks about
like a lot of what we talkedabout yesterday in the previous
episode.
Watching people being setbackcan be deliciously rewarding, if
, at any rate, we think theydeserved to be setback.
(13:50):
Suppose, for example, yourabusive boss is your abusive
boss is summarily fired by hisboss just to set last.
Watching people overcomesetbacks can also be
entertaining.
This is one of the reasonspeople have an interest in
spectator sports.
(14:11):
We love to see the team we arerooting for imposed setbacks on
the opposing team and baseballbatters are struck out, players
are injured, games are lost.
We also love watching ourfavorite team recover in a
heroic fashion from a setback isexperienced.
(14:34):
Remove the setbacks from sports, and they would become as
boring as watching someone mowthe lawn.
When we aren't watching sports,we might spend our time reading
a novel, or our interest inliterature can also be explained
in part by our fascination ofset with setbacks.
(14:55):
Novels are full of them, andwith good reason.
A novel in which two charactersfall in love on their first
meeting, get married, neverfight, live happily ever after
would be a commercial failure.
Authors realize this andtherefore go out of their way to
(15:16):
confront characters withobstacles.
As a result, their characters.
Relationships don't runsmoothly, hearts get broken,
their lives are also filled withdrama.
They might contract an illnessor be victim to a crime.
Same rule applies to cinema.
(15:40):
Most people don't attempt towrite short stories, novels or
screenplays, thinking it wouldrequire a degree of creativity
they lack that they lack.
Ask them to describe a recentsetback, though, and they and
you might trigger their creativejuices.
They might add elements andcharacters to their setback tale
(16:05):
in attempt to make the setbacksound less foreseeable and more
challenging than it was.
By doing this, they make theirown solution to that.
Setbacks seem all more amazing,and if they failed to find a
solution, they make a failuremore understandable.
(16:28):
Another time our creative juicesflow is when we are asleep.
We dream about strange things,some good, some bad.
One thing that makes bad dreamsbad is the setbacks we
experience in them.
We might Be unable to findthings we need, we prevented
(16:52):
from seeing people we need tosee, or unable to do the things
we need to do, such as shout outa word of warning to the loved
one who is imminent danger.
A single dream might contain achain of setbacks.
Just when we think we found asolution, another setback
(17:13):
prevents us from implementingthe solution.
When our dreaming selvesfinally conclude that a setback
is insurmountable suppose thedragon that has been blocking
your path through the woods haslaid his reptilian claws on us
(17:34):
we often respond by waking up,and on doing so, we will likely
feel compelled to share ourdream world setbacks with
friends and relatives.
The setbacks we experience whileawake cannot likewise be
eliminated simply by opening oureyes.
(17:56):
It is therefore important thatwe develop an effective strategy
for dealing with them.
Unfortunately, the strategythat many employ isn't just
ineffective, it'scounterproductive.
It results in them becomingfirst frustrated and then angry,
(18:21):
which substantially increasesharm done.
That increases the harm done,done by the setback, and it's
kinda like what we talked aboutyesterday.
You know, instead of gettingangry, it's okay to get
frustrated, but you know, someindividuals get fueled up so bad
(18:47):
that they get frustrated and itturns to anger and it just
festers and builds, and builds,and builds until it explodes.
Different people respond tosetbacks in different ways.
Some people are quite sensitiveto them.
(19:09):
Even a minor setback will havesignificant impact on their
emotional state, and afterexperience it, they won't bounce
back quickly.
They might feel impact,incapable of finding a
workaround for the setback, orthey might play the role of the
(19:31):
victim and complain to anyonewho will listen how unfair is
that they were setback in thismanner.
They might go on to arguebecause of their victimization,
they shouldn't have to come upwith a workaround, someone else
(19:54):
should have to do it for them.
Most of us, though, are tougherthan this, where we respond to
the setbacks we experience notby feeling helpless and defeated
, but by feeling frustrated.
In many cases, the response isinvoluntary.
Now, I didn't realize this whenI read this the other day about
(20:24):
the response being involuntary.
We no more choose to getfrustrated in the face of a
setback than hay fever suffererchooses to sneeze when pollen is
in the air.
It's just what we do.
So, again, frustration is aninvoluntary reaction to the
(20:46):
setback or something badhappening.
There's, however, an importantdifference between sneezing and
getting frustrated.
Sneezing removes whatever isirritating our sinuses, thereby
makes us feel better.
Getting frustrated, on theother hand, often makes us feel
better.
Getting frustrated, on theother hand, often begets to
(21:11):
anger.
This is unfortunate, sinceanger is incompatible with
happiness.
Indeed, anger can be thought ofas an anti-joy.
Consequently, gettingfrustrated and response to a
setback only makes things worse.
Unfortunately, any anger weexperience is likely to be
(21:34):
contagious.
This is because we often directour setback, trigger anger, at
someone else, and when weexpress our anger to that person
, he or she could very wellrespond by returning it.
In other cases, we share ouranger not with the person who
(21:55):
made us angry, but with theinnocent bystander.
We do this, in part, because weseek to validate our anger.
We want this person to assurethat that we have every reason
to be angry.
Better still, we want thisperson to commit to commiss.
(22:16):
We want this person to becomeangry with us.
We want them, in other words,to get angry as well, so they
can share our wretchedness.
Of course, if it was foolish forone person to get angry about
something, it is twice asfoolish for two people to do so,
(22:39):
especially if the second personisn't directly affected by
whatever it was that made theperson angry.
Along these lines, suppose thatafter I've experienced a
setback, friend tells me thatshe feels bad about it.
Maybe she doesn't literallyfeel bad.
(23:00):
All she's trying to say is thatshe wishes I hadn't had a
setback.
This behavior would beperfectly understandable.
Suppose, however, that sheliterally does feel bad.
Suppose, in particular, thatshe is angry and sad by having
(23:26):
been setback.
This is the last.
In a Stoic-like the guy readslike myself would want, I might
ask a friend for advice onfinding a workaround for a
setback, but I would never askor expect a friend to be angry
or sad, sad about my beingsetback.
(23:50):
This sort of commisscommiseration turns a setback
for one person into a setbackfor two without helping the
first person overcome thesetback.
In other words, it only makesmatters worse.
(24:10):
So that's a little update onwhat I was talking about
yesterday with the setbacks.
So I just wanted to kind ofread that chapter to you guys,
just so you kind of know what Iwas talking about with how it's
okay to be frustrated, but it'show we handle it.
(24:33):
Just like in everything in life, it's how we handle it.
We're always gonna havesetbacks, like we said yesterday
.
So I'm your host, laurenJohnson, here on War of the Mind
, and go ahead and check us outon our website at
ljvoiceprojectcom.
(24:54):
We got some a lot of stuffadded on there.
Our blog is also on there,along with our past episodes of
War of the Mind, so go ahead andcheck that out.
Otherwise, you can find us onFacebook, twitter, instagram
under ljvoiceproject, and withthat, I'm your host, and keep
(25:20):
hope alive.
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