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Welcome to the Daily Stoke Podcast where each day we bring you a passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you find strength, insight, and wisdom every day life.

Each one of these passages is based on the 2000 year old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women. For more you can visit us at DailyStoke.com.

Criticism is loud, respect is quiet. It can be easy to think you're going down the wrong path that you're making a huge mistake that nobody gets it, that you're the only one. The reason for this is simple.

We hear a lot more from the people who disagree with us than the people who agree with us. The writer Austin Cleon made this point recently during the pandemic.

Those of us who are decent who care about the impact of our actions who are following the scientific data as it comes in and clarifies the bigger picture we are living quiet lives.

We're doing less, posting less, focusing on keeping our families and communities safe.

It's the people who are not doing these things who are flying around going to parties indifferent to the consequences of their actions in denial of the reality of the situation.

Those are the ones we're hearing from and seeing things from.

Ironically it's their cognitive dissonance that also seems to make them so aggressive, rude, and disruptive.

They'd rather you feel stupid than feel shame or awareness themselves. That's why they're so loud.

They're externalizing their own anxiety and fear and frustration onto the rest of us.

They're almost antistobic in a way focusing exclusively on the things they cannot control.

All of which is to say you have to get good at tuning all this out.

Whether it's your judgmental parents or some jerk on social media, whether it's your old boss predicting you'll fail or that angry customer leaving a bad,

or review the doubts and the negativity are not representative. These people don't know.

You can't listen to them. You definitely can't compare yourself to them.

Seneca talked about staying on the path and not being distracted by the ones that crisscross yours.

That's a huge key and sometimes hugely difficult, especially when those on the other paths appear wider and flatter and easier to navigate.

There's another part to Seneca's point about staying the course though.

There are countless others in front and behind you on parallel paths just out of sight who agree with you,

who are on the same path, the same journey. They're decent and hardworking and determined too.

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