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Welcome to the Daily Stoke. For each day, we read a short passage designed to help you cultivate the strength, insight, wisdom necessary for living good 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 DailyStoic.com.

Don't let anger make you mean successful, talented people are often frustrated for a simple reason. The world is constantly disappointing them.

They expect everyone to be like them to work as hard as they do to care as much as they do to hold themselves to the same standards they do.

And if not that, at the very least, we expect people to show up and do their jobs. It's the difference between these expectations and reality that makes us angry.

Angry at the man behind the counter who can't even apologize that the flight is delayed because the airline couldn't manage to get a pilot onto the plane. Angry at the delivery person who bent and smashed your mail into the box.

Angry at the employee who disregarded instructions and made a costly mistake. Angry at this. Angry at that. Angry day after day. It's understandable that that doesn't make it okay.

Because not only is this a miserable way to live, but worse, it makes other people miserable too. And that's what is particularly inexcusable for a stoke.

You're not allowed to externalize your crap onto other people. You can't make the world worse because of your own inflexibility.

We've found it a tad ironic for instance to see the number of customer service emails that have come in for people who have signed up for our taming your temper course, which helps people with their anger problems.

The things people are comfortable saying to a faceless person behind a computer. The things people are ready to blame on everyone but themselves.

I know I signed up for the wrong email. I know I only emailed 20 minutes ago, but why is it my problem solved right now.

The things we think we can get away with because we are stressed because we think no one is looking because no one has called us on it.

It's not manly to get angry. Marcus Aurelius wrote it's not natural either. It's better to be calm and controlled. He said it's better to treat people with kindness.

Don't go expecting Plato's Republic. He said if there are brambles in the path, he said go around. Why get angry as if the world would notice.

It's wonderful that you have high standards. It's wonderful that you are demanding of yourself. It's wonderful that you do your job.

But you have to be willing to be flexible and tolerant with other people. You have to be patient. You have to keep your frustrations and check.

That's what stoicism is about. That's what the point of all of this is. Don't let yourself get away with anything less.

And of course, if you do want to check out our taming your temper course, you can do that at dailystoic.com slash temper.

I'm not pointing the finger at anyone else. I am as guilty of this as anyone, especially as computers.

It's sort of depersonalized things. It's so easy to treat other people as appendages, to treat other people as impediments or frustrations.

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