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People / 40m
Marcus Aurelius on Difficult People in 40 Minutes
Stoic Lessons for Dealing with Rude, Arrogant, Provoking, and Difficult People
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People / 40m
Stoic Lessons for Dealing with Rude, Arrogant, Provoking, and Difficult People
Some people can ruin ten minutes and then occupy the rest of your evening.
A rude manager. A critical parent. An arrogant colleague. Someone who provokes, interrupts, blames, complains, or seems to know exactly which button to press.
Marcus Aurelius dealt with difficult people at a scale few of us will ever experience: scheming officials, unreliable allies, political enemies, betrayal, war, and even a general who attempted to take his empire. Yet his private writings repeatedly return to the same question: how do you deal with difficult people without becoming difficult yourself? Marcus Aurelius on Difficult People in 40 Minutes turns those Stoic reflections into practical tools for everyday conflict.
You’ll discover:
The goal is not to make difficult people behave better.
It is to stop giving them the power to decide who you become.
The audiobook also includes a practical companion guide to help you apply Marcus Aurelius’s ideas during real conflicts rather than only understanding them in theory.
We'll email you the first chapter of Marcus Aurelius on Difficult People in 40 Minutes after you confirm your address.
The spring of the year one hundred and seventy-five. The emperor Marcus Aurelius is in a camp on the northern frontier when a messenger arrives with news that should have broken him. Avidius Cassius, one of his most trusted generals, a man he had promoted and relied on, has declared himself emperor in the east. Egypt has gone over to him. Syria has gone over to him. Half the empire is in revolt, led by a friend. The rebellion collapses within three months. Cassius is killed by his own officers, and his head is sent to Marcus. The ancient historian who tells the story says that Marcus would not look at it, and ordered it buried. He was sorry, he said, to have been robbed of the chance to pardon him. Then something else happens. Cassius's correspondence is found, and with it, presumably, the names of everyone in Rome who had encouraged him. Senators. Officials. Perhaps people very close to the emperor. Marcus has every reason to read those letters. Any other ruler of his age would have read them, and then the executions would have begun. He has them burned, unread. That is the man who wrote the most practical advice we have from the ancient world on how to deal with difficult people. He did not get it from a quiet life. He spent twenty years among flatterers, schemers, incompetent officials, ungrateful allies, a difficult co-emperor, a turbulent court, and finally a son who would turn out to be one of the worst rulers Rome ever had. He had more difficult people in his life than almost anyone who has ever lived. And every morning, in his notebook, he got himself ready to meet them.
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