This is interesting.
Frame your thoughts like this - you are an old person, you won't let yourself be enslaved by this any longer, no longer pulled like a puppet by every impulse, and you'll stop complaining about your present fortune or dreading the future.
Marcus Aurelius
What does this mean, think like an old person? Remember in Greek times old wasn't a derogatory term. It meant wisdom and experience. Now let's look at the meaning of this.
There are gut responses and then proper responses. Just think how you might get a message that is flip or sarcastic or blames you. Our immediate reaction is to blast them back. Copy everyone they did and explain how they are incorrect idiots or liars, which is it!?!?
But, after we do this once or twice, we realize it is ourselves that looks petty here. So write your flaming response - but we don't send it. We wait until we cool off and look at our response (and the original message) through rested eyes and no doubt our response will change.
So we CAN do this. It just isn't as emotionally rewarding in the moment.
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