Kill Anger: The Stoic Morning Routine

Stoic exercise for Anger

Based on the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius and the Enchiridion of Epictetus, here is a powerful Stoic exercise designed to preempt and manage anger.

The Exercise: The Morning Anticipation & Reframing

This exercise combines a morning rehearsal (to lower expectations) with a specific method of reframing the offender's intent (to lower resentment).

Step 1: The Morning Preparation Before you begin your day, anticipate that you will encounter difficult people. By predicting this behavior, you remove the element of surprise, which often fuels anger.

• The Practice: As soon as you wake up, repeat the following to yourself:

Step 2: The Reframing of Motive When you inevitably encounter these people, you must immediately reframe why they are acting this way. Do not view their actions as a personal attack, but as a symptom of their ignorance regarding what is truly good and evil.

• The Practice: Remind yourself that the offender is "acting under compulsion" of their own mistaken views. Use the phrase Epictetus recommends:

Step 3: The Dissociation of Harm Finally, remind yourself that their anger or insults cannot actually harm your character or your mind unless you choose to accept the insult.

• The Practice: Tell yourself that because the offender cannot force you to do anything shameful, they cannot truly hurt you.

Why this works (Stoic Theory):

• We are all kin: The Stoics believed that to be angry at a fellow human is "against nature," because we are made for cooperation like "the feet, the hands, the eyelids".

• Anger hurts you more: Marcus Aurelius argues that "to be angry and out of humour" is to separate yourself from the universe, making you an "abscess" on the world. Ultimately, "how much worse evils we suffer from anger and grief about certain things than from the things themselves".