The Most Important Mindset Reframe to Become a More Stoic Person
Become less emotionally reactive to people, and watch your life trajectory skyrocket
People can drive you mad.
They make you say: “I can’t believe they did that, I would never!”
No matter how long you rack your brain trying to understand why they did that, you get nowhere.
This mindset is the root cause of all your social suffering, and it’s keeping you volatile and reactive.
But there’s a solution — a way to become stoic when faced with frustration and disagreement.
And this is the story of my near-death experience that showed me how.
The accident — a brutal teacher
I was about 100 metres from home when I found myself flying through the air.
I’d just lost my car in the Brisbane floods, so I was using my motorcycle for the time being. I hated riding it through the city, too many erratic drivers — but I had no choice.
A car turned out in front of me from behind traffic.
You’re not meant to squeeze the brakes on a motorcycle in an emergency, but when you’re in a life-or-death situation, you don’t really have time to think back to best practice.
I swerved left to avoid a hit but went straight over the handlebars.
I remember it being very quiet in that moment as I came off the bike — it really does feel like it goes in slow motion, it’s true. I didn’t have time to panic. I hit the ground and rolled about 10 metres.
I stood up — which was a good sign — but my left leg was badly injured.
The driver rushed over and was profusely apologising. His name was Matthew James Norman. I felt bad for him, he had panic in his eyes. I was hurting, but I was ok. So I put my hand on his shoulder and told him it was ok — just an accident.
He assured me he’d help me out, that his uncle was a mechanic and we’d figure it out together.
But this story wouldn’t be interesting if that’s how it went, would it?
After a torn quad, Matthew James Norman decided to deny that he said any of that, that it was my fault and that he wouldn’t be helping with any of the repairs.
I was so angry with him. I wanted revenge. I couldn’t believe someone could nearly kill you, assure you they’d be there to help, and then change their tone like that.
How could he?
I was grateful to be relatively unscathed, but my blood was boiling. I was tossing up legal action. I wanted justice. I was filled with resentment. I talked about Matthew James Norman a lot to my friends and family.
Why would someone do this?
How could someone do this?
As tough as it was, it taught me a lesson that would end all my suffering and all my resistance to the way others behaved.
You’re suffering because you’re in resistance.
Resistance: the refusal to accept, or comply.
That’s what you’re doing.
That’s what I did with Matthew James Norman. The refusal, or inability, to accept his behaviour.
How could he? — I thought to myself — If that were me, I would’ve offered as much help as possible.
I remembered a quote from my Dad:
“If you wait until others behave like you would’ve, you’ll be waiting a long time.”
The root cause of all your problems is that you expect others to behave like you would.
But this makes two critical assumptions:
They have the same intelligence and emotional capacity as you
That they were raised with the same moral compass as you
If these were both true, you wouldn’t be in this situation to begin with.
Stop resisting, and start understanding
Never expect someone to be as fair and just as you.
Instead of putting your emotions in their hands, keep them in yours.
Instead of being upset, agitated and angry — behave the right way by your own standards and move on with your life.
I could ponder what he was thinking, but there was no use. I’ve accepted that he probably didn’t have any money and he was just protecting himself like a coward — and that’s fine.
It’s actually logical, just not morally good.
When someone does wrong by you, it’s okay to be disappointed. But it’s fruitless to be frustrated and angry at them. Trying to understand why it’s happened is, for lack of a better term, stupid.
Do I wish he could’ve handled it better? Sure.
But I would’ve avoided a lot of suffering had I just accepted that he didn’t from the beginning. I spent a lot of time thinking about it. Time that he probably isn’t even aware of.
A waste of my energy.
So next time you’re faced with a situation that makes you ask:
How could they?
Reframe it to:
They’ve done this — and although I don’t agree — I accept it. Now, what are the logical next steps to deal with it?
You cannot control the actions of people like our little friend, Matthew James Norman, but you can control your own.
Thank you for reading this if you got here.
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Ideas like this genuinely do make self-improvement more interesting and simple to me, and my aim is just to share that with you.
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