The Stoic Handbook with Jon Brooks
Sep 29, 2026 · 46 min · 12 segments
You know how you want to handle anger. Then someone says the wrong thing, and you're already reacting. This 45-minute Stoic talk works through PAUSE: Perceive, Acknowledge, Unhook, Sort and Engage…
Jon BrooksHost
So, you know, in your own experience that you've had this moment, okay, you're about to send an email or you've just sent it and you're already saying the sentence you'll regret.
It's almost like your body has taken over and it's doing the thing that the better version of you, the wiser version of you knows it shouldn't be doing, but you still do it.
If you're someone who reacts before you can think, maybe you're quick to get angry, quick to get anxiety, quick to become defensive, we are going to be looking at tools to handle that.
And if you're also tired of being told to just pause, that doesn't help, right? To just pause, count to five, then definitely this is for you, okay? Because we're gonna look in detail at what it means to pause and how to do it properly.
A lot of the Stoic advice is really interesting because the Stoics were very intelligent, very wise people.
They spent all their time philosophizing, dedicated their life to living a wise existence.
And they came up with a system, a framework that is very robust and But then what happens then over time, over the 2000 years that have passed since it was invented, people have taken the highlights and then they teach the highlights.
And so the dichotomy of control, which is this full system of how to manage your clearly now just becomes focus on what you can control.
It's very similar to when someone says, if you want to get in shape, move more, eat less.
Have you ever heard of the 300 millisecond problem? Okay, because this is the gap between when your body reacts to something and your mind consciously becomes aware of it.
So it takes between 12 and 150 milliseconds before your amygdala recognizes a situation.
This is called the low road, the kind of emotional, physical reaction to something.
The high road is, Your conscious awareness, you know, your prefrontal cortex and then more human part of you kicks in 200 to 300 milliseconds later.
Your body reacts first, the amygdala, and then conscious awareness kicks in later.
The problem is by the time you are consciously aware, your body has already begun responding.
So, you know, in your own experience that you've had this moment, okay, you're about to send an email or you've just sent it and you're already saying the sentence you'll regret.
It's almost like your body has taken over and it's doing the thing that the better version of you, the wiser version of you knows it shouldn't be doing, but you still do it.
If you're someone who reacts before you can think, maybe you're quick to get angry, quick to get anxiety, quick to become defensive, we are going to be looking at tools to handle that.
And if you're also tired of being told to just pause, that doesn't help, right? To just pause, count to five, then definitely this is for you, okay? Because we're gonna look in detail at what it means to pause and how to do it properly.
A lot of the Stoic advice is really interesting because the Stoics were very intelligent, very wise people.
They spent all their time philosophizing, dedicated their life to living a wise existence.
And they came up with a system, a framework that is very robust and But then what happens then over time, over the 2000 years that have passed since it was invented, people have taken the highlights and then they teach the highlights.
And so the dichotomy of control, which is this full system of how to manage your clearly now just becomes focus on what you can control.
It's very similar to when someone says, if you want to get in shape, move more, eat less.
Have you ever heard of the 300 millisecond problem? Okay, because this is the gap between when your body reacts to something and your mind consciously becomes aware of it.
So it takes between 12 and 150 milliseconds before your amygdala recognizes a situation.
This is called the low road, the kind of emotional, physical reaction to something.
The high road is, Your conscious awareness, you know, your prefrontal cortex and then more human part of you kicks in 200 to 300 milliseconds later.
Your body reacts first, the amygdala, and then conscious awareness kicks in later.
The problem is by the time you are consciously aware, your body has already begun responding.
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