Suppose that somebody insults you at a party, they call you boring, or stupid, or irrelevant, and for days afterwards you can't stop thinking about it. You replay it over and over again. You are hurt, and then you are angry, and then you are hurt again. The stoic philosopher Epictetus would ask you this question: 'Why have you given this person so much power over your mind?'
Epictetus argues that an insult is just words that come from one person's mouth and go to your ears, and what happens next is entirely up to you. You can choose to take the words in, examine them, and let them fester, or you can choose to let them pass like a breeze on the wind. As he wrote, 'If someone succeeds in provoking you, realize that your mind is complicit in the provocation.' The insult didn't make you angry. You made yourself angry by accepting the words were important, were true, and worthy of your attention.
Epictetus knew great cruelty in his life. He was enslaved, beaten, and disabled by his master. And yet he insisted that nobody can touch his inner freedom so long as he prevented them from doing so. For Epictetus, resilience wasn't having a thick skin, or denying that words can be hurtful, it is recognizing that you have the power to prevent people from entering your inner fortress, and deciding how you will deal with what people say.
Because, as the ex-spy Evy Poumpouras put it, 'If you're easily offended, you are easily manipulated.' They might have said the words. They might have intended to hurt you, but you decide if they can do so. You decide if the words mean anything to you at all.