I think you will agree with me that all work environments contain some … people … that create difficulties. They may be the manager who is at the top of the food chain and continues to push blame to others when projects are behind, or the passive-aggressive colleague who only communicates by way of back-door, subliminal methods via indirect comments and CC’d email. These individuals, no matter how talented, they drain a significant amount of our productivity and energy. That is that we relive their comments in our minds on our way to work, write long and angry drafts of emails to respond to them but never actually send or deliver them, and allow the unprofessionalism of these individuals to take over our state of mind.
Many of the great philosophers in antiquity actively worked to eliminate this pattern of frustration and lack of productivity from our day-to-day lives. With regards to how we look at our difficult colleague, we generally view our feelings of anger toward them to be justified as a result of their poor actions. However, the Stoics viewed this whole process in a completely distinct manner.
In his “Enchiridion”, Epictetus very directly states how wrong this mindset is. He states:
