Trigger Question #107:
Many of us go to work already tired. Not from lack of sleep, but from anticipating another day of nonsense at work. Another day of humans behaving badly.
What to do?
You could fake indifference. Pretend positivity. Put on bigger and more powerful noise-cancelling headphones. Move to the South Pole.
Or you could act like a Roman emperor.
Wait! That might not go as planned. Let me be more specific. You can start your day the way a specific Roman emperor, Marcus Aurelius, did. Or said he did:
“Begin the morning by saying to thyself, I shall meet with the busy-body, the ungrateful, arrogant, deceitful, envious, unsocial.”
Will this help? I think so, and here’s why. You will wonder if maybe your colleagues are saying the same thing to themselves every morning. Meaning that, in their minds, you are the busy-body, the ungrateful, arrogant, deceitful, envious, unsocial!
And then, with an inner grin, you will stop glorifying your nonsense at work. Or so we hope.
Welcome to my side of the nonsense divide.
(Note: The quote is the first sentence of Book Two of Meditations by Marcus Aurelius as translated by George Long.)
. . .