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If you find yourself feeling annoyed, angry, or impatient with the world or the people in it, I have some advice worth taking seriously. Negative emotions are almost always the result of reality failing to meet our expectations. You have no control over the world or the people in it. Most people barely have control over themselves. That leaves only one variable that you can govern reasonably: your expectations.
Marcus Aurelius understood this well. He advised beginning each morning by reminding yourself that you'll encounter the busybody, the ungrateful, arrogant, deceitful, envious, and unsocial. Once you accept this frame, once you accept that undesirable people exist and always will, you stop feeling shocked or personally wronged when you encounter them. Go a step further, and admit that parts of you are undesirable as well and the reaction softens more. You're no longer offended. You are simply meeting expectations. At that point, irritation gives way to something more useful, gratitude even. Why wouldn't you want to learn from someone else's mistakes instead of paying the full cost of making them yourself? With this mindset, angry, bitter, resentful, lazy, and ignorant people you encounter are no longer obstacles that you failed to avoid. They become walking lessons. The wise man encounters a fool and improves himself. The fool encounters a fool and acts foolishly. There may even be something shameful in allowing such people to unsettle us. As Epictetus put it, if someone were to hand your body over to a stranger, you would be outraged; yet you think nothing of handing over your mind to anyone who provokes you allowing it to be disturbed and confused. So learn to be thankful for enemies rather than perplexed or angered by them. Used properly, they become fuel for self-improvement. Used poorly, they drag you down into the same resentment that consumes them.
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