In dealing with others the following suggestion of Marcus Aurelius may come in play:
"When a man has done thee any wrong, immediately consider with what opinion about good or evil he has done wrong. For when thou hast seen this, thou wilt pity him, and neither wonder nor be angry." Again, in this connection the lines of Cowper are pertinent:
"The modest, sensible and well-bred man
Will not affront me, and no other can."
Pope, also, who is said not always to have followed his own good counsel, contributes a verse which may serve a turn:
"At ev'ry trifle scorn to take offense,
That always shows great pride, or little sense."
The practice of such commonplace philosophy (which, to be effective, should be ready for immediate use, not stored away for later reflection), together with training against faulty mental states studied in these pages, will go far toward relieving the mental perturbation that unfits for effective work, and contributes to "neurasthenia."
During an hour's delay, caused by the failure of another to keep an appointment, I formulated the following maxim:
"These are the annoyances incident to my business; to fret when they occur means that I cannot manage my business without friction."
This may not appeal to the reader, but for me it has proved as good an hour's work as I ever did. Since that time, on the occurrence of similar sources of provocation, I have found it necessary to go no farther than "These are the annoyances," to restore the needful balance. When we allow our gorge to rise at ordinary sources of discomfort, it implies that we are prepared only for our affairs to run with perfect smoothness. This represents the insistent idea carried to an absurdity.
At the risk of losing caste with the critical I cannot forbear sharing with the reader an inelegant maxim which has more than once prevented an access of rage upon the blunder of a subordinate: "If he had our brains he'd have our job."