Inverting the vex

Ask yourself what you’d do if you were sure you couldn’t change the attitudes of others. What then would you do by yourself to keep the problem from affecting you? If you approach it on that basis, you usually find that there are many more direct alternatives available than you’d noticed while you were busy trying to change others.

turned a moment of frustration into a moment of delight.

when you’re trying to Master Your Time, few things are more infuriating than a task or delay that’s foisted upon you against your will, with no regard for the schedule you’ve painstakingly drawn up in your overpriced notebook. But when you turn your attention instead to the fact that you’re in a position to have an irritating experience in the firs

When you are uncomfortable or even in pain, you don’t have to label it as bad or unjust and catastrophic. Instead, keep it right there where it is so you can still do something with it. And how you do that—that magic tool—is focus.

By imagining ourselves offering advice on the very topic that is perturbing us, we are made to engage in a different dialogue; our first take on events changes as we are made to consider a more phlegmatic and unruffled response. Having this imaginary conversation brings us out of ourselves, detaches us from the disturbances of those initial emotion