The story the day tells you

A ticket comes back rejected. A customer snaps. The schedule changes again, and a shift you needed is gone. Notice what happens in the half-second after: before you've decided anything, the event already arrives wearing a story. They don't respect my work. This place is a mess. Here we go again.

Epictetus, who was born a slave and knew real hardship, put it plainly almost two thousand years ago: "Men are disturbed, not by things, but by the principles and notions which they form concerning things" (Enchiridion 5, Carter). The rejected ticket is just a rejected ticket. The snap is sound and a face. The distress is the story you stapled on top, and the story is yours — which is the good news, because what's yours, you can change.

This is the whole Wisdom move, and the week starts here: see the event before you've dressed it. Not to excuse the customer or pretend the schedule is fair. Just to know which part is fact and which part you supplied, so you respond to the first and not the second.

Most of what ruins a workday was never the workday. It was the narration.