A passage from Epictetus
Epictetus, Enchiridion 4
✱
When you are going about any action, remind yourself what nature the action is. If you are going to bathe, picture to yourself the things which usually happen in the bath: some people splash the water, some push, some use abusive language, and others steal.
Related passages
✱
Begin the morning by saying to thyself, I shall meet with the busy-body, the ungrateful, arrogant, deceitful, envious, unsocial.
✱
Take away thy opinion, and then there is taken away the complaint, 'I have been harmed.' Take away the complaint, and the harm is taken away.
✱
If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.