According to Joel Owen, a lecturer in evidence-based low-intensity psychological therapies, working on the Psychological Wellbeing Practitioner training programme at the University of East Anglia in the UK. The Roman emperor and Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius To encourage in himself an attitude of compassion and self-control, describes a practice of preparing himself for the day ahead:

"Say to yourself first thing in the morning: today I shall meet people who are meddling, ungrateful, aggressive, treacherous, malicious and unsocial. All of this has afflicted them through their ignorance of true good and evil. But I have seen that the nature of good is what is right, and the nature of evil what is wrong; and I have reflected that the nature of the offender himself is akin to my own…"