Progress is not achieved by luck or accident but by working on yourself daily. - Epictetus, Discourses, 2.18

For many years, I assumed that if I simply worked hard enough and cared deeply enough about the work I was doing, I would naturally find my place within professional environments. To some degree, that was true. Dedication and competence do matter. But over time, I also began to recognize that workplaces are not governed by skill, intelligence, or even good intentions. They are ecosystems of temperament, hierarchy, communication styles, institutional habits, and unspoken expectations. Some people move through those systems instinctively. Others have to study them more deliberately.

Navigating different thinking styles

One of the most important areas of training in my own life has been learning how to function within environments where my way of thinking is not always easily understood. I tend to think expansively and systemically. I make connections quickly, move toward possibilities, and often communicate directly and in ways that assume others are making the same conceptual leaps alongside me. In some settings, those tendencies are welcomed. In others, they create friction. What I experience as enthusiasm or clarity may be perceived by someone else as intensity, disruption, or as a challenge.

Earlier in life, I often experienced that disconnect as confusion. Why did conversations that felt productive to me leave others uncomfortable? Why did attempts to solve problems sometimes create interpersonal strain instead? Why did certain environments reward caution and predictability more than curiosity or improvisation?

Training involves discernment

Over time, however, I began to understand that this recognition itself could become part of my Stoic practice. The goal was not to suppress my nature or become someone else entirely. Nor was it to assume that every environment that resisted me was inherently wrong. Rather, the training involved learning discernment: understanding what was within my control, learning to read situations more carefully, and developing the discipline to respond effectively instead of reactively.

That training has required a good deal of restraint. I had to learn to slow my own momentum long enough to assess the emotional and institutional realities surrounding a conversation. I also had to learn that being correct about a problem does not necessarily mean others are prepared to confront it in the same moment or in the same manner. Perhaps most difficult of all, it has involved learning not to interpret an unwanted reaction as hostility.

The workplace as training ground

Epictetus reminds us that philosophy is not theoretical performance but lived practice. We train because situations will test us before we feel fully prepared for them. In that sense, difficult workplaces can become unexpected training grounds. They expose impatience, ego, insecurity, defensiveness, and the desire to be validated or immediately understood. They force us to confront how much of our internal peace depends upon external recognition.

At the same time, Stoicism does not require surrendering one’s character in exchange for social ease. There is an important distinction between adaptation and self- erasure. Some forms of friction are invitations toward growth; others simply reveal genuine differences in values, priorities, or ways of perceiving the world. Wisdom lies in learning to distinguish between the two without becoming either rigid or resentful.

In the workplace, this has emerged through daily correction: pausing before responding; revising an email rather than sending it immediately; allowing silence to exist without rushing to fill it; recognizing when a conversation is no longer productive; or accepting that not every insight needs to be defended ( or even spoken aloud ) in order to remain true.

The long practice of becoming

None of these things arrived naturally to me. They were trained slowly through repetition, failure, observation, and reflection. The work was not about becoming less of myself. It was learning how to inhabit myself more judiciously and patiently among other people.

As I grow older, I find myself becoming even more intentional about the environments in which I choose to invest my energy. Part of my own continuing practice has been recognizing that adaptation and self-knowledge must exist alongside one another. There is value in learning how to function skillfully within systems that do not naturally fit us, but there is also wisdom in eventually building spaces that allow our strengths to serve others more fully.

Increasingly, this has led me toward work that allows for greater integration between thought, creativity, service, and human connection.

The training, then, was never simply about enduring difficult environments. It was about learning enough about myself—with honesty and without resentment—to begin creating the conditions under which I can contribute most meaningfully, work most virtuously, and perhaps help others do the same.

Andi Sciacca serves as the Chief Academic Officer and as the Director of Accreditation & Assessment for the European Graduate School. She is also the Environ- mental Sustainability Program Coordinator for the FEED MKE Program for the City of Milwaukee.

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