The Coworker Who Made Me Dread Monday Mornings
A few years ago, I worked with someone who made every day feel like walking through a minefield. She wasn’t overtly hostile, it was subtler than that. The passive-aggressive emails cc’ing our manager. The way she’d take credit for collaborative work in meetings. The small, cutting remarks disguised as “just being honest.”
I tried everything the standard workplace advice suggests. I documented incidents. I practiced assertive communication. I even went to HR once, which accomplished absolutely nothing except making things more awkward.
It wasn’t until I picked up Joseph Murphy’s The Power of Your Subconscious Mind that I considered an entirely different approach, one that started not with her behavior, but with my own mind.
Murphy’s Foundational Idea About Other People
Joseph Murphy taught that the subconscious mind is a powerful creative force that responds to habitual thoughts and mental images. When it comes to other people (especially difficult ones) Murphy was remarkably consistent in his advice: change your mental attitude toward the person, and the relationship will change.
This isn’t naive optimism. Murphy grounded it in a specific mechanism. Your subconscious mind, he argued, is connected to the universal subconscious, and your habitual thoughts about someone actually influence the dynamic between you.
“When you think of the other person, think of love, peace, harmony, and goodwill. Your subconscious will respond accordingly, and the relationship will be transformed.” – Joseph Murphy, Chapter 19
When I first read this, I’ll admit my reaction was skepticism bordering on irritation. “Think loving thoughts about the woman who just threw me under the bus in a team meeting? Sure, that’ll fix it.”
But I was desperate enough to try. And what happened over the following weeks genuinely surprised me.
Why We Get Stuck in Workplace Conflicts
Before I describe what I did, I want to talk about why workplace conflicts have such a grip on us. It’s not just that your boss or coworker is difficult. It’s that you’re trapped. You can’t walk away the way you might from a frustrating stranger at the grocery store. You have to show up, day after day, and interact with this person. Your livelihood depends on it.
That forced proximity does something to your nervous system. It creates a low-grade, chronic stress response that colors everything. You start anticipating the difficulty before it arrives. You replay yesterday’s slight while brushing your teeth this morning. You mentally rehearse tomorrow’s confrontation while trying to fall asleep.
Murphy would say, and I think he’s right, that this mental rehearsal is creative. You’re not just passively suffering. You’re actively imagining continued conflict, impressing those images on your subconscious, and watching them play out exactly as you’ve mentally scripted them.
I realized I was spending more mental energy on my difficult coworker than on my actual work. She was living rent-free in my head, and I was the one furnishing the apartment.
The Murphy Method for Difficult Workplace Relationships
Murphy prescribed a specific technique that I adapted for my situation. Here’s the version I used, and that I still use when workplace tensions arise.
The Nightly Blessing Practice:
Every night before sleep, I’d close my eyes and bring the difficult person to mind. Not the version of them I resented, but a neutral image. Just their face. Then I’d mentally say to them, with as much sincerity as I could muster:
“I wish for you health, happiness, peace, and all the blessings of life.”
The first few nights, it felt completely hollow. Even performative. But Murphy was emphatic that sincerity would develop with repetition, that the subconscious doesn’t initially require perfect feeling, just consistent direction.
“Repeat the word ‘peace’ silently, easily, and feelingly. Do this for about five minutes at night before you go to sleep. You will find that your relationships will undergo a great transformation.” – Joseph Murphy, Chapter 6
After about ten days, something shifted in me. Not in her, in me. The resentment started feeling less automatic. I’d see her in the hallway and notice that the usual spike of tension was milder. After three weeks, I noticed something even stranger: her behavior toward me seemed to be softening too. The cc’d emails slowed down. She made a comment in a meeting that was actually supportive of my work.
Was she changing, or was I just perceiving her differently? Honestly, I think it was both, and Murphy would say those two things aren’t really separable.
Applying This to a Difficult Boss
Bosses present a unique challenge because there’s a power imbalance. You can’t just mentally bless your boss and ignore their actual behavior if they’re making unreasonable demands, micromanaging, or creating a toxic environment. Practical boundaries still matter.
But Murphy’s approach works as a complement to practical action, not a replacement for it. What I’ve found is that when I address the internal component, my mental attitude toward a difficult boss, the practical actions I take become more effective.
Here’s why: when you’re saturated with resentment toward your boss, everything you do carries that energy. Your emails have an edge. Your body language in meetings broadcasts defensiveness. You interpret ambiguous situations in the worst possible light. And the boss, picking up on all of this, responds accordingly.
When you shift the inner state (even partially) your outward behavior changes in subtle but significant ways. You become less reactive. You communicate more clearly. You’re more likely to see the boss as a complicated human being rather than a cartoon villain. And that changes the dynamic.
I had a manager once who was notorious for his temper. Sharp, public criticism was his default mode. I spent months seething about it internally while smiling externally. Nothing changed. When I started applying Murphy’s nightly blessing technique specifically focused on him, the most immediate change was in my own stress level. I stopped dreading meetings. I stopped replaying his criticisms in my head.
And over time, gradually, not overnight, our interactions improved. He didn’t become a different person. But the friction between us decreased noticeably.
When You Need to Leave
I want to be honest about the limits of this approach. Murphy’s technique is powerful, but it’s not a reason to stay in a genuinely abusive workplace. If your boss is engaging in harassment, discrimination, or behavior that’s causing you real harm, mental techniques are not a substitute for protecting yourself, whether that means going to HR, consulting a lawyer, or finding a new job.
Murphy himself would likely agree. He taught that the subconscious mind can guide you to right action, and sometimes the right action is to remove yourself from a harmful situation. The nightly blessing practice can help you leave without bitterness, which is valuable in itself. Carrying resentment from one job to the next just transplants the problem.
I’ve used Murphy’s approach to prepare for a job transition. Instead of imagining the difficult boss while feeling anger, I imagined myself in a new role, happy, valued, at peace. And I blessed the old situation as I left it. The transition was smoother than any I’d experienced before.
A Practical Exercise for This Week
If you’re currently dealing with a difficult boss or coworker, here’s a concrete practice drawn from Murphy’s teachings that you can start tonight.
Step 1: Before bed, close your eyes and relax your body. Take several slow breaths until you feel the day’s tension begin to release.
Step 2: Bring the difficult person to mind. See their face as neutrally as you can, not the version of them that annoys you, just a simple, still image.
Step 3: Mentally repeat: “I release you from my resentment. I wish you peace, health, and happiness. I am free and you are free.” Say it slowly. If the words feel forced, that’s fine. Keep going.
Step 4: Now shift your focus. Imagine yourself at work, feeling calm, respected, and valued. See a specific scene, maybe a meeting going well, or a positive interaction with this same person. Make it brief and vivid.
Step 5: Fall asleep holding that positive scene, not the image of conflict.
Do this for at least two weeks before evaluating results. The first week may feel mechanical. That’s normal. Murphy emphasized that the subconscious responds to repetition, not one-time efforts.
What Changed for Me, And What I Learned
The coworker I mentioned at the beginning? Our relationship didn’t become a friendship. But it became workable. The hostility faded. We reached a kind of professional neutrality that allowed us both to do our jobs without the constant background hum of conflict.
More importantly, I changed. I stopped carrying workplace resentment home with me. I stopped spending my weekends mentally rehearsing Monday’s confrontation. My sleep improved. My mood improved. My actual work product improved because I wasn’t burning half my mental energy on interpersonal warfare.
Murphy’s approach taught me something I don’t think any management book ever could: the most powerful thing you can change about a difficult workplace relationship is your own mind. Not because the other person doesn’t bear responsibility for their behavior, they do. But because your mind is the only territory you actually control, and changing it changes everything that flows from it.
That difficult coworker may never read Joseph Murphy. They may never work on their own subconscious patterns. But that’s not your problem to solve. Your problem is the mental state you’re carrying into work each morning. And that, according to Murphy, is entirely within your power to reshape.
