At work, it's even worse.

Every day it feels like your co-workers are actively engaged in undermining your
goals. They are professional saboteurs, with their constant leading you into temptation, buying of donuts,
and organizing an endless parade of birthday parties, going away parties, and "hey it's a day that ends in a
'y'!" pizza parties.

The sad, harsh, but true fact is that they want to see you fail. Few people have the inner strength to let a
friend succeed. They don't want their fellow birds of a feather to leave the nest. It threatens them. So they
sabotage you.
German language has a word for this, Schadenfreude, meaning to take pleasure in the failure of others. It's all
too common in society today. People might seem like they want to help, but most take greater pleasure in
seeing you stumble and struggle than succeed.
Criticism is easy to hand out when they are behind a computer screen and or when they gossip behind your
back. Few critics will ever have the courage to say anything to your face. That makes it easier for you to
ignore them, for they are cowards, and nothing more. Criticism is the simply the attacker's only way of
dealing with their insecurity.
So where is the solid rock on which to stand? "There's nothing here but sinking sand, Craig!" you want to
scream at me.