Mind Your Business: Dealing with the Three Poisons In Your Career

by Shannon Bond

Many professionals and business owners have felt the tug of greed, anger, and illusion. In Buddhist philosophy, they are known as the three poisons. Greed may also be known as lust, anger as hatred, and illusion as ignorance. Let’s examine how these negative motions of the mind might play out in a contemporary career and what antidote leads to liberation.

The Setup

In a sleek downtown office building, Sarah was a rising star at a top consulting firm. Ambitious and driven, she set her sights on a senior partner role, determined to climb the corporate ladder faster than anyone in her cohort. However, the pressures of the job and the cutthroat environment she worked in often triggered negative thoughts and emotions that led to behaviors reflecting the three poisons, which are the root causes of suffering.

The First Poison: Greed (or lust)

Sarah’s thirst for success fed her ambition until it grew overwhelming. She regularly put in 80-hour workweeks, accepting every new project and outbidding colleagues for clients. Promotions, bonuses, and recognition became her only measure of self-worth. She saw her achievements not as milestones but as stepping stones toward even greater rewards—never satisfied, always craving more.

One day, her firm announced a highly coveted international project. It was lucrative, high-profile, and a guaranteed path to promotion. Sarah aggressively campaigned for it, undermining her coworker, Jim, in front of their boss. When she won the bid, Sarah felt an initial thrill, but it was fleeting. She quickly set her eyes on the next goal, her mind preoccupied with how to extract even more value from her clients, team, and work. Her constant grasping for more left her exhausted and isolated as her colleague’s perception of her shifted from a high performer to a self-serving corporate climber.

Her endless pursuit of material success was a manifestation of greed, which clouds the mind and breeds suffering. Despite achieving her goals, she felt empty. Her desires always outpaced her achievements. Greed, disguised as high performance, trapped her in a cycle of dissatisfaction. Often, ambition grows from a healthy place. A will to be good at a job, receive praise, and promotion. There is nothing inherently harmful in these pursuits and resulting awards. However, the will to perform can easily tip someone over the line into a mindset full of greed, especially in a professional culture that recognizes “high performance” as a virtue.  

The Second Poison: Anger (or rage)

Weeks into the prestigious project, Sarah found herself increasingly frustrated. The project was more complex than anticipated, and her team wasn’t meeting her standards. She lashed out at them during meetings, often blaming them for mistakes, micromanaging their every move, and snapping when things didn’t go according to plan.

Her relationship with Jim, strained by her underhanded actions, became hostile. He started pushing back on her aggressive style, pointing out errors in her decisions. Sarah’s resentment grew, and thoughts of competition and vengeance consumed her. She began treating every interaction with him as a battle for dominance, determined to prove her superiority.

Her anger blinded her to the support she could have received from her team, isolating her further. In her quest to succeed, Sarah had created an environment of fear and hostility, driven by anger, the second poison. Her inability to see past her resentment caused her to suffer, damaging her work relationships and leaving her feeling embittered and alone. Anger and rage is a stealthy poison that can seep into our consciousness. It leaks into the world through conversations and actions. To observe this, pay attention to conversations. Is there consistent negativity? Venting? Blaming? If so, the anger’s poison may be infecting the mind.

The Third Poison: Ignorance (or illusion)

In the pursuit of her career goals, Sarah overlooked the importance of self-awareness, mindfulness, and the impact of her actions on others. She operated under the assumption that external success would bring her professional recognition and lasting fulfillment, ignorant of the internal consequences of her relentless pursuit.

Despite her growing achievements, Sarah found herself increasingly unhappy. She started to experience burnout, her personal life was deteriorating, and she had alienated most of her colleagues. Why did she feel so discontent despite everything she had worked so hard for? She turned to more work as a solution, convinced that another promotion or another project would fix her inner turmoil.

This blindness to the deeper truths of her suffering—the delusion that more success would lead to happiness—was a prime example of ignorance, the third poison. Ignorance is the root cause of misunderstanding reality and clinging to impermanent things, leading to ongoing suffering. All things, accomplishments, jobs, careers, even life, are impermanent. To realize this can bring anxiety or liberation, depending on the mindset one chooses. Sarah’s inability to see the impermanent nature of success and the deeper causes of her dissatisfaction kept her trapped in a cycle of stress and unhappiness. To be liberated, however, is the ability to accept impermanence and find joy in a career for the sake of it, for the fellowship, and for the attainment of wisdom.

The Awakening

Sarah was called in for a performance review after a particularly disastrous team meeting, where her outburst caused a key team member to quit. Her boss, a seasoned executive, spoke to her candidly. She acknowledged her achievements but pointed out the wreckage she had left behind—broken relationships, a demoralized team, and her declining health.

For the first time, Sarah realized the true cost of her actions. The greed that had pushed her to overreach, the anger that had isolated her from her colleagues, and the ignorance that had blinded her to her own needs and the needs of others had all contributed to her growing unhappiness.

In the following days, Sarah began to reflect on her actions and their consequences. She enrolled in a mindfulness course and contacted a professional coach, hoping to gain some clarity. Slowly, she started to understand the power of letting go—of ambitions that only led to suffering, of anger that poisoned her relationships, and of ignorance that had kept her trapped in her delusions.

Sarah’s journey toward change was slow and challenging, but it marked the beginning of a transformation. She started to prioritize balance in her career and personal life, fostering a more compassionate relationship with her team and acknowledging the impermanence of external success. It wasn’t an overnight fix, but as she gradually let go of the Three Poisons, Sarah discovered a more profound sense of fulfillment and a connection to the three positive attitudes that lead to liberation: generosity, lovingkindness, and wisdom, the topic of our next Mind Your Business article.