Seneca and Lazarus- an explanation of emotion?

In all honesty, I don't see how these two philosophers or their "philosophies" relate to each other, Lazarus's appraisal theory explains how emotions happen, and Seneca explains why certain emotions happen, and what we can do to counteract, stop, or decrease their effects. Seneca explains that negative emotions, mainly focusing on anger arise from certain rationally (or more like irrationally) held ideas about the world, and the problem with these ideas, are that they are far too optimistic. In Seneca's analysis, people get angry, because they're too hopeful. Whenever people are angry, there's an element of surprise, self-pity, and injustice, but if we didn't have expectations then we wouldn't get surprised, therefore we wouldn't get angry. Lazarus's appraisal theory insists that our emotions are evaluations of events that cause specific reactions in different people.  Thus the sequence of events is as follows: event, thinking, and simultaneous events of arousal and emotion.

I feel like these two theories would be more explainable had they been put together, Lazarus's appraisal as the first part, Seneca's as the second. They correspond with each other, this I think is the only thing they have in common.

They conflict only a little, because Lazarus's theory states our emotions are based on events and how we interpret them, but Seneca's brings up a new perspective of ours, expectations. Expectations in his theory play a big role, so I'm thinking the way these two could be put together ( like I said would work out perfectly up there ^) would be... Expectations ----> Event-----> Interpretation-----> Simultaneous Arousal  & Emotion.

My opinions are that Lazarus was correct, with that correction ^ and one statement Seneca mentioned in the video that caught my attention was something about how being pessimistic in the end will make you happier because you won't have as big of expectations as an optimist would have. This does make sense, but I think that living your life pessimistically will only hurt you in the end, sure you won't have that much of expectations to live up to, but then what are you living for? You must strive to be better, at all times, with high expectations of yourself. If at the end of the day you fail those expectations, you go home you deal with it, say you can do better, and go back out into the world with the same expectations, starting a new day. If you have expectations or not, i'm not so sure happiness will just fall into your lap.