I don't know where along the way it all happened, but at some point between my 39th and my 40th birthday, I sort of calmed down. There was a time when I ran hot, getting irritated by the smallest things. I would get frustrated at an email response, or get annoyed that things weren't moving as fast as I thought they could. I was always rather politically correct about it, but inside, I was burning.
I could let the smallest thing just ruin my entire day at work.
I even came home from work one day so riled up that I threw my laptop bag right in front of my in-laws. Let me set the scene. I came home, parked my car in the garage, and got a call from my skip-level boss. He said some stuff that set me off, and rather than parking that conversation in the driveway, I carried it into the house. I walked up the stairs and hucked my laptop bag, with the laptop in it, all the way across the kitchen floor. It slammed into the fridge.
To add to this scene, my in-laws were sitting in the living room waiting to greet me as they had driven three hours to stay a few days with us.
"That's our daughter's husband," I'm sure they were thinking. Not my best moment. But it was a microcosm of how I could carry things with me and let them really bother me in ways that weren't always great.
And then, somewhere around the time I turned 40, it all sort of subsided. Things just stopped bothering me like they once did. I flipped a switch that started to cause me to question why I would allow people, politics, culture, or environments to carry with me and ruin my mood or my happiness.
I'd love to give you some enlightened moment of learning, but I think the reasoning is that I started to learn that it just didn't really matter that much. Me behaving in a way that wasn't appropriate, or me allowing my entire day to get ruined as a result of an idiot, it just stopped registering the same way. I think it's partly experience, but also partly values. I learned that letting my values get interrupted by things I couldn't control just wasn't worth it.
Also, those people who make you feel that way aren't worth your time and energy. You're going to let a narcissist ruin your day? No. It's not worth it. Not one bit.
I think my feeling today is that getting all worked up and frustrated by things you can't control doesn't make sense. Why put yourself in a position to ruin your afternoon over something so small in the grand scheme of things?
So put things into perspective. Stop for a minute and think about what is important to you. I'm not saying you shouldn't have emotions about things, but I am saying you shouldn't let them ruin your outlook. You have way too much going on to let someone or something in your career absolutely derail your mindset. And I hope you can reach this outlook before you hit a certain birthday, because trust me, it's a way better way to operate.