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.