I was a day and a half into my vacation in the Bay Area, and I needed to be in Santa Cruz by four for a previously scheduled event. It was past 11 in the morning, I still had the Golden Gate Bridge to see, and then needed to make the two hour scenic drive down the 1 Highway. Considering I take pictures like a mad man and stop at just about everything with a hint of beauty in it, I was pushing things.

And I couldn’t get into my car.

I was standing in a parking garage in downtown San Francisco, ready to go, and my key fob had stopped working. This was not unexpected. It had gotten wonky, to the point that I now rarely lock my car, for fear of this exact situation. I had locked it this time because, well, I was leaving my car in a San Francisco parking garage overnight.

I could have gotten angry. Past Matt would have.

Past Matt would have thrown a fit. Past Matt would have yelled and screamed and cursed his luck. His blood pressure would be racing. He would have bitten the head off of anyone near. He would have blamed God, San Francisco, the parking attendant, his bleeping car, Hyundai, even himself eventually.

I have worked hard to remove Past Matt from life. He doesn’t help. He only makes things worse.

I tried the key fob a few times. I pushed the buttons in different directions. I used different objects to push it, in case my fingers weren’t applying the correct amount of pressure. The car stayed silent and closed.

I still didn’t get mad. I started to turn to problem solving. This wasn’t going to be an easy fix, but I needed to stay calm.

I needed to call AAA out to open my car, which could take a while. I had no phone service that deep in the basement parking garage, so I went up to street level and spoke with the attendant. Unfortunately, they did not carry any kind of lock jimmies or other tools for opening cars. So I called AAA and waited on hold for several minutes. Once I reached a service call taker, she had to transfer me to the San Francisco branch. I was on hold again.

I still didn’t get angry. I was settled and resigned and working on solutions to my problems. I was doing, not steaming. I considered my next few hours. Was I prepared to not stop as I drove down to Santa Cruz? Could I arrive a little bit late?

I decided I would not miss the Golden Gate Bridge. I would miss the event or try to attend later, rather than miss the bridge on a San Francisco vacation.

I was prepared to do what I needed to do to get what I could get done, and I would let the rest go.

As I remained on hold, I realized I had left all of my stuff from the hotel just sitting out in the open next to my car, where anyone could see it (and take it). At the risk of losing my connection, I decided I had better go down and at least move my luggage out of sight.

As I turned the corner to the car, I felt the key fob in my pocket. Just for just in cases, I pulled it out and pushed the button. My car lit up, now unlocked!

I was alone so no one could hear me laughing at this odd turn of events. I happily loaded up my car and resolved to not lock it again until I could get a new key fob.

I was able to see the bridge and get down to Santa Cruz. And I saved myself the stress and hardship of pointless anger.

I don’t say this (entirely) as rah-rah me. I’m just pointing out that this was once a problem for me, and that day it was not. I have done a lot of work to try to control myself in these situations, and to accept when things go wrong, without anger. I stay calm and reason my way through problems.

This is something anyone could do if they took the time to do it. Take a deep breath when you feel anger. Allow that little witness in you to guard you against auto-responses which only get you in trouble, or at the very least make you look like a fool.

If I can do it, certainly you can.

Managers don’t just lead the employees. They are ambassadors to the community and their clients. They are accountants of company assets. They are guardians of their employer’s business interests. They do the hiring and the firing. They set the level of standards by which their team operates. They are problem solvers and crisis managers.

And this is why you can get some pretty crummy managers at times. It’s not easy to do all these things. This position requires a varied skillset and a willingness to tackle things you’re not used to doing.

The one skillset among these without which you absolutely cannot make do is how to properly handle and engage and motivate your employees.

You might be able to wing the rest. But if you’re poor at these key soft skills, you’re not going to go far.

Here are eight rules I follow when dealing with my employees:

Set Boundaries and Expectations—and Stick to Them

You can be the friendly manager who everyone likes if you want. You can be strict with cleanliness but a little loose with on times. You can be aloof and always extremely professional. How you choose to manage is up to you.

But if you want to be taken seriously by your employees, you must be consistent in how you act. You can’t get on one person about being late while letting another slide. You can’t allow some to push the envelope with their behavior and then go by the book with others. You shouldn’t have sharp standards one day, and lax the next.

One of the key things employees are seeking from their boss is security and comfort. If they can’t tell how you will respond from one day to the next, they will not be able to focus as well on the job at hand, always wondering which “you” is at work that day. They have enough to worry about meeting your and the company’s standards. If they can’t trust you to be the same day after day, they will always be uneasy, unhappy and looking to get out as soon as they can.

Be Honest and Authentic

Be straight with your employees, as much as you are allowed to be. If they are doing a good job, tell them. Trust me, they want to hear you say it. If they have some “areas for improvement,” tell it to them with sensitivity and tact, but also be direct.

There will always be times when you can’t tell the whole truth. That is the nature of the business. Managers are always privy to more information about their employees’ futures and the direction of the company, as they need to be to do their job.

But employees will always appreciate it when you are clear with them on what you expect of them, and whether or not they are meeting those expectations. It lets them know where they stand. They don’t have to guess.

This includes not being afraid to be negative. You shouldn’t be unnecessarily so, but if all you say is positive opinions or give inauthentic evaluations, your employees will see through the bull a mile away.

You should also make sure you are always being your true self. Don’t put up a façade and act like everything is okay if it is not. Don’t be fake. No one respects someone who acts this way. Nor will they do what you need them to do when push comes to shove.

Care For The Well-Being Of Your Employees

Don’t be a user, i.e. someone who only values what others can do for you. Be a human being, first and foremost. Care about your employees.

If there is one thing I have learned, it is that if you care for your employees, not only will they care for you and work hard for you, they will also care for your guests. And if your guests are happy, your business is likely to be making money.

Be as interested in your employees’ futures as you are your own. Work with them to improve. Give them honest assessments of where they are at their position and in the company, and give them what aid you can to help them achieve their goals, both personal (within reason) and professional.

One trick I have learned is that when an employee asks you some conversational question (something more specific than “how are you doing”), it isn’t likely to be because they want to know so much about you, but that they want to be asked about themselves. If someone has something to say, I will be happy to give them the opportunity to share. Such behaviors lead to rapport and a supportive team environment.

Be The Rock In The Storm

I will admit this one is hard for me. I don’t always maintain as much calm as I would like in stressful situations.

That said, although it may be an area I can improve upon, I can still see very much the value in “being the rock.”

When things are going crazy, and everyone is starting to feel overwhelmed, they are going to be watching to see how you behave. That sets the standard for how they then act.

I once worked with a manager who was always a little frazzled in extremely busy rushes. This person would go into the kitchen with the right intentions and trying to help but would end up yelling at people and doing more commanding than helping. This always put the kitchen workers on edge, and the performance of the back of the house staff as a whole would actually suffer.

If instead you give your employees a calm demeanor and temperament, they will in turn be calm. They will feel less pressure, allowing them to perform their jobs better in the heat of the moment. What’s more, if you are not raising your voice, then you do not risk confrontations that can lead to resentment and open rebellion, or risk hurting team morale.

Show Respect No Matter Who It Is

Treat every person who works for you with respect. You might say that the actions of some at work don’t call for them to receive any respect from you, and I understand that thinking.

But respect is the bare minimum you should be showing to all of your employees for two reasons. One, they are human, and that alone is reason enough to be respectful. This isn’t just a good work rule but a good life behavior to adopt. Two, if you give respect, you will almost certainly receive it back. And managers who are respected get their employees’ best efforts and intentions.

Don’t just do this with your best or most trusted employees. Do it with everyone, even your lower performers or newest team members.

Make it a point to be courteous and professional. This is a small price to pay for a wealth of long term gains. Shake hands. Wish them well. Smile. Look at them in the eyes when you speak to them. Listen to what they have to say, without trying to plan out what you’re going to say before they are done.

If they have something exceptionally personal going on that is interfering with their job performance, be sympathetic toward their plight. There is always a point at which this must be addressed at work, of course. One can’t show up drunk and be excused for it because they got into a nasty fight with their spouse, for instance. But a little empathy goes a long way.

Don’t Command, Request

How do you respond when someone gives you an order, no ifs, ands, or buts about it? I would guess that you resent it and take offense. I know that I have in the past in the same situation. It is not a pleasant feeling for someone to exert their authority over you.

That authority is present, of course. Your job is to have and use that authority to achieve the business aims of your higher ups.

But do you need to make it obvious?

If instead of issuing a command, try instead to make it a request. Don’t say “clean up that mess at once,” instead say “could you please clean up the floor here?”

Making a request like this hides the authority behind it. It doesn’t bring the personal challenge into the equation. It sets the illusion that it is a request where your employee has a choice to not do it. Sure, it’s just a bit of social play, really, but it goes a long way to giving your employee a feeling of control over their own actions.

Explain Your Why

Don’t just tell people what to do. Explain to them why it has to be done.

If you give your team a reason they can accept, they will be a lot more willing to do what you want and without questioning further.

By explaining your reason, you show respect to them by elevating them to a partnership, at least in appearance.

If you just issue an order for them to do something and it is not clear why it must be done, they will feel like you don’t think they’re worthy enough to know why. Or think you believe they are not intelligent enough to understand.

By telling them the reason, it allows them to see into the whole tapestry of the work enterprise and know where their own role is in the business. Plus, if the reason is logical and sensible (and it always should be), they can see the purpose to it, and will believe that they are contributing in some important and meaningful way.

Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff

Like being a rock, this one is also a personal hardship for me, as I tend to be more detail-oriented than most. The reality is, though, that there is no easier way to kill the morale of a team than to be picky and disapproving.

No one should be expected to be perfect, including yourself. You need to set your standards and then give your employees the leeway to hit the mark as close as they can. Sometimes that might not be too close, especially if they are inexperienced or the task before them is especially challenging.

If you pick at every little thing they do, they will feel that you do not trust that they can do the job. This will send their confidence plummeting. Not to mention, your constant attention to their mistakes and having them correct them all the time makes working for you quite a chore.

In almost everything, we can find some way in which it can be improved, of course. But how often is the tiny improvement you seek worth the social capital you must expend with your employee to get it done?

Know when “good enough” is better than attempting to achieve perfection. Further, on those rare occasions when near perfection is truly needed, they will be more willing and able to go that extra mile to do it right.

This also goes for behavior. There are always lines you cannot cross, and which you must ensure your employees do not cross as well. But if you’re too controlling of everything around you, the environment in your work will be constrictive and unhappy.

In other words, within reason, let the employees show off their personality and be themselves, so long as they aren’t hurting other employees or your guests or business interests.

Of course you have. Unless you haven’t been in a bar or a club in twenty years. Or you hang out at higher end spots where the DJ knows better.

It’s a silly, schmaltzy song, and it is probably more hated than loved, given how much it is overplayed. When I hear the opening piano chords, I have to resist the temptation to roll my eyes.

And yet today my mind is enveloped by one key line from this poppy nonsensical song:

“Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.”

It is funny how apt a line can be, no matter where it is found.

Tomorrow, the restaurant I work for will be closing for the final time, and I expect to be out of a job.

But today I am not so concerned about not having a job, but instead on losing that daily human contact.

The reality is that I generally love human beings. I like being around them with all their quirks and humors and emotions.

And the restaurant business was how I maintained that contact. Yes, I am by nature an introvert and it is only a matter of time before I need to be by myself for a while.

But I am like the rope in a contest of tug of war between my desire to be alone and my need to have some regular contact with friendly people.

Two restaurants I used to work out have already closed, and I transferred from a third to the current location. So I have left friends behind before. It was always hard. I tried my best to keep in touch, although it is incredible how difficult that can be when you don’t see or hear from old friends on a day to day basis.

This last time may be the most difficult one yet. In every other case where I was leaving, I was going to some place new, where I knew I would make more friends and have novel experiences. This time, I don’t expect to be offered a position to move to, and even if I did, I am inclined by my life goals to turn it down.

So I return to that weirdly on point lyric in an otherwise forgettable tune.

This is a new beginning. And the end of some other beginning’s end.

I have been here before. I am not certain that the precipice at the end of which I currently stand has ever been so high and dark. But the fact of having to tackle the unknown is not new to me.

I know that what I seek is on the other side. While I feel melancholy at moving on from friends and from a job I have been a part of for more than two decades, I know that where I want to be is not on this side of that chasm.

I have said it before, and I will say it again. In order to grow, we must accept that success is not a guarantee and that it lies outside of our comfort zones.

So tomorrow when the restaurant closes, I will hug my co-workers, I will say farewell but not goodbye, and I will shake hands and pat backs.

And then I will step out not into the light of a complacent new beginning but the unknowable darkness of a further, more difficult goal.

And I think I will make friends there, too.

But sometimes if a meditation is too on point and perfect for where I am right now, I can’t ignore it.

Earlier this week, Holiday brought up in his daily email that one can never know what his true potential if he is never tested.

The quote, forthwith, from Seneca:

“I judge you unfortunate because you have never lived through misfortune. You have passed through life without an opponent—no one can ever know what you are capable of, not even you.”

I’m sure it seems odd to think that the lack of troubles is an inhibition to you reaching your highest self, but it really does make sense.

How does one build up physical strength? By working out, forcing your muscles to break down and rebuild into stronger versions.

How does one improve at something? By failing, over and over again, until you get better at it.

How does one broaden their horizons? By going out beyond the limits of their comfort zones and testing themselves against new frontiers.

This fact of human growth appeals to me in particular because I am a little over three weeks from likely losing my job, a fact I have mentioned in a previous recent blog.

I am trying to put a good face on it and not reveal that the end of that certainty of income causes me some level of anxiety and fear. I tell myself I am resourceful and multi-talented, having succeeded in a couple different industries. I have a network of friends and former business associates whom I believe will help me find employment quickly if I need it. I am working on my own gigs and have the confidence I can do the work necessary to make those succeed. I am making plans to cut my expenditures and believe I can instill the discipline to do so and to live a life of less, at least for now.

But in recent days, as the end comes ever more perilously near, I have found myself uneasy. I have weird dreams and troubled sleep. I have a low-level anxiety at times that settles in deep in my gut and is difficult to root out.

And I know that is my fear of the unknown. I have never been actively unemployed from all jobs since I was 17. That is 29 years, for those of you without a calculator handy. I actually often joke that I in fact have had two jobs more often than one job in my working life.

And I don’t have bountiful savings to fall back on either. No, I am not going to be destitute, but like many Americans, I have not saved well. What I have saved will not last terribly long if I don’t find new income.

So this quote hit me hard. It seemed so apropos to what I am going through.

It is helping me understand that this challenge before me is not one to be avoided. No, I need this obstacle. I need to truly test myself. I need to have the courage to step out of my comfort bubble and take on the unknown.

For how will I ever know who I can really be if I take the easy way out? Scramble for some job that makes me unhappy, just to keep me at the status quo? Never try to do something I really enjoy and get more out of life?

If I am true to the person I wish to become, then I cannot take the easy way out. I must lose my job. I must fall back on my own resources. I must be willing to push my limits.

“You never know how strong you are until being strong is your only choice.”

— Bob Marley

I was utterly confused. I was walking into McDonalds and my view of the business front was blocked by a wall. I didn’t think anyone could see me yet.

I walked around the wall and looked toward the cashier counter. A young woman was looking directly at me and rushing to the cash stand, a big smile on her face. She welcomed me again to McDonalds.

She appeared to me to be unreasonably pleased to take my order. She was in her late teens, and seemed kind and positive.

After repeating my order back to me, she asked me to insert my card if I have a chip. As I did so, she started to sing. Just a little ditty. It seemed to be a happy tune.

She offered me my receipt and said, “I will know where to take your food because I have seen your face.”

I couldn’t help but break out into a smile at this. It was so over the top and unexpected. I thanked her and went to take my seat.

It was clear to me that the girl was at least mildly autistic, although clearly high functioning.

I thought about how much of her life could very well be a struggle, above and beyond what most of us go through. In the race of life, she was starting behind the starting line where the rest of us were and seemed unlikely to be able to keep up.

If this reality occurred to her, it was not apparent in her actions or demeanor. She seemed happy and proud to serve her customers. She seemed to take joy from every interaction.

And I thought, why don’t I do that?

Why doesn’t anyone really? Choose to be happy. Choose to be positive.

Now, I’m not talking about the Law of Attraction here, wherein one is supposed to think positive thoughts and by doing so in some mystical way bend the universe to provide good things for them. There is no basis for that in reality.

I am talking about, whatever happens in life, take the optimistic mindset.

The point is you can choose to be down about whatever is going wrong in your life and slog your way through your day if you want. You can be miserable and wallow in self-pity. Perhaps others will even sympathize.

Chances are, though, they will do it from afar. After all, who wants to be around a sourpuss? Suddenly no one will help you or offer a shoulder to cry on, because frankly, you’re a drag,

That is the power of the negative woe is me mindset.

If you choose to do that, you will have company. I hear a lot more complaining and whining about life’s problems than I do gratitude for its gifts.

If you choose to be positive, people will help you. They will want to. They will want to be around you.

Smiles even have a positive physiological effect. The mere act of smiling and thinking positively has been shown to increase endorphins in your bloodstream, which are natural “feel good” hormones.

Of course, you must remain based in reality. Just choosing to be happy isn’t likely to fix any of your problems, much less all of them. You must marry attitude with action.

A “can do” attitude throws away the doubts and imbues in you a belief and confidence in your own resilience and ability to cope. Wouldn’t that be better than sitting in the dark bemoaning your trials and struggles? Or giving up before you get anywhere?

Whatever life this young woman makes for herself, she seems likely to accept and love it for what it is. She will be far happier than most people I know, even if she achieves far less.

He was no rice farmer. He was a professor of economics. His whole life, he had taught economic principles to his students, and sent them off to go change the world. He had never had to apply them himself.

But, now, here he was, a new owner of an old business, and little idea how to run it.

He could have sold it, made himself a little bit of money and continued his life as an economics professor. Indeed, that may have been the sensible thing to do.

Instead, he quit the university and set about on a simple plan to reshape the family business, starting with those two buildings. He rebuilt them into steel structures, modernizing them, making them more sound and permanent.

Then he acquired other buildings and remade them in the same way. Eventually, with eighty-three buildings built over thirty-two years, this former economics professor was named the world’s wealthiest private citizen by Forbes magazine in 1991.

Takaichiro Mori had pivoted from more than half a century of one life to find unmatched success in an entirely different industry. And in the process, he remade central Tokyo into a modern urban metropolis.

At 46, I am eight years junior to Mori when he made his monumental course change, and I am faced with a similar challenge. In a little over a month, I am likely to be out of a job, surplus to requirement at a company which is closing more locations than it is opening.

I have options. I can continue to manage for another company. I could switch to another position in the current one, and bide my time. I don’t really have many doubts that I can move on to a new position somewhere else and more or less stay at the level I am currently, or maybe even improve upon it somewhat.

But is that what I want? Do I want to remain an economics professor for another thirty years? Or will I instead give real estate tycoon a shot? Metaphorically, of course.

Mori was no massive success story before he inherited his father’s business, and neither am I. But he made himself into something, even on the wrong side of fifty years old.

I know many people who are themselves facing similar questions and self-doubts. They are maybe not in their fifties, but many of them are in their forties, like me. They, too, are looking back on lives where they have yet to achieve much and wondering if it’s possible to change.

Mori was renowned for his humble lifestyle, wearing only a simple black kimono in his office, and living in a modest apartment not far from work. He was not a man of extravagance, and proclaimed himself merely lucky to have benefited from a post-war boom in Tokyo real estate values.

If Mori could do this, why can’t I? Why can’t you? At thirty? Forty? Fifty? Older?

It’s never too late to bloom.

I don’t accept that my past defines where I go in the future. The past is the past, unrecoverable and unchangeable. Therefore, I spend no time being concerned about it. My future lies before me, and that is all that matters.

If you find yourself in a similar spot and of a mindset that you cannot change, Mori’s story shows that you can.

The only person who can stop you from achieving your dreams—at any age—is you.

–Anonymous

Sometimes when I wake up, I don’t jump out of bed to start my day. Instead I grab my phone and lose myself in mindless screen time.

To be fair, I also often do things that improve me, such as reading The Daily Stoic email, or doing my Duolingo exercises.

But such is what I often do when I allow myself to get complacent and comfortable. I can dawdle the day away like no other. What can seem like an open expanse of a day with limitless possibilities can quickly become tightly constrained, as I struggle to complete my daily to-dos before I must be off to bed again.

And I wonder why I am not accomplishing as much as I want to?

I ran into the above quote last year, and it struck me as quite profound. I hadn’t thought of things in that way.

It spells out to me the end result of making poor choices on little things that don’t seem to matter so much, like deciding whether to get out of bed right away and get after life, for example.

Perhaps if I spend an extra minute or two on my phone, it won’t seem like such an imposition on my day. But those minutes add up. Then you’re talking hours, whole days, weeks.

Recently the subject of death bed confessionals came up in my mastermind group, as some were relating their overall life vision as more or less the person they expect to be when they are dying and looking back on their lives and their accomplishments.

I immediately thought about this quote and about what kind of man I want to be. I found that I was clear in three of four key areas, those of health, wealth and relationships.

These were easy for me to pick out. For health, I am to be fit and active and disciplined in my habits. For wealth, I would like to be comfortable enough to not be concerned about my finances, but not desire for so much more beyond my needs that it lead me astray. For relationships, it was to simply be of service to others, as many as possible.

The fourth area, the self, though, was a bit fuzzier. This calls for you to be much more introspective. There is a lot more variation here. Everyone wants to be healthy and wealthy. But when it comes to how you define who you are, what ideal paradigm is there for that? There is none, because who you wish to become is as varied as there are people to have the thought.

So I dug deep into this one and asked myself, “What sort of man do you want to be, Matt?”

And I decided I wanted be emotionally resilient and in control. I wanted to be able to experience boundless joy and happiness, but be strong enough to ditch pain, anger, sadness and frustration, the emotions which can only hold me back. I wanted to live outside of my comfort zone and confront my fears. I wanted to be a person others could come to for wisdom and help.

For some time now, I have had a vision statement and a definition of who I am aiming to become, but I don’t know that I made it so clear as I did after this most recent exercise.

And that Matt, he doesn’t stay in bed for a second longer than he has to. When life beckons, that Matt jumps out and starts back on the path. On that Matt’s death bed, it would be hoped that the man in the mirror closely resembles the person described in my vision statement.

Have you established your vision of your future self? If you were to die today, how close would you be to that hypothetical perfect you?

I only get one life, and I don’t want to leave it wanting. I would imagine it is much the same for everyone else.

So go get after that perfect you. As Karl Marx famously said on his own death bed, “Last words are for fools who haven’t said enough.”

Or done enough.

That in and of itself is not mind-blowing in the fantasy genre. It’s actually a rather common trope, like a recreation of Greek myths of old.

This time, though, it led me to think about the end.

As in, death. Mortality. And more than that, even. Entropy.

I know, I know, I lost you.

I’ll take you back to sophomore year physics class for a bit. Entropy is referenced in Isaac Newton’s second law of thermodynamics, which basically says that entropy, which is a gradual decline into disorder, always increases in an isolated system.

In my example, the “isolated system” is the universe. As time passes, the universe tends to fall into disorder. Its ultimate rock bottom state is a bunch of random particles, the most base level of matter and energy, randomly distributed throughout space. No rocks, no planets, no stars, no humans. The universe wants to be that, more or less.

You can see the evidence all around you. Erosion sweeps away rock and dirt into the sea. The sun burns and blasts out a little more of its energy, and its fusion engine loses a little more fuel, so that one day it will run out and collapse within itself. We are alive now, but we are destined to die, and when we do, our bodies break down into smaller particles once more.

And so I thought about this character whom had attained immortality, and considered: was this such a great thing after all? To be in defiance of the natural course of the universe? What would any such creature find to be of value?

If you value nothing, does life have meaning?

If I was some immortal demi-god, I wouldn’t need to fear death. Since I will not experience death, I have endless time. Time would then lose its value for me, much like other very common substances, like water or air.

Didn’t get my workout in today? No worries, I will do it tomorrow. There will always be a “tomorrow” for me. Time only has value because we mortal beings know that, one day, time will run out. Death will come, and we will have no more time.

If the sun never stops shining or running out of fuel, it will never supernova or become a red giant. And so the Earth will never be swallowed up by an expanding star, nor receive less than its normal allotment of heat and light.

The Earth would never change.

Would we value it less? Likely. Some would say we value it little enough even with the knowledge that it is not a permanent thing, but I digress.

Death is a form of an ending. And an ending is change. For in everything that changes, something new is born—but it rises from the destruction of the old. Every breath we take brings in air, filled most critically with oxygen, which is “destroyed” in our cells and reconstituted as carbon dioxide and breathed out.

Change. Something is removed. Something else replaces it.

And so, death, ending, change, these are the basis for everything we value. We value our lives because they may end. We value money because we can lose it. We value people because they die too.

The fears of death and change are among our most crippling ailments, and yet they are also the most necessary for us to live lives of meaning.

Don’t fear your end or wish to become immortal. Instead, recognize that that inevitability makes every day you live count and every experience matter.

The benefits of meditation have been well-documented. It seemed like just about every successful entrepreneur or artist meditated on a daily basis. And as someone with particularly volatile emotions at times, I was keen to apply the practice to my own emotional resilience.

Only, it turns out I wasn’t very good at it.

I couldn’t keep my mind from bouncing around. It wouldn’t stay empty. And when it went off on its own, I often forgot to reel it back in, or to dismiss whatever thought it had gone off chasing. Focus was an issue for me.

All of the books and articles and apps I invested in indicated that this tendency would go away, and that my mind would settle down. That may indeed be the case, but it appears my particular collection of neurons is the mental equivalent of wild untamed bucking horse. I have yet to keep from being thrown.

And so I haven’t really invested in a daily meditative practice. Sure, I go through stretches where I give it a game shot. I am in one now. Thank you, New Year.

But it really is going to require me to accept that it may not work for me, and to just do it anyway. Mayhap I am reaping the benefits after all, even as I dismally fail to corral my centrifugal vortex of a mind.

While perhaps meditation itself is not a gleaming success for me, it did give me a rather sublime thought amidst my exercise earlier this week.

And that is the power of appreciating “now.”

There I was, sitting in a chair in my bedroom, trying to clear my mind. It was a chilly, quiet day. I could hear my mini-fridge steadily humming. I heard the rumble of cars whizzing by on the freeway nearby. My socked feet were settled on the floor and my breath was even and level. My hands laid on the arm rests of the chair, with my fingertips more than a little cold from the crisp air.

It was here that my mind wandered in a direction I did not expect. I thought about now. Where I was now. Who I was now. When now was.

And I realized now is special. This now is special. Why? Because it is happening now. And it will never happen again. It is unique and its like will never come again.

I will never be this age again. I will never be the exact person I am again at this moment. The world, the universe even, will never be the same again. As I sit here in this chair, the world moves on and I with it.

I opened my eyes and appreciated the moment. I didn’t think about what lay in the future. I didn’t worry about what had happened to me in the past. I just simply sat still and considered the sublime nature of now.

In doing so, I came to understand how wonderful it is that I can contemplate this. That I am alive and present to do so.

And I consider how many of these moments I have been given, and yet I throw them away like nothing. All their uniqueness and individual power, one after the other, none ever occupying the same space, and when they are gone, they are gone. And I had thrown them away.

I recognized that I only had so many of these moments left to me. And that was the real gift of now. It created in me a tremendous surge of energy to do, to become, to live.

To be. For as long as I am able.

Even if you don’t practice mindfulness, take some time today to consider the power of the present, and appreciate how wonderful and special it is. Let go of past regrets and future concerns, and just be content with now.

During this battle of wills, I briefly lost control of my mind, as one does when angry. I said things I regret. I said things to hurt, and to intimidate.

The who, the what, the why of it all, doesn’t really matter.

The only concern is that I got angry and lost control.

Whenever something like this occurs, I tend to get reflective after the episode and try to determine where I went wrong, and what I could do to stop it from happening again.

I found myself particularly disappointed in my actions, as the person with whom I argued is someone I have a good deal of respect for.

So I decided to dive deeper into our words and my feelings, to really get at the root of why I reacted so strongly to his words.

The rage I felt in the moment, that overwhelmed my control, came from a feeling of being dismissed.

Now, I wasn’t really dismissed. The core of the message was for us both to calm down, and talk sensibly when we had cooler heads. This is entirely rational and the correct way to defuse a volatile situation.

But I felt dismissed, unimportant, and inferior.

“It’s not a sensible strategy,” my bruised self proclaimed. “No! It is a personal attack!”

As I now calmly type these words and recall, this line of thinking strikes me as sheer insanity.

And, yet, I went there, I thought that, I reacted.

What is the problem with being dismissed? I ask myself now.

That is the core of what set me off. I was in fight or flight mode, and viewing the entire discourse as an attack on my person. My lizard brain was already inclined to defend itself, to be prepared to return fire.

Why?

Ego, of course. To dismiss me is to make me less. And my ego could not stand for this. Or at least not when I’m in a confrontational state of mind.

As I mulled this, I considered other times I have gotten angry, or seen others do so.

For instance, if I am cut off on the road and I react with anger… why is that? I can only guess that in “taking my road,” this other person has in some way made me less once more. He took something from me and now I am less valuable. Sure, the road is a public good and the time lost as I slow down behind him or consider a lane change is fleeting, so how less valuable is my state of life at that point? Negligible, of course.

And yet still I react with anger, as do others. Road rage is a common occurrence nowadays.

It all comes down to ego. Almost every time I have felt aggressive or angry, it has come down to a reaction to some perceived attack on my person or my identity. And almost always, that assault is a fiction of my own creation.

In doing so, I cause myself and those around me to suffer unnecessarily. Indeed, the misperception of an attack on my ego results in an actual loss of respect for and trust in me on the part of others who see my reaction, a loss which is much greater and more serious than the imaginary one in my head.

With this intuition in mind, I am now telling myself, whenever I start to feel a little tense or irate, that anger is ego. And ego, in most circumstances, just gets in the way and leads to negative consequences.

The anger is not necessary. I am not being dismissed. I am not being attacked. I am not in actuality hurt whatsoever.

I may regret that confrontation, but it may have given me a powerful tool to combat these feelings when I get triggered. I merely repeat to myself “Anger is ego” until I calm down and can assess the threat rationally.

If this proves beneficial, I will have taken the good out of an otherwise regrettable situation and made myself a better person.

If you also struggle to keep control when confronted, maybe try this and see if it works for you as well.