Good morning! I hope the world is being good to you and you’re being good to it.

Grab your coffee or beverage of choice and share a thought with me!

Do you have a personal quality, or qualities, that serves as a source of pride or maybe that you consider the keystone of your personality. Perhaps it’s a way you carry yourself or your general approach to challenges that others recognize enough to comment on. You hear things like, “you’re always so calm,” or, “I appreciate how you always put others first,” or even, “I wish I had your confidence.” Whether we can personally identify a quality within ourselves, everyone has a foundational consistency to their actions. When I was younger, I naively thought that once I got the measure of a person, they will exist within that mold forever. As the years batter me with a deluge of learning experiences, however, it’s apparent people can change. This is something I probably should’ve always known, having grown up with the adage that, “when you assume, you make an ass out of u and me,” but I also learned pretty early on that I’m not as smart as I thought I was nor in any position to judge. Despite understanding this, I still missed how my personal label changed as well.

I’ve always considered myself easygoing and calm. While that typically served me well, I did once get dinged during my review while working at McDonald’s that I just need to move faster. A long gone fast food career aside, my internal rebuttal to that critique is that, yes, I could move faster, but I want to understand the situation and then be deliberate with my actions. That mindset usually serves me well – no fuss, no muss. While thinking I’m this laid back, calm operator, however, I missed the changes. Chill was no longer my foundational modus operandi.

I get worked up. The unexpected spikes my emotions. I dwell on concern for things unworthy of such attention. It’s unclear what caused this shift, but I have thoughts. Corporate work sucks. When everything is labeled high priority and a crisis, you can only hold the line for so long before being forced to operate in perpetual high priority and crisis mode. Then, not that I’m assigning any blame to a newborn, but welcoming a new child introduces a plethora of worries and concerns. And ultimately, every activity today requires more time, planning, and pieces, so those moments of pure, organic freedom from responsibility and worry are rare and compact. There is an inherent need to optimize every minute and every action, so when something does not go as expected, there’s a ripple of stressful discontent that has to manifest in some way.

For me, I get prickly. I’m short with others more quickly, and I get frustrated with things that shouldn’t garner frustration. While slow to recognize this unfortunate evolution, I did notice it and had to make a tardy resolution to not get so worked up over things. That may sound like a pretty generic and broad resolution, but it’s enough for the voice in my head to remind me to take a breath and let things roll.

Has it worked perfectly? No, absolutely not, but it has made a difference. I can no longer say my keystone traits are being easygoing and calm. I don’t even know that I’m as adaptable as I once was, but I am focusing on ensuring those qualities don’t disappear altogether, which is where they were headed. What replaced them then? I haven’t figured that out either. I guess I’m still molting. I’ll consider it a win, however, that I’m at least aware of the process.