The promotion list is out and your name is not on it. In the morning you are disappointed, which is fair. By evening something worse has set in. You do not just feel passed over. You feel like less of a person. That second feeling is a clue that your worth has been tied to the wrong measure.

What is really going on

If you keep looking outside yourself for approval and validation, you will never be happy. People are all different, and each of them sees things in a different way. So your reputation is not something you can control. If your worth depends on it, your worth is in other people’s hands.

The way you choose to measure your worth shapes the kind of life you live. Measure it by outside events and you will rise and fall with every result.

Wisdom in action

Start from a different place. You were born worthy and enough. When you insist that you are flawed or inadequate, you are arguing with the very life that made you as you are. And when life knocks you down, remember that every one of us is one of a kind, as each snowflake is.

Then change the stick. Use one that is based on things you can control, and not on the outside events of your life. Stop trying to please everyone around you, and begin to satisfy yourself. Life is short.

When you know who you are, and you are pleased with the person you have become, a certain peace stays with you through the ups and downs that nobody escapes. You go on believing in yourself whether you have been fired, been through a divorce, or missed a promotion.

So do not chase the things that lift your self-esteem for a short while. Measure your worth by who you are at your core. Act according to your values, and build a life that has meaning and purpose.

Try this today

Write down three values you want to be known for, such as honesty, effort or kindness. Tonight, score your day only against those three. Leave every result that was outside your control off the page.

At dinner, everyone at the table praises a plan you think is a mistake. You nod. Someone asks you directly and you say, “Yes, sounds good.” On the way home you feel oddly tired, and a little smaller than when you left. Nothing bad happened. You just spent three hours being someone else.

What is really going on

With so much influence coming at us from outside, people tend to forget who they are. They put on a mask and build a different personality simply to fit in. Most of us like the idea of being true to ourselves. But in the moment we go along to get along, and do what everybody else is doing.

Authenticity means knowing exactly who you are, and being happy about it. Being untrue to your own nature stores up a great many problems for later in life. If you value authenticity and freedom over conformity and approval, three signs tell you that you are on the right track.

Wisdom in action

1. You are honest with yourself about what you think, feel, want and need. You have to be honest with yourself before you can be honest with anyone else. So you make room to connect with yourself, perhaps through meditation, writing in a journal, or time in nature. You look at the harsh facts you would prefer to avoid. And when a hard choice comes, you are aware enough to trace your fear to its root.

2. You share your thoughts and feelings freely. You may fear being judged. You may be tempted to tell a small lie to keep the peace. Still, you push yourself to speak when something needs to be said. You do not swallow your feelings just so that others stay comfortable. You are willing to risk embarrassment, because you know your feelings are valid, and that voicing them is how a hurt gets healed and a broken thing gets fixed.

3. You honour your needs, and say no to what conflicts with them. You know what keeps you balanced in body, mind and emotion, and you put those things first, even when it means refusing someone. Your needs do not have to look like anyone else’s. It does not matter that another person manages on four hours of sleep, works around the clock, or fills every evening with social plans. You do what is right for you, and you take good care of yourself, because you are the only one who can.

Try this today

Catch one moment where you are about to agree only to keep things smooth. Say instead, kindly and plainly, “I see it a little differently.” Then say how.

You are introduced to someone new. Within two minutes, without meaning to, you have measured them. Which college? How good is their English? What is their job title? We all carry a private yardstick, and it is nearly always marked in the units of whatever we ourselves are good at. An old folktale shows what that habit is worth.

The story

A scholar once had to cross a very wide river. It was a long, slow trip, and he soon grew bored. He called out to the boatman.

“Let us talk, boatman. What languages have you studied? Do you know anything of grammar and phonetics?” It was a subject in which he was a formidable expert.

The boatman shook his head. “No, sir,” he answered politely. “I have no use for such tools.”

“What a pity,” said the scholar, looking down his nose. “Then you have wasted the better part of your life. Everyone ought to know the rules of language.”

Some time later a storm broke. The wind whipped the river into waves. The little boat was thrown about and struck a rock that jutted out of the water.

Now the boatman spoke. “Sir, forgive my simple mind, which must seem dull to you. But tell me, wise one, do you know how to swim?”

The scholar shook his head. “I am afraid not, boatman. I have always been immersed in thinking.”

“In that case, sir, you too have wasted your life. For my boat, alas, is about to sink.”

Wisdom in action

The way we see a stranger often says more about us than about them. The scholar did not really ask what the boatman knew. He asked whether the boatman knew what he knew. When the answer was no, he wrote off a whole life.

The tale sets two kinds of knowledge side by side, and it is honest about which one mattered on that river. Sometimes plain, practical wisdom is worth more than the highest learning.

Try this today

Think of someone you have quietly ranked below yourself: a driver, a junior, an elder who never studied much. Ask them to show you one thing they know how to do and you do not. Then notice what happens to your yardstick.

The alarm rings. For one second everything is as it was. Then you remember: the job has ended, or the house is in another city now, or someone who was always there is not. You pull the blanket back up and think, life will never be normal again.

What is really going on

Change is unavoidable, but that does not make it easy. Sometimes it is not wanted at all. And even when you wanted it, turning the change into a habit, or simply accepting it, is likely to be hard.

The thought under the blanket is half right. Life will never go back to the old normal. What it leaves out is that you will learn to create a new normal. Human beings endure. We are built for survival. The haze you are in will lift. It may not lift as soon as you would like, but it will.

Wisdom in action

Because change is so hard, you need a little positivity to carry you through, and to keep reminding you why this change is necessary and may even be good for you.

Some people draw on their faith to find the lesson in a hard time. Whether or not you do, you can still use a painful experience to understand yourself and to grow. Absolutely everything that happens to us can be treated as a chance to learn. It does not come naturally, though. You have to train your mind to think along those lines first.

There will be mornings when you want to stay in bed for good and believe your life is over. It is not. Life goes on and the world keeps turning. If you check out, everyone else simply carries on without you. So you make a conscious choice: get up, put one foot in front of the other, and keep walking. Do not give up. It is not an easy choice, but it is yours to make. And when things turn for the better, you will be glad you made it.

Try this today

Choose one small thing that will belong to your new normal: a morning walk, a fixed breakfast time, a call to a friend. Do it today, and again tomorrow. A new normal is built out of repeated small things.

You spend twenty minutes walking the team through your plan. The slides are clear. The logic is sound. You finish and ask, “Any questions?” Silence. Everyone nods and files out. A week later nothing has changed, and you wonder what went wrong. You spoke well. But you were talking at them.

What is really going on

Being able to put your view across in a clear and convincing way is not enough. Dialogue is an art of its own. Even very practical organisations struggle to improve their performance and get the results they want, and the cause can be traced straight to one ability: whether their people can think and talk together, especially at critical moments. Dialogue sits at the heart of engaging people and of thinking strategically.

The reason is simple. A small group is smarter together than any one member is alone. Dialogue is the way to harness that shared intelligence.

Wisdom in action

Dialogue turns into action when four things happen:

• People listen to each other with respect.
• Everyone sets aside fixed opinions about one another, and hard conclusions about the world around them.
• The intelligence of each person, and of the group as a whole, is drawn out.
• The group opens up to fresh thinking about the challenges and possibilities in front of it.

Building this culture can start with one move. Ask about, and agree on, the most critical questions your team or organisation must answer to succeed in the future. Perhaps it is where you need to disrupt your own way of working before competitors or customers do it for you. Perhaps it is how to free up capacity and resources. Perhaps it is where to shift focus to stay ahead.

Whatever the question, the most valuable parts of the conversation will be the ones that neither side could have imagined before it began. That is the test of a real dialogue.

Try this today

In your next meeting, do not open with your answer. Open with the one question that matters most, and let three other people speak before you do.

You send the report and spot the wrong figure one minute later. You correct it, apologise, and nobody minds. But for the rest of the afternoon a voice in your head keeps going: careless, everyone noticed, you always do this. The mistake took one minute. The commentary takes four hours.

What is really going on

Your inner voice is the conversation you hold with yourself in your head all day. Sometimes it is supportive. Sometimes it is critical. For many of us it is mostly a source of insecurity and unease, and not much of a support. The aim is not to silence it. The aim is to work with it mindfully, so that a weakness becomes a source of strength. Three exercises help.

Wisdom in action

1. Listen with curiosity. Begin by simply observing the voices and the conversation going on in your head. Normally we are so identified with these voices that we take every word very seriously. Try listening with curiosity instead, with some detachment and lightness. You will notice that some voices are positive and some are negative. Greet both kinds with a little humour.

2. Talk back wisely. Next, listen to the inner dialogue and answer it, gently steering it in a better direction. If the voices are attacking you over a mistake or a poor judgment, calmly point out the reasons why you can afford to be a little easier and less harsh on yourself. If they are going on about a project at work, deliberately bring in the parts of the project that are going well, or that you can feel good about.

3. Find the still, small voice. Last, listen a little deeper, underneath the loud chatter of the everyday mind. There is a quieter voice there, coming from a deeper level of you. Its nature is kind and quiet, strong and wise. You only hear it when you listen closely, in a relaxed frame of mind.

Try this today

The next time the commentary starts, do not argue and do not obey. Say, “There is that voice again,” and smile at it. Then add one true sentence in your own defence.

You say, “I look awful in this photo,” and wait. What you want is for someone to answer, “No, you look great.” When nobody does, the whole evening feels a little flat. Most of us have done some version of this, and it is worth understanding why.

What is really going on

Everyone likes a little attention now and then. Attention seeking simply means doing things that are likely to make others notice you. It becomes a problem only when the need goes beyond a limit. Four patterns show where that limit lies.

Fishing for compliments. A true compliment is one that is given without being asked for. People who feel deeply unsure of who they are often try to prop up their self-esteem by pointing out their own good qualities, instead of letting others notice for themselves. Most of us fish occasionally, and it does not always mean low self-esteem. The trouble begins when you need someone else to say you are good before you can feel good.

Seeking sympathy. This is extremely common, and it is attention of a negative kind. You are not being praised for your strengths. You are being pitied for your misfortunes. Sympathy itself is a good thing. Setting out to collect it on purpose is not healthy, and it can even push a person into risky behaviour.

Pretending you cannot. Children do this often, and adults do it too when they feel neglected. You ask others to do a task for you because you have told them, or have convinced yourself, that you are not able to.

Stirring up drama online. Creating a scene on social media belongs to the same family.

Wisdom in action

The common thread is asking other people to supply a feeling that has to come from inside. Praise and sympathy that arrive unasked are worth far more than any amount you can pull out of people. So do the thing well, and let it be noticed, or not.

Try this today

The next time you are about to drop a hint for praise or pity, pause and say plainly to yourself what you actually need. Then do one thing you are quietly proud of, and tell no one.

It is two in the morning and the old film is running again. The course you dropped. The harsh words you never took back. The money you trusted to the wrong person. Or perhaps it is something that was done to you, something unfair that you did nothing to deserve. Years have gone by, and it still sits on your chest.

What is really going on

First, you are not alone. Every one of us has made a fair share of mistakes. Most of us regret things we did, and things we neglected to do. Most of us have also been through bad situations that were not our fault at all.

Second, the feeling has some truth in it. Your life today is, to a large extent, the result of your past actions, choices and experiences. That is why the past feels so heavy. It looks like the author of everything.

But here is the good news. Your future is not decided by the past. It is decided by how you act in the present moment. The past explains how you got here. It does not have to define you, and it does not get to choose where you go next.

Wisdom in action

You cannot change what happened. What you can choose is how you respond to it, and how much power over your present life you are willing to hand it. That amount is not fixed. You set it.

This holds even when the event was severe. However large it was, you can choose to look at it as a lesson learnt. A lesson is something you carry forward and use. A weight is something that only holds you down. It is the same memory, held in two different ways.

Try this today

Pick the one memory that weighs most. Finish this sentence on paper: “Because of that, I now know…” Then name one thing you will do today that the person who has learnt that lesson would do.

You are three weeks into a bad patch. At work you watch the clock and will the hands to move. At home you look at the calendar and wish you could tear off a handful of pages and land in the month where this is over. All of us have wished for that at some point.

What is really going on

However much pain you are in, one fact holds. Everything that happens to us has its own time and rhythm. In the end everything passes, everything arrives, and everything changes. Absolutely everything has a beginning and an end. So when something bad happens, there is no need to despair, even though it troubles you.

The same rule applies to the good times. If you are in a comfortable phase right now, make the most of it, so that it stays with you as a good memory.

Wisdom in action

Getting through a hard time takes three things: patience, time and reflection. That is not easy, but it is not impossible either. And the day does come when you look back on what happened as a great lesson.

The one who has patience lacks nothing. With patience you can keep moving, enjoy the road, take on changes, and stop the present from slipping away unnoticed. Rushing the clock gives you nothing. Patience gives you room to think about what this event means, and about what you want to make happen next.

A Chinese proverb carries a very healing piece of logic. If the problem has a solution, why worry? And if it has no solution, why worry?

Finally, although everything passes, something always remains. It may be small or large, and it is nearly always something you learned. It settles into your memory and becomes part of who you are.

Try this today

Take the thing that is weighing on you and put the proverb to it. Does it have a solution? If yes, write down the first step. If no, write down one thing it is teaching you. Either way, you have something better to do than worry.

You saved for six years to buy a home of your own. The day you got the keys was one of the best of your life. A month later you caught yourself looking at bigger flats online and feeling, once again, that you were not there yet. Nothing has gone wrong with you. This is how wanting works.

What is really going on

Most of us have spent months, sometimes years, working towards something we truly wanted. It may have been a goal to accomplish, or a part of life that badly needed to improve. And when things do finally fall into place, something else is waiting. There are always more possibilities, and more things we are going to want, whatever we have already achieved.

Reaching the top of the mountain we have been climbing does feel very good. We celebrate. We breathe out in relief. We look back and appreciate how far we have come. Then we look up and notice that there is yet another mountain to climb.

Wisdom in action

The usual advice is to enjoy the journey. On a pleasant stretch, that is easy. But depending on what you are working through, enjoying it can be a great deal to ask.

So aim for something else. It is more than acceptable to trust the journey instead. This is a choice about where you put your attention. You decide to trust what is happening, and you settle into the understanding that life is, somehow, rearranging itself to bring you what you need.

The best part of this shift is a quiet one. You no longer have to keep trying to answer questions that nobody can answer yet. Will this work out? How long will it take? What comes after? You can leave them open and still take the next step.

Try this today

Choose one thing you are in the middle of. When an unanswerable question about it comes up, tell yourself: “I do not need to know that yet.” Then do the next small piece of work in front of you.