We make decisions more than anything else. Filtering information effectively forces us to learn crucial skills of prioritization and delegation—skills that enable or block our advancement. When the stakes are high and the pressure is on, learning how to embrace a daily practice increases our chances of not only survival but effective performance. Learning how to prioritize and delegate information for ourselves, first, helps us drive results more effectively with others.

Like a seed, we are equipped with everything we need to succeed. We don't require perfect conditions. In fact, persistence amidst challenge and change is what serves as the catalyst for growth.

Your ability to evaluate others requires context you likely do not have. Instead, focus on yourself.

We know the right path is to practice patience, especially when it’s hard. Patience is a quality of emotional equilibrium and neutrality. Neutrality is where you enjoy the highest creativity, where you see to most alternatives to reactivity.

Being right, often, can be both a blessing and a curse.   This is a good time for asking questions—but be strategic. Our hastiness to be right or to dominate comes at a cost. We miss an opportunity to develop others, as well as ourselves.

Because we will cross paths with people who challenge our thoughts and reactions our whole lives, it's important to learn how to work with them sooner rather than later. They teach us about ourselves and challenge us to be better people. We can take comfort in the fact that, with the right tools and strategies, we can learn to deal with challenging personalities in ways that are constructive and help move us and others forward.

People with challenging personalities get us to react to them by threatening our Ego. When we are belittled in some way—real or imagined—we feel destabilized. Vulnerable, our natural instinct is to strike back or lash out. This is one reason, but not the only reason, that it’s dangerous for our Ego to be in the driver’s seat.

In 1995, author and science journalist Daniel Goleman wrote Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ. The book was groundbreaking but remained on the fringe of business literature for several decades. Now, the concept of emotional intelligence is widely accepted as the practical application of an individual's ability to apply their knowledge of emotions to manage their own behavior and to influence others.

We have worries. We also have solutions. Our challenge is to trust that we can solve a problem with creativity and considered response instead of reactivity.