Don’t take yourself too seriously. Know when to laugh at yourself, and find a way to laugh at obstacles that inevitably present themselves.

The Gap Between You and Your Failures

There's a peculiar trap we fall into: the more we care about something, the more fragile and untouchable we make it. One mistake feels catastrophic. One awkward moment becomes a permanent character flaw in our minds. We become so invested in being competent, impressive, or "on brand" that we forget we're just people—people who trip over words, misread situations, and sometimes show up to meetings with coffee stains on our shirts.

The thing about humor is that it's actually a form of intelligence. When you can laugh at yourself, you're creating distance between you and your failures. You're saying: this happened to me, but it isn't who I am. That gap is where actual resilience lives. And when obstacles arrive—which they always do—laughing at them isn't about minimizing real problems. It's about refusing to give them more power than they deserve. A terrible presentation, a rejected proposal, a relationship that didn't work out: these are all genuinely hard. But they're also almost never as catastrophic as they feel in the moment.

The real skill is learning the difference between taking yourself seriously and taking life seriously. You can care deeply about your work without needing to be a monument about it. That lightness doesn't diminish your ambitions; it actually makes you more resilient when things get messy.