When I speak, am I too not listening? -Ramakrishna Paramahamsa

Balls and courage can be summoned up when one is cornered, but what's even more important, is discretion. The adage, 'Discretion is the better part of valor' is a very apt one. The balls and courage that we work up can be both, our best friend, as well as our worst enemy. It's hard to remain level-headed when emotions come into play, but that is the most important thing for one to master.

Hindsight teaches us to not pick battles just to prove a point, but to avoid them instead, whenever possible. The movie First Blood (Rambo I) drives this point home wonderfully. How does Rambo respond to a bad situation? He makes it much worse by reacting emotionally when he needed to be unemotional and level-headed. We often commit the same mistake. We can either unleash our frustrations, much the way Rambo did, and paint a huge target onto ourselves, or diffuse the situation with a compromise or two, and stay strong.

It's important to be able to differentiate between the unpleasant and the unacceptable. When emotions overpower reason, even merely unpleasant things seem unacceptable and intolerable, but in reality, they are not. None of us can avoid unpleasant situations entirely, no matter how hard we try. If we embark on a crusade to eliminate unpleasantness in entirety, we WILL run out of steam. Instead, if we learn to swallow the odd bitter pill, we can save our energy for more important and significant battles.

Whenever we feel the urge to get into a protest with all our guns blazing, we need to ask ourselves whether it's really worth the bother. If it's not, a more defensive approach may well pay richer long-term dividends.