The contemplation of celestial things will make a man both speak and think more sublimely and magnificently when he descends to human affairs.

Time spent on something vastly larger than your own concerns changes the scale you bring back down with you. After an hour with the stars, or with deep time, or with anything genuinely beyond your own affairs, the argument you were losing looks the right size. This is not escapism, because you do come back. You come back with better proportions and, oddly, more generosity.

Build in something this week that has nothing to do with your situation: a night sky, a long book, a walk somewhere old. Do it before the difficult conversation rather than after. The scale you arrive with usually decides the tone.