Last year you’d have fired back. This year you put the phone down. That gap is the whole story.

Restraint that was impossible a year ago and comes easily now is the clearest evidence of change there is, and almost nobody notices it in themselves. Nothing outside you shifted. The provocation was the same; what changed is what it could pull out of you. That difference is the whole measurement.

Find one situation this year that you handled differently than you would have before. Say plainly to yourself what the old response would have been. Then give the gap the same weight you would give any other achievement.