I saw Oprah, on several occasions, pick a person from her audience and ask them for a short version of their story: Who are they, what have they learned, what difference have they made? Powerful stuff, I know, because friends and I co-published a small, community newspaper for 12 years, and whenever we posed those questions, something incredible happened: Because we cared enough to ask, their hearts and minds opened and they blew us away with their experiences, insights and plans. We filled an issue with the answers of people we asked: Who are you? What have you learned? What difference have you made? The heart-responses of a maid we came upon cleaning a large public restroom were as significant and inspirational as the governor’s.

Those really are the important questions, aren’t they? We can change any conversation to a communication with them. We yearn for true connections, we want to bring down our walls, but these are really scary times. While that is true, fear and hopelessness are mind-bullies that can grow a bunch of balloons into hot-air balloons—and toss us about as if they are in charge.

Did you ever tell anyone, “You’re not the boss of me!” That’s what we’ve got to do with fear and hopelessness, “Scram! No fear here! I’m the boss of me!” Maybe then we can take an imaginary hammer to our “protection” walls and go somewhere and do something for someone else. We’ll have made a difference for another, and have the satisfaction earned by giving.

Isn’t it really something that God created us and needs every one of us–that we all matter? We may think we don’t matter, but we couldn’t be more wrong. We are loved beyond measure as individuals, and what He/She most needs is our insight, our cooperation, our service. I picture our God of Love looking down on Earth and smiling at the light and sparkling colors where we’ve laid in our own small pieces of His cosmic patchwork quilt.

Have you ever noticed how something ‘sets you off’ and you let loose on someone, not just about the thing that set you off, but everything that ever set you off? That’s because anger comes from a place inside us that’s like a pool, and everything that has ever upset us is stored in the pool. Some of us may be more just or organized than others, so we only yell at Person A for Person A’s wrongdoings; some of us just let go on everyone for everything.

It doesn’t have to be that way, though. There is a whole school of thought that teaches there is nothing that can upset us unless we allow it to, unless we give others’ actions power over us. The idea is that we are in charge of ourselves and what we think, what we say and what we do.

This is serious business—accepting responsibility for ourselves. It’s a powerful life philosophy because we can completely transform our lives. We can stand back, breathe deeply, look around us as if we’re watching a movie, no longer an actor, but an observer. From this vantage point, we can see the girlfriend wasn’t cheating on the guy, she had just stopped to help someone with directions. As a movie-goer, we see the boss is worried about her own job, not our production–like she said. As an observer, we see the guy’s face when he cuts us off in traffic and we realize something is terribly wrong in his life.

A shift like this means we don’t take everything personally. We see there is a lot going on that has nothing to do with us, and for those things that do have to do with us, we can make conscious choices: choose upset or to look a little deeper. From the deeper place, doors to communication open; understanding grows, forgiveness develops, wisdom increases, and life changes for the better.

It’s not easy to make a change like this. But it certainly is possible and it is very worthwhile. We know ourselves better and we know others better. We see how much we all have in common—not how different we are. We’re all human beings with basic human needs, that’s all. It’s just our egos that tell us differently.