See yourself as someone else sees you. Then, in the ordinary events of life, the numerous small crises you face each day, be that hero. The newsie didn't even acknowledge it. He refuses to return incivility for incivility, because then he would no longer be in command of his own conduct. But it is also a psychological prescription for our emotional health.
Nobody is unhappier than the perpetual reactor.
His center of emotional gravity is not rooted within himself, where it belongs, but in the world outside him. His spiritual temperature is always being raised or lowered by the social climate around him, and he is a mere creature at the mercy of these elements. Praise gives him a feeling of euphoria, which is false, because it does not last and it does not come from self-approval. Criticism depresses him more than it should, because it confirms his own secret shaky opinion of himself. Snubs hurt, and the merest suspicion of unpopularity in any quarter rouses him to bitterness.