The price tag you wrote yourself

A driver turns down loads he doesn't like until the one dispatcher he's desperate to please calls — then he takes anything, any hour, any route. A line cook who shrugs at most things goes tight and careful the week the executive chef is watching. We all have that one thing we want so much it quietly hands someone else the controls. The wanting isn't the problem. The size of it is.

Epictetus saw exactly how this works, and where the leash gets fastened: "it makes no difference what the external object be, the value you set upon it makes you subservient to another" (Discourses 4.4, Oldfather). Read that twice. Not the object — the value you set on it. The promotion has no power over you until you decide it's the thing that makes or breaks you. The moment you do, whoever can grant or withhold it owns a piece of your day.

So today's practice is small and almost mathematical. Catch the thing you're overvaluing, and turn the dial down a notch — not to zero, just to its real size. A good thing, worth having, not worth your freedom.