How do I handle the attacks and compromises of political leadership?

You have grown into leading. But the attacks keep coming, and each compromise takes a small bite out of you. That wearing-down is real. It is the tax on standing where others will not stand. Feeling it does not mean you are failing. It means you are exposed, which is what leadership is.\nThe attacks hurt most when you take them as a verdict on your worth. They are usually not that. They are what people throw at anyone who holds power and makes choices. Learn to sort the criticism that is true and useful from the noise meant only to wound. Keep the first. Let the second pass through you like weather. It is not about you, even when it uses your name.\nCompromise wears differently. It wears when you forget why you made it. So keep one line clear in your own mind: the thing you will not trade, no matter what. Around that line, bend freely. Below it, never. When you know where your floor is, each compromise stops feeling like a loss of yourself. Write that one line down today. Read it when the storm comes.