The world is unequal in nearly every regard.

From the moment you’re born (in fact, a good deal beforehand), there are already weights on the scales. You don’t come into this world with anything close to a blank slate.

On a micro level, that persists. You will never be exact as “X” as your neighbor – exactly as wealthy, exactly as healthy, exactly as wise. Exactly as happy.

But you will also never be exactly as “X” as you were today, and will be tomorrow. Time exists. We are not static, we are lines flowing through the years.

Some people want to tear and shred when they witness some unequal measure of anything. Your car is nicer than mine, so I’ll flatten the tires and smash the windshield. You’re in better shape than me, so I’ll cut your hamstring. You’re happier than me, so I’ll make you miserable.

Don’t fall into that trap. Every second you spend destroying is a second you could have spent creating. Better to help the future version of you than hurt the future version of someone else.

You can’t build a house out of the ashes of someone else’s.

There’s a great mental heuristic I like to use whenever I’m deciding if I want to purchase something. I visualize a table with both the thing I want to buy on it, and an amount of cash equal to the purchase price sitting next to it. I then decide which I would take, if I could only take one.

That gives me my answer. Shiny new things are shiny and new, but money is pretty dang versatile, despite not being terribly interesting in comparison to some new trinket. So it’s worthwhile to give them both an equal shake.

This trick also works if I’m deciding whether or not to keep something. I can visualize the object I already have next to either a.) the cash I could get for it, or b.) the empty space I’d free up if I got rid of it. That helps me decide which things are worth keeping. (For me, very few things get kept in this instance – I value versatility in my objects, and few things are as versatile as money and empty space.)

Taking those two concepts together made me realize that there’s an additional question I should very often be asking myself, but seldom do.

If I’m looking at, for example, a new tool and I decide not to buy it because it doesn’t pass the heuristic above, I should then immediately ask myself: “should I sell any of the tools I already have?” I mean, if the tool I don’t have doesn’t pass the “better than money” test, then maybe the tool I do have wouldn’t pass, either. If I don’t allow myself to be fooled by status quo bias, then there’s no difference between two objects just because I own one of them and don’t own the other.

The same applies to the reverse – if I’m deciding whether to sell something or not and I decide to keep it, the next question really should be: “should I buy more?” After all, if an object is worth more to me than its cash equivalent, that might still be true for the next one.

Of course, diminishing marginal returns keep this from being a universal rule. The second identical hammer is a lot less valuable to me than the first. The third is virtually worthless. Not everything maintains the same per-unit value if I get more than one.

But that means that for any given category of item, there’s an optimal level – the number where the one I have is worth more than its volume in space or amount in cash, but the next one wouldn’t be. I don’t always know if I’m at the correct level, and certainly I err on the side of less. But asking the question is a good idea.

This goes well beyond personal effects. It’s probably pretty easy to figure out if I own the right number of spatulas. (Even if somehow that number were more than “one,” which it certainly isn’t, the ease at which money can be converted into spatulas means I can probably hold off.) But what about investments? Those are trickier. I think the question helps.

Certainly it doesn’t hurt to ask, and asking unusual questions can help refine your thinking in other ways. So the next time you decide not to buy something, ask yourself if you should sell something similar. And if you decide not to sell something, ask yourself if you should buy more of it. You never know what strange insights these kinds of questions can bring.

If you see a car stalled on the side of the road, you’re likely to drive past it. If you see someone pushing their car down the street, you’re more likely to stop and help.

This phenomenon translates in all sorts of scenarios, and works for a few reasons. First – why do you drive by when you see a car stalled on the side of the road? It’s not because you’re a bad person or callously indifferent to the suffering of others. No, you drive by because there’s probably not a lot you can do, and it’s probably not an emergency. Cars stall and break down all the time, and in most cases you call a tow truck or a friend or whatever and you solve it. Unless you can do something special that the driver can’t, there’s seldom anything meaningful you can contribute.

Now, let’s look at the other example – someone pushing their car.

Why do you stop? Well for one, if someone is pushing their car (as opposed to sitting around waiting for a tow truck or a ride), then the need seems more immediate. You don’t push a car unless you have to. Maybe this person genuinely can’t afford a tow or a taxi. Maybe they don’t have a cell phone so they can call someone. This is someone with a more genuine, immediate need, and the good in us demands we help.

But there’s another reason. We stop and help because there’s an obvious way we can do so. I don’t have to be a mechanic or own a truck. Almost anyone can help push.

And there’s even one more big reason, maybe the biggest – the person pushing their car isn’t just sitting around waiting to be rescued. They’re doing what they can.

What’s the lesson? People are more likely to help not just when it seems like a more severe situation, but also when it’s obvious that they even can help, and when the person they’re helping looks like they’re putting in their own best effort. In any situation, you can do those things as well.

If you have a difficult situation and you want help, making it easy to figure out how to help you and showing that you’re doing your best already are both excellent ways to foster good will among the good Samaritans. There is absolutely nothing wrong with asking for help when you need it. But don’t ask and then sit around – get out and push.

Take consolation prizes when you can. Don’t be so bitter about missing first place that you also miss third.

You really wanted to get to the gym today. Wanted to spend at least an hour there. But call after call, emergency after emergency. You didn’t make it. The strongest thing in the world now – in some ways stronger than making it to the gym in the first place – is dropping to the floor in your kitchen and doing ten push-ups.

Better than nothing.

People aim high and then quit. Don’t do that – don’t use missing that last 1% as an excuse to not put in the 99% tomorrow, or even five minutes later. You planned to dump your whole bonus into your investment account, but most of it went to an emergency medical bill? Put the last scraps in anyway.

Better than nothing.

Don’t end on a goose egg (sales slang for “zero,” if you didn’t know that one). Get on the board, somehow. Even if it doesn’t affect today’s outcome, it affects tomorrow’s hope. You still lose the game whether the final score is 35-0 or 35-1, but that one point can be the bottom rung of the ladder you need to climb up tomorrow.

Better than nothing.

Tesla isn’t a car company. They’re a technology company.

McDonald’s isn’t in the restaurant business, they’re in the real estate business.

When I was 19, I worked for a little while as a salesman for a car company. Though we were a large chain franchise, we were in the secondary market – which means yes, I was the classic “used car salesman.” (Though as a 19-year-old kid, I was hardly the classic stereotype, I’m happy to say.)

Our particular company specialized in buyers with terrible credit, repossessions, bankruptcies, etc. I learned some fascinating things about the business while I was there. One of the ones that stuck out to me was my manager, Steve, telling me what kind of business we were really in.

“We don’t sell cars. We’re a credit repair company. Cars are just the mechanism.” See, the appeal of our particular brand was that we did a lot more reporting to credit agencies than the minimum required by law, so if you were on time with your payments you could substantially improve your credit by completing a car loan with us. Many of my customers didn’t even need a car – they either already had one or they lived in a part of the city where it wasn’t necessary, etc. Instead, they needed credit, and credit can be hard to build when you don’t have any. If your credit is so bad that no one will lend to you, it’s tricky to prove yourself credit-worthy again. So many people came to us and bought the cheapest car imaginable but financed it so they could boost their score back up.

The reason I learned this lesson is because in the early days of my employment there, I sucked. Steve explained to me that I sucked because I was trying to sell cars, and I was doing a good job of it – but people weren’t there to buy cars. I was talking up the features of the cars, trying to get people to take test drives, etc. When I became successful was when I learned to take people right to the desk to talk finance terms. Half my customers picked out a car after the paperwork was signed, because they hadn’t really come in to buy a vehicle. They’d come in to trade cash for credit.

That’s the lesson – understand what your audience really walked in looking for. Whether you’re selling, leading, flirting, speaking, anything – the other person wants something, and if you don’t have a good handle on what it is, you can’t help them.

If you’re like most people, you probably have any number of things that cause you to have Bad Feelings.

Events you don’t like. Activities you’d rather not perform. States of being you don’t want to exist in.

For each of these things, there is an opposite. In a neutral state, away from the poison, you could probably think about what the antidote is. And prepare for it.

A clean example – maybe you hate being thirsty. It gives you headaches and makes you irritable. The antidote? A convenient-to-carry water bottle, or strategically-placed water near your workspace, etc.

Maybe it really annoys you every time you get in your car and start driving, only to realize you forgot your sunglasses. Your antidote? A spare pair to keep exclusively in the glove compartment.

Your poisons aren’t infinite. Most are repetitive. Take the time to find their antidotes and place them strategically. Free your mind from those poisonous distractions.

Attitude is upstream from results. It’s not the other way around.

I’m sure you’ve encountered this, but many people anchor their attitudes as reactive; the result of things that happen. If things are going well, they’re positive – and vice versa.

The problem is that most stuff that happens to you happens because of you. Most, not all – but there’s very little point in focusing on the stuff you can’t control. You should focus on what you can.

When you make that distinction, you can realize how important a positive attitude is. Here’s the thing – neither a positive attitude nor a negative attitude will, by itself, do anything at all. You can’t sit around and wish good things into existence, no matter how upbeat you are. You need to work. But your attitude tremendously affects what you consider as viable pathways to work.

Now, some people will tell you that your attitude has no physical effect on the world around you, and therefore can’t make an impact. The world doesn’t know about your attitude and certainly doesn’t bend to it in terms of what opportunities are presented. This falls into a category of beliefs I call “unhelpful.” See, I don’t like to qualify beliefs as correct or incorrect, right or wrong. Instead, I use the terms “helpful” and “unhelpful.” A belief that your attitude doesn’t matter is an unhelpful belief, as is a negative attitude.

Why? Because the human mind is an imperfect computer.

Have you ever seen those cool pictures where it looks like a bunch of scribbled lines, but when you put on red-colored glasses to eliminate the red lines, the remaining blue lines form a clear picture? Your life is actually very much like that. Every day you actually see a thousand different things – good and bad, useful and useless, opportunities and dangers. And then your mind filters them. But every mind filters differently, and even the same mind can filter differently based on what you’re primed to see.

Your attitude is a high-impact way of priming yourself to filter out the bad stuff and see the opportunities. It’s like a bag of marbles of different colors – instead of picking them out at random, your attitude lets you look in the bag and grab the ones you actually want.

You can create an amazing feedback loop. Start with a positive statement – “Today I will find some success, no matter how small.” Then work. It’s almost guaranteed that you’ll find some success, no matter how small. Then your attitude statement was proven correct! Use that to prime your mind for greater statements and your work for greater successes.

Work backwards if you need to. Look for a recent success, no matter how small. Say, “I did that, so I can do this.” Then work. Rinse, repeat. Count your blessings, and watch them grow.

Sometimes you have to do a little housecleaning on your dreams.

It’s wonderful to be aspirational and motivated, to let ambition drive you. And plenty of my posts here on The Opportunity Machine center around practical advice for turning dreams into realistic action steps. But there’s a less pleasant – but no less necessary – side of this.

Sometimes you have to cut a dream loose.

Why? Because an unrealized dream will eat at you, destroying you from within. It will cripple your motivation for other dreams because it will constantly serve as a reminder of your worst proclivities.

You will absolutely not achieve 100% of your dreams. That’s totally okay! But the more mental space you clear for the things you both really want to do and really have the juice to accomplish, the more focused you can be. Better to have one dream become reality than ten dreams that languish in your mind, in the dreaded kingdom of “Wouldn’t It Be Nice.”

But how – how can you give up on something, and have it be a positive step forward?

First, recognize that cutting a dream loose doesn’t automatically equate to saying “I can’t accomplish this, I never could, it was stupid of me to dream this.” That’s folly. Instead, recognize it as you saying “This dream was one of many seeds that could have taken root, but my life went in different directions – directions I am pleased with or am working to improve. I have had many dreams, and others deserve my attention more now.” You can’t do everything.

Next, examine the dream for what parts you can salvage! Let’s say you wanted to be an astronaut, but a realistic examination of your life reveals that you have passed the point where that’s attainable. Well – why did you want to be an astronaut? Was it because of a love of space, or because of a love of science, or because of a desire for fame, or because of the thrill of exploration? Those are four very different motivators, and there are many paths in life that can reward those motivators that aren’t “astronaut.” Cutting loose the dream of being an astronaut doesn’t mean cutting loose the dream of exploring or of a career in science. Recycle the best parts!

Lastly, recognize that dreams are an infinite resource. You will always be able to have new ones – you can even resurrect old ones if the time becomes right. But space in your psyche is decidedly finite. If your head is filled with unrealized dreams then you’ll constantly be thinking about what you don’t have, what you haven’t done, a million “what ifs” that will poison and control you.

It is far better to have clarity of thought and purpose to the best of your ability. When you dream, dream of things you can actively work towards; when you work, work on the things you dream about. The rest of your time, fill with leisure, laughter and love – not longing for dreams unrealized.

How you react to your beliefs is more important than the beliefs themselves. Knowledge, information, and even conviction are only relevant if they actually change and inform the path you walk in the world.

This is why I think most “conspiracy theorists” aren’t playing with a full deck. It’s not the conspiracy theory itself! It’s the reaction. For instance, if I believed that an ultra-powerful, shadowy cabal of Illuminati controlled the world in secret, it would be absolutely bananas of me to loudly proclaim this belief. There’s a scene in The Dark Knight Rises (the second of Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy) where an employee of Wayne Enterprises has discovered evidence that Bruce Wayne is Batman. He approaches one of Wayne’s confidants with the information and demands money for his silence. The confidant, Lucius Fox, replies: “Let me get this straight. You think that your client, one of the wealthiest, most powerful men in the world, is secretly a vigilante who spends his nights beating criminals to a pulp with his bare hands; and your plan… is to blackmail this person? Good luck.”

But that’s what conspiracy theorists seem to do! They become convinced of a vast, powerful network of powerful agents and then start jumping up and down screaming about it, very publicly. It’s not the belief itself that disturbs me – it’s the extremely irrational behavior in response.

Maybe those things naturally go hand-in-hand – irrational beliefs couple well with irrational actions. But you don’t need one to have the other.

Some people have great beliefs but irrational actions. That’s a lot of people, in fact. Most good advice is obvious, but acting on it seems rare. Other people have crazy beliefs but seem to keep it together in their actions; sometimes this can result from simple societal pressure or it might just be that your irrational belief doesn’t really affect your day-to-day actions.

The deeper lesson to draw, however, is that simply believing in something isn’t enough. You need to translate that into actions. That can be difficult! Beliefs are easy to hold, but actions can be difficult and costly to take. Changing your life because of a belief is extremely rare. What most people do instead is to act however they want to act and then adopt beliefs that retroactively justify those actions.

Pretty much all of your nature as a human pushes you to be this way, so you’ll never be 100% successful in defeating that tendency towards ad hoc justifications. But you can certainly move the needle, and that’s absolutely worth doing.