Imagine you have a short-term financial emergency. You’re cash-strapped and some bills are due. So you decide to sell your car.

Now in some instances, selling off assets is a perfectly reasonable response to a financial emergency. If you have a beautiful piece of art that you enjoy, it still might make sense to convert that into liquidity when the times are tough. It might even make sense to downsize your car – if you have an expensive vehicle and can sell it for enough money to buy a more sensible one with cash left over, that could be a good move.

But just selling your car outright is probably not the best idea. Your car is, among other things, a capital asset. It generates money – or at least, it can.

Don’t burn the furniture to stay warm. Be willing to do anything it takes to survive, but don’t rush to the most extreme versions. The last things you should ever cut from your life are the things that generate resources.

At the beginning of this year, I lost my father. As tends to happen in these circumstances, various people in my life did various things as gestures of sympathy and support. My amazing bosses did something very unusual – they sent me a tree.

More accurately, they sent me a sort of tree “kit.” It had a little acorn sapling about an inch high, a pot, a bag of nutrient-rich soil, instructions, etc. I liked it significantly more than flowers; in fact, it might be the best of these kinds of gestures I’ve ever heard of. When you look at things that are linked in memory to a loved one you’ve lost, they’re often static – old pictures, objects they possessed, etc. But it’s hard to be sad while looking at a tree, and having a project to focus on is helpful. It was very good.

So I planted this little tree and put it next to a window. I watered it every day and told my kids about it. They loved watering the “Pop-Pop Tree” and they loved what it represented; a symbol that life springs eternal, and that we can leave the world better than when we entered it.

My bosses didn’t know this, but my father and I planted a tree together when I was about seven. It was a big fun project for us. In the yard of my parents’ house, that tree is still there. It’s enormous now. It outlived my father; it will probably outlive me. So this felt good, it felt right.

After a few weeks, the thing had grown well up out of the pot. A tall thin stem, a few leaves, etc. It seemed to have grown to the extent of what the limited space of the pot would allow, and the instructions included said that about this time it should be transferred outside. (Yes, I needed instructions for a tree. I do not have a green thumb, and this was the first time since I was seven that I had planted anything at all.)

My children and I made a whole ritual of it. We found a suitable spot in the yard and dug it up. We gathered stones to surround the spot, and churned up the soil, and transferred the mass of dirt and roots and the little sapling from the pot to the ground. We told stories about my father, their Pop-Pop. The sun set.

For the next month or two, we continued to water it, though the normal rains of the season lessened the need. It continued to grow, bit by bit. Until it didn’t. Until disaster.

One morning I went outside to find that the little sapling had broken. There was nothing left but a slight twig in the ground, and the little stem and its leaves lay next to it. A million things could have happened – sharp winds, a stray rabbit taking a bite, perhaps it even looked insufficiently like a tree yet to the lawncare company. Whatever happened, the tree was gone.

I didn’t expect to be as upset about it as I was, but I was pretty distraught. My children noticed immediately and consoled me, but I wanted it to be something they could learn from. I told them that these things happen – to trees and to people. But we can keep up hope, because even though this tree didn’t make it, there will always be another. There will always be another tree, and there will always be more people to love and who will love you. We can miss them very very much, but the world turns, and that is good.

I’m glad I said the words, and I’m glad my children heard them. But my heart was very sad. My children were kind; my son in particular said “I’m sorry about your tree” about a hundred times a day while hugging me. But just as when my father passed, the days will keep pushing into you whether you’re ready for them or not.

And then.

One morning I looked into the yard, and there was a new tree in the circle of stones. The stem had broken, but the seed was still there. The roots were intact; nothing had dug them up. So the plant still lived, and as living plants do, it grew. What truly amazed me was how different it looked now – a heartier base, thicker and shorter, with many more leaves than before. It was growing in the wild now, against the elements, not in a pot in my kitchen where it never knew wind or strife. It was stronger.

There truly was another tree. Life is not so easily beaten.

My father was like that. I remember when the doctors sat us down as a family and told us we had to prepare our goodbyes and get our affairs in order because Dad had at most six months to live. That was about twenty years before his death. Things knocked him down plenty of times, but he was a fighter. He was resilient. Like the tree.

I’ve put some chicken wire around it now – even the most resilient of us can use some help from family – but it’s already stronger and taller than the first version. I have no idea if it will make it through its first winter. I have no idea if, like that tree my father and I planted together more than three decades ago, it will one day be taller than I am and outlive the humans that once looked down upon it. I don’t need to know those things.

What I do know, is that there will always be another tree, and there will always be people to love, and who will love you.

It’s interesting how different people group experiences that don’t generate strong feelings one way or the other.

Let’s say you watch a movie. You enjoyed it, but don’t have any desire to watch it again. Certainly no desire to buy it. If it were on at somebody’s house you wouldn’t complain or leave the room, but you also wouldn’t request it or suggest it, especially when compared to the many other movies in existence you could choose from.

Some people would take that to mean you hated it!

For a lot of people, that’s because they’re not comfortable with how to treat things in the neutral space. Often they feel guilty suggesting something that isn’t 100% A+ super fantastic in the other person’s mind.

Someone once invited me out to dinner at a particular restaurant. I accepted and had a lovely time with a friend. They later asked me what I thought of that particular restaurant and I answered similarly to the movie description, above: “I like it, not a place I’d pick but certainly a place I have no problem going to.”

They responded as if they’d just run over my cat. “I’m so sorry! I’d have never made you go there if I knew you didn’t like it!”

First: you didn’t make me go anywhere. I’m an adult, and can voice my opinions as needed. If I didn’t want to go there, I’d have made an alternate suggestion. You couldn’t make me go somewhere if you wanted to.

Second: did I say I didn’t like it? In fact, I said I did like it! I just said I didn’t love it, but that’s okay. I’m comfortable in the space between. Especially because that’s where people are! You can’t expect to only do things that are exactly the perfect, favorite things of yours and still expect to connect with other people. I don’t need it to always be my favorite restaurant, my favorite movie, my favorite game. That’s a comfortable space to live in. It has good people in it.

I am going to give you an incredibly powerful tool for brainstorming, mentality, and creativity. I call it the “Ten-Minute Yes.”

Here’s the problem that everyone has: we reject things. Instantly, without thought, and without useful awareness. Someone gives you a suggestion or you become aware of an option and your brain says “no” almost on autopilot. Your gut instinct is sometimes good, but that doesn’t mean it’s especially informative. So when you reject things too quickly, you cut off avenues of creativity.

Here’s the solution: the next time someone suggests something to you when you’re feeling stuck, or the next time your search for a solution hits a potential option, don’t reject it – even if you feel like you know it’s wrong. Instead, set a timer for ten minutes.

During that ten minutes, live in a world of make-believe where you not only don’t reject that idea, you have fully and 100% embraced it as the solution you will choose.

When the ten minutes is up, you can go back to the real world. But for that ten minutes, don’t say “if.” Just look at “how.”

Want an example? You’re looking for a new job, but every job listing you see looks bad to you, so you’re getting frustrated. A friend jokes, “run away and join the circus.”

Set the timer! For just ten minutes, say “Okay, I’ve committed to joining a circus. Now – what will I do in the circus? Will I be a performer or one of the supporting team members? Which circus is the best? How will I apply – let me look up their website. Oh neat, they actually have a career page…”

When the timer goes off, you’re probably not going to join the circus (though you might, who knows?). But you will have generated a dozen useful ideas for your progress. Giving yourself permission for this temporary engagement frees your mind from a commitment and allows for positive play. That, in turn, lets the creative juices flow.

When the ten minutes is over, if you don’t join the circus – you’ll know why. Because you actually explored the idea, you’ll have more insight into what features of the potential solution didn’t meet your needs. That gives you direction and allows you to shape your future searches for solutions in a meaningful way.

So if you’re looking for a solution to anything and you’re feeling stuck, give this a try. The most you have to lose is ten minutes – but you have a lot to gain!

No one promised you roses.

You are entitled to the pursuit of happiness, not happiness itself. The happiness is in the pursuit, of course. It isn’t at the end. If you think it’s at the end, you’ll never get it.

Some things cannot be caught, only chased. But as long as you chase it, you have it. When you think you’ve caught it, it’s gone.

Do not be quick to dismiss effort as a chore, as an unwelcome barrier between you and your goal. The effort is the goal; it always was. You didn’t always know it.

Some games can’t ever be won, you just keep trying to beat your old high score. You are entitled to play again and again. You aren’t entitled to a single point. But as long as you play, the points will come.

Be grateful for every drop of sweat.

The point of thinking well isn’t to think endlessly. It’s to prepare a fertile ground in which good things can be planted. But once planted, those crops must be tended – which requires a very different kind of mental discipline.

Thinking well is about finding concepts with value. Once you’ve found one, the goal shifts – you must now implement that concept. You must turn it into action in your life, or else the thinking part didn’t yield any benefit. You have to close the trap around it.

Converting concept into action can mean a lot of things, but if you aren’t taking some action then you’re just thinking for the sake of thinking. That isn’t the point. Building a better mousetrap has no point if it never catches mice.

The more complex your information ecosystem starts to become, the more you start to need a central place that all of that information leads to. But this can create some significant friction!

It’s an old trope; the physical “inbox” sitting on a desk with stratified layers of paper, towering enormously over the desk, with the bottom third dating back decades. It’s a cliche for a reason – when you bottleneck all of your information into a central place, it slows the flow of that information down.

A command center has to be more than just the information graveyard, a place where it goes to die. It has to be a processing center that, at minimum, acts on information at the same speed it receives it.

This alone takes time. If you’re collecting information from multiple spheres of your life, it’s not going to be an instantaneous process to move it where it needs to be in order to take appropriate action. There are plenty of ways to do this sort of thing and I won’t pretend my way is the best for everyone. But the most elemental mistake you can make is assuming that your system doesn’t need its own slot in your schedule for maintainence. It does.

I believe in experimental experiences. In other words, do things to try things! New things are good. At a certain point, you’re good at all the stuff you already do.

But because I like to think about my own experiences, I like to mull over how I know if I enjoyed something or not.

Good company makes things very enjoyable. But to that extent, if I’m with good company, am I biased towards the action itself? Let’s say I’d never ridden a roller coaster before. I decide to ride one with some of my dearest and most hilarious loved ones. We have a wonderful time. Later, it would be reasonable for me to ask if I actually enjoyed riding roller coasters!

The same is true in reverse, of course. I love camping, but if I had to go a whole weekend with someone I found really unbearable, that might sour the experience for me. And if it were the first time I went, I might judge camping a bit too harshly.

Good company is just one confounding factor – everything from my hydration level to how much sleep I’ve gotten recently can affect my perception of things.

Of course… if that’s true, is that bad? I mean, is the “problem” here that if I have good baseline physical and mental conditions and good company, I might “falsely” just enjoy everything I do, forever?

Maybe I’m onto something here.

Think about a topic you know a lot about. An area where you feel very confident in your expertise.

Think about why you feel that way. How do you know you’re an expert? Think about how many hours you’ve spent engrossed in the topic. How many books you’ve read, courses you’ve taken, hours of footage you’ve viewed, other experts you’ve conversed with, etc. Consider all the times you’ve had the opportunity to have your expertise tested and proved up to the challenge. Relive the lessons you’ve passed to others on that topic, and the number of times you’ve been asked directly to opine on it. In short, take a full and honest inventory of the proof of your knowledge.

Now, the next time you’re about to give an opinion on any other topic, ask yourself if you’ve committed the same level of investment into your expertise on this subject.

If the answer is no, replace your opinion with a question, and prepare your mind to hear the honest answer.

This advice, if followed, will make you a much better and happier person.

I sometimes see people blasting sales or marketing efforts with some variation of: “I would never buy this! What are these people thinking?”

My (internal) response: “What makes you think the goal is to get you to buy something?”

You aren’t the only person in the universe. If you see a marketing campaign that is completely uncompelling to you, remember that. My father was fond of pointing out that if people keep doing something, it’s probably working. If it isn’t working on you, then it might be an interesting exercise to try and imagine who it is working on.

There’s opportunity there.

My father would see an advertisement that didn’t appeal to him at all, and it would broaden his horizons. He’d say, “Wow, so there are people out there buying that stuff, huh? Could be money in that.” It didn’t matter that he didn’t see the lure himself. He knew a simple truth: If you spend $500 dollars on a billboard, it’s because you expect to make more than $500 dollars back in sales from it. And if you spend $500 dollars on a billboard a second time, then you did.

So the next time you see a billboard (or anything else) that seems so abjectly silly that you can’t imagine who would pay for such a thing, remember – the market of products, services, and ideas is great and wide, and you are but a tiny island. Get a ship.