Nostalgia is a powerful drug. It’s very natural at my age for people to get into the “everything new is bad” mentality. Old movies were great, new ones are awesome! Old music was great, new music is terrible!

Look, here’s the reality: some stuff is great, and some stuff is terrible. It’s mostly evenly distributed across time, because it’s mostly evenly distributed across people who create it and people are creating stuff all the time.

If you love all old stuff and hate all new stuff, then you love a lot of terrible stuff and you hate a lot of great stuff. It’s easy to find examples that support your confirmation bias. Some old stuff IS great! Some new stuff IS terrible! But your “new” will be someone else’s “old” when they’re a cranky and nostalgic old coot.

Learn to let go of the worst of your artifacts, and make room for some rad new stuff.

Teaching people is a tricky thing. It requires a lot of faith and trust – not in the teacher, but in the student.

People who teach for a living in any capacity can shoot themselves in the foot by not starting with that faith. One of the most basic elements you need to trust is that the student wants to be there. This isn’t always a safe assumption, of course – if you’re a middle-school teacher, most of your learners are emphatically there against their will and you have to basically force them to learn. Of course, this is a clear case of the rules of the system actually hurting the learning process – if teachers were allowed to ignore the students who didn’t want to be there, they’d be much more effective at teaching the ones who did.

Most training professions that focus on teaching adults, whether college professors, corporate trainers, sports coaches, or anything like that should absolutely begin with the assumption that their students want to learn, though. You can’t care more than they do about their learning outcome. If you do, you’ll undercut their entire learning process. They’ll become passive and maybe 20% of what you teach will stick. Learning for a grade is radically different than learning for a skill.

The other major factor you have to trust, at any age level, is the existing skill set of your learners. It’s not just an incredible waste of time to try to teach things that your learners already know, it actively hurts the process of teaching them things that they don’t. If you start teaching a class of learners what they already know, they shut you out completely. They write you off, confident that they don’t need you. It also kills the rapport you need to build – nobody likes being talked down to.

When you teach, start with faith. Ask questions and be open, ready to hear before you start trying to dump your brain out into theirs. Use what you learn to target your teaching to the most direct, desired, and needed areas. Watch the learning bloom.

You can be the captain of a tiny rowboat, you can be first mate on a sailboat, or you can be part of the crew on a yacht. Which thing matters to you?

There’s not really a right or wrong answer here, but it IS important that you know what question you’re asking. Because some people don’t want to be “just crew,” even when their actual goal is getting to the destination quickly and safely.

I’ve seen this happen plenty of times, professionally. Someone is currently a VP at their company, and they’ve been offered a role as a mid-level manager at a different company. They balk, almost insulted. Nevermind the fact that the new company is a hundred times the size of their current boutique firm and the salary is double what they’re making now. No, gotta have that title.

Titles have their value, of course. But that value translates exactly two ways:

1. As a way of broadcasting the value of your contributions so you get more opportunities to do increasingly important/valuable work for increasing rewards.
2. Status games.

People get so hung up on Number 2 that they forget why it matters in the first place. Titles are a ladder. And you don’t climb a ladder just to stand on the higher rungs. You climb a ladder to reach something. If that thing is within reach, the ladder has done its job! Get the thing, don’t keep climbing right on past it.

You want to be captain of a tiny rowboat when it’s important that you demonstrate to others that you can competently captain a ship of any size… so that you can eventually captain larger ones. If you’re just trying to get to the opposite shore, get on the best boat, no matter what they call you.

(And yes, there’s absolutely value in “going your own way” and some people would rather take the rowboat for that reason… but if you’re going your own way, that’s not really about what you’re called, is it? You can call yourself Emperor Poseidon of The Seven Seas at that point!)

The wind doesn’t always blow. It doesn’t always rain. The sun doesn’t always shine (at least, where you are). But these are powerful resources – how we harvest them is what matters.

Are you ready when the wind blows? Do you have your sails unfurled, ready to capture the wind when it comes?

Some people don’t know what to do with good luck when they get it. They get a sudden windfall and they scramble to do something with it, most of it slipping away before they can. Because when they didn’t have it, they didn’t prepare.

You have to prepare for good luck as much as you have to prepare for bad. Whether you end up needing a sail or a tent, you need canvas either way.

What would you do today with your good luck if you got it?

A few days ago, I was discussing a problem with someone. He predicted a bad outcome to the problem, but then apologized for “being a pessimist.”

I told him that pessimism was a non-factor, and not to worry about it. The universe will do what the universe will do, and pessimism doesn’t affect it at all. For the things we can affect, we need The Comprehensive View.

The Comprehensive View is how you solve problems. You have to simultaneously hold a few viewpoints in your mind that seem contradictory from an emotional standpoint, but aren’t. These viewpoints are:

1. Things are currently bad.
2. Things aren’t as bad as they could be.
3. Things might get worse.
4. Things can get better.

None of those are mutually exclusive, but they evoke different moods. “Things are currently bad” feels defeatist or “pessimistic,” but it’s just an observation. “Things aren’t as bad as they could be” seems optimistic while “Things might get worse” seems fearful – but all of these observations are just mapping the landscape. And you need to map the landscape in order to find a way through.

Things are currently bad – why? Things aren’t as bad as they could be – what should we prepare for? Things might get worse – what would we do if they did? Things can get better – how can we make that happen?

Forget pessimism or optimism – both of those are modes of thinking that yield agency to chance. Instead, map your terrain and solve your problems. That’s The Comprehensive View.

My mother turns 70 today.

There isn’t enough space in all this blog to tell about how amazing she is; I’d need as many days as she’s been alive.

There’s an interesting point that happens where you start to “catch up” to your parents. Of course you both age one day every day, but the ratios change. When you’re five years old, your parents might be anywhere from around five to eight times as old as you, on average. By the time you’re in your forties, they might not even be twice as old as you anymore. That ratio feels meaningful.

My mother cleared basically every hurdle of modern life – a long and fulfilling career with a solid “brass ring” retirement that she now enjoys; a 40+ year marriage; a loving and solid family, both immediate and extended; many life-long friends with countless memories of grand adventures; vibrant hobbies and life experiences. If I can say the same at 70, my life will be a clear success. I am inspired by her.

And to top it all off, she did all that while remaining the kindest, saintliest person you’d ever meet. She’s a blessing to us all, and she is a constant reminder to me that if you’re clever and diligent, you never have to be vicious.

Happy Birthday, Mom. I love you.

It is virtually impossible to “uncrumple” a piece of paper. Once you crumple it up, it’s going to have creases and bends pretty much forever.

You can still write on it, though.

Some things can’t be fixed. But that doesn’t mean the broken thing doesn’t have its uses, too.

Sometimes curiosity is a driving force. It propels you to explore and experiment, to seek answers to important questions. It pushes you to greater action.

But not always. Curiosity, as incredible as it is, can also be a sticky tar that traps you in place. If you’re curious about the future or the present, it’s often the former. But curiosity about the past can be the latter.

Backward-looking curiosity can cause you to over-analyze, to dwell, and to constantly second-guess yourself until you’re paralyzed. You can’t move forward because there’s still so much to discover about what’s already happened!

But here’s the thing: there always will be. You will never finally turn over that last stone or solve that final riddle that makes everything that came before make perfect sense. You’ll never reconcile the past that was with the past you wished for.

You can align the future of your dreams with the future that’s coming, though. And curiosity about the path will get you there. So let the burning desire for knowledge and insight rage in your heart! But make sure it’s powering a steam engine taking you into the future, not melting you down into immobile slag.

You can’t make “half an attempt.” If you attempted it, you attempted it.

Maybe you could do better! But that’s true even of your best efforts – there’s always room for improvement. So don’t be down on yourself about “half a try.” You got in there, you put numbers on the board. That’s effort. Anything off the couch is effort.

Do it again tomorrow.

I was reading a book to my children tonight, and one of the characters told another something that the second character didn’t believe (even though it was true). The second character, incredulous, called the statement “ridiculous.”

My middle child, aged 7, said: “Just because something is ridiculous doesn’t mean it isn’t possible.“

I felt that was worth memorializing. It’s solid wisdom.