Take pride in your work, not your profession. How you manage your money is more important than how you get it, and what you do with it is even more important than that. Stay humble, and never look down on an honest day’s work.

I truly don’t know if I’d love camping as much as I do if my father hadn’t taken me. Maybe I’d have naturally enjoyed it just as much if I’d gone for the first time when I was 30, who knows? But I enjoy it immensely now, and every time I set foot in the wilds I think of him.

Yesterday I took all three of my children on an overnight camping trip. Our first one all together. They loved it as much as I did – as much as I do, still. They asked me if we could go again soon, and if we could go more often, and when the next time we could go was.

I don’t know the long-term effects of my choices or my actions. No one can know such things. But now, in this moment, my family is good, and I am with them, and I love them so.

Give your caring to those who can receive it. When you spend effort and emotion, make sure there is someone to accept the payment. The people in your reach need you more than you know. That’s where it belongs.

Often the way to solve a sticky problem is to ignore it for a bit and work on something energizing. The creative juices flow again, and you come back to the original problem with renewed clarity. It helps to get “unstuck.”

Sometimes it can feel difficult to do that, especially when many interrelated problems are all especially thorny or you have multiple areas of your life that bring you stress today. But I promise, there is some corner of your life, however small and dusty, that has something you can take action on and improve in a simple way, right now. It could be as simple as cleaning your toilet, but it’s still progress.

Don’t run from stress, but sometimes a tactical retreat to regroup is just fine.

The source of all anxiety is looking at things you can’t touch. Touch is the cure for anxiety; if you can interact with something, physically move it or speak to it or draw on it, then it ceases to be something that hijacks your amygdala.

That sensation you feel, when you feel anxious? That’s supposed to be a set of chemicals and impulses that help you deal with the problem. It gives you the alertness to find an escape route or the strength to fight or even the social impulse to befriend. But it’s reactive. Something frightens you, and that part of your brain goes “Oh, you seem to have a problem! Here’s a bunch of brain juice that will help you solve it.”

But if you can’t solve it? Then you just keep that feeling, and your brain just keeps pumping in more jitter-juice and you overload. That stuff is meant to come in short bursts.

In the days when we evolved this particular function of our brains, there was no such thing as a non-immediate problem. Our savanna ancestors didn’t think about things like the state of a distant world or a looming proposal at work. The sorts of problems we evolved that response to deal with are all problems that would be dealt with swiftly, and then the panic would recede until it was needed again.

Listen to me. You are not meant to panic all the time. And if you are, it’s not a disorder or a psychological problem. It’s a very expected response to a really terrible behavior that most modern people have adopted, which is paying attention to problems you can’t solve, all the goddamned time.

Look, your brain can’t tell the difference between a tiger and a really realistic video of a tiger, which is why scary movies work on us even though we know they’re movies. So when you look at a picture of a problem that would be really, really concerning if it was happening right in front of you, your brain reacts the same way. But unlike the problem in front of you, you can’t actually respond to the distant one. So it never gets solved, so you never stop panicking. You can’t fight, can’t take flight. You just soak in the jitter-juice.

You need to stop.

I know this is hard. For one, when there’s a tiger in front of you the last thing your brain wants to hear is “just ignore the tiger.” For two, things like “doomscrolling” and other ways we let our lives become flooded with distant fear-generating scenarios are downright addictive for many. And for three, a whole lot of people have figured out that numbers One and Two mean that they can make a lot of money or gain a lot of influence by constantly feeding you this stuff.

But despite all that, you need to do it. You need to stop allowing that stuff to constantly hijack your brain. If you don’t, it’s just anxiety all the time, forever. In order to get rid of anxiety, you need to be able to solve problems. And this is one you can really, truly solve.

Sometimes, when there are many paths in front of me, I feel scrambled. I imagine deadlines where there aren’t any, and I feel a sort of pressure that is entirely self-imposed. I don’t want to be scrambled. I want to be over easy.

Here is what I do:

1. Choose actions that can benefit the largest number of possible paths. For example, taking on a few freelance clients to save extra money will be pretty much universally helpful, regardless of what I end up investing that money in.
2. Remember that time passes no matter what, and as long as I’m not backsliding I’m moving toward my goals, because I’ve already done number 1.
3. While time passes, don’t ignore it. My life is very good now, regardless of what I want to build for the future. I have incredible children, and spending time with them is a joy. No matter what else I’m doing, that’s my “why.” So take it while I have it!

These three things calm me considerably. And being calm lets me think more clearly, which lets me take the actions I want to take. It can sometimes feel like the long way around, but that can be the surer path.

As a leader, you have to conduct yourself in a way that sets the expectations of what acceptable behavior looks like. More than telling people how to behave, you have to show them by how you behave.

I’m thinking specifically as a parent, but this applies in just about every circumstance where you’re influencing the behavior of others. It’s not just about the example you set, either. Yes, you need to “walk the walk,” so to speak. But you also need to teach behaviors that go beyond that.

You need to be a gently padded brick wall. What I often see leaders acting like instead is a spiky sponge.

What is a spiky sponge? It’s someone who barks but yields. They may yell, threaten, or even strike physically. But they’re also inconsistent, threats are often idle, and they’ll yield if they get frustrated. They try to lead through intimidation but often their main motivation is to make their own life easier.

Instead, you need to be a gently padded brick wall. You need to be kind in your demeanor, forgiving of errors, and welcoming to questions. But you must also be firm, consistent, and patient. People can bounce off you all day without hurting themselves, but they won’t move you. They know they won’t be hurt by you, but they also know that your values won’t be compromised.

Being the latter takes patience and confidence, both of which come from reflection. Be sure of your methods by researching, practicing, and being willing to adapt. Test your values and your ideas so that you are confident they’ll support the gently padded brick wall you’re building on their foundation.

Imagine you are an emotionless robot who does not care at all about human life. You have no feelings or empathy at all, zero compassion for the struggles of others, and everything in your existence is a cold calculation designed to maximize your own self-interest.

If this were true, you should be super kind all the time.

In my line of work, I hear stories constantly about people in positions of authority being heartless and cruel. It doesn’t shock me – I know humans have a great capacity for cruelty. What often shocks me is how rapidly that cruelty comes back to bite that person in the ass and then how shocked the person is about it.

I mean, this is a pattern I see repeated more times than I can count:

Employee: [Makes a reasonable request.]
Manager: [Responds in a thoughtless and cruel way.]
Employee: [Quits, and makes manager’s life very hard.]
Manager: [Shocked face.]

Variations on the theme abound, but the central lesson is clear: Even if you don’t actually care at all, pretending to have a heart is absolutely to your benefit.

I’m a pragmatist. I don’t see a lot of difference between pretending to be kind and being kind, as long as they both lead to the same actions. If someone gives a hundred dollars to charity because they genuinely care about the cause, and someone else gives a hundred dollars because they don’t want their employees to think they’re a miser, then the charity still gets two hundred dollars. So to my way of thinking, everyone pretending to be kind would actually be a huge improvement, even if no one’s heart moved a millimeter.

Make kindness and compassion your default reaction, regardless of how you actually feel. Everyone’s life – especially yours, if that’s what you care about – will improve.

Today, my children and I went for a nature hike. It was absolutely lovely, and the children had a wonderful time. At one point though, the energy levels of my youngest flagged a little (he was excitedly running around quite a bit, and thus went through his energy reserves a bit faster than the rest of us). He started to worry that he “wasn’t going to make it,” because the journey was too far.

My oldest then stepped in and walked next to him, saying “You don’t have to make it all the way back. You just have to make it to that next tree right there. You can do that, right?” And of course he could! He practically bounced. Then she told him he only had to make it to the next tree…

Before it became a trick, it became a game. He happily jogged from tree to tree at his big sister’s direction, enjoying his short little stints and forgetting entirely about the full length of the trail still ahead of us.

Breaking down larger tasks into small chunks works, but it works even better if those small chunks become a game in themselves, something fun to bounce to. And it helps to have someone you love along for the journey.