Sometimes after you’ve wronged someone, they kindly leave the door open for you to make amends. They tell you what they would expect, and then all will be forgiven.

If you’re not going to do it, so be it. I don’t know the situation. But I do know this: Don’t do half of it and then expect the full measure of forgiveness.

If you borrow someone’s car and get into an accident with it, you messed up. The friend might be justifiably upset. But they tell you that if you repair the damage, you’ll be willing to lend them things again in the future. If you just fill the gas tank up, don’t expect forgiveness – and don’t whine when you don’t get it.

Do everything they ask, plus a little bit more. Show that mistakes don’t define you – your honor does.

I recently spoke with someone who was having trouble at their workplace. She’s what the kids today call a bit “neurospicy.” A combination of some neurodivergence, along with some mundane eccentricities, makes it difficult for her to connect with most people and creates challenges in certain interactions. At one point, she commented: “It’s so difficult for me at work because I’m… like this!”

And then it hit me: No, that’s not it. It’s difficult for her because other people aren’t.

See, there’s nothing inherently wrong with her. She’s smart and funny and kind. She’s just smart and funny and kind in a way that’s a few feet to one side of the people she’s around all day. My suggestion to her was that it wasn’t her job that was difficult (objectively, she’s great at it), it’s just that she’s doing it with the wrong people.

Because she’s smart, this set her on a whole flurry of investigation, looking for organizations that do what she does, but catering to groups and demographics more aligned to her own identity. Sure enough, there were many! And now she’s in the (much friendlier) process of chatting with them to look for her next role.

If you’re a little different from the people around you, remember that those people aren’t all people. It’s one flock, and you find a different one of your feather.

A bad habit many people have is asking for help they don’t want.

We’ve all seen a social media post from someone starting off with “Am I wrong?” Then they detail a scenario in which they are obviously wrong, asking for someone to calmly tell them what the right path is. 99% of people will say, “Do the other thing, and apologize for the thing you did.” Maybe one other person will say, “You were right!”

And what happens? The original author gloms onto that one person, thanking them profusely for showing them that they were right all along, despite “all the haters.” They never wanted help – they wanted validation.

People do it in real life, too. Usually, if someone starts off a question with “now be honest…” the last thing they want is honesty. They’ll often argue if even the tiniest bit of the response deviates from what they’d hoped for.

Obviously, you shouldn’t do this. There’s not much more advice than that – be honest about what you want, and if you find yourself needing to ask for echo-chamber validation in order to be honest, take that as the sign that maybe you’re the one who needs to readjust. But what do you do if someone else asks you something this way (and you can’t just ignore it, as you can online)?

Try redirecting a little – positively. “Before I answer, can I ask you something? It sounds like you’re feeling a little nervous about asking me this question. Can I ask you why?” We don’t have to feed every bear that comes to our door. Sometimes the more productive conversation is the one underneath.

All of my kids are active, but my youngest, my son, is incredibly so. Even by our standards, he’s a little dynamo. If he isn’t able to be active, he tends to get frustrated, so I’m often finding new ways to let him stretch his independence.

Today, his closest companion (his older sister) wasn’t in the mood to play, and he was distraught. So I was telling him what he could do to entertain himself – a valuable skill to develop, especially for someone with more energy than most of his peers. I suggested that he could “go explore,” and he lit up. “Really?!” Yes, really!

I told him the basic rules for safety, namely that he couldn’t cross “any roads with lines.” This ensured that he didn’t tackle any busy highways, which also kept him within a half-dozen blocks or so of home. I pointed out which things were within this area, including his favorite pizza place.

He suddenly leaped at the idea of going there. He earns his own money for chores, so I told him how much he should take if he wanted a slice and some fries. His sister’s ears perked up, and now she was excited about this idea as well. Soon they both had pocket money and their scooters, and my 7- and 8-year-olds were off into the afternoon.

An hour or so later, they returned triumphant – full of pizza, stories, and added confidence. All it takes is a little extra scoot out the door, and someone to encourage (and believe in) you.

Beauty and coziness are rarely companions. The most comfortable chair is the old, busted-looking one, ragged with age and worn into a perfect groove. The warmest home is surrounded with wild growth. The best shoes are smooth with a thousand miles.

Don’t forget otherwise in your quest for aesthetics.

Before I will discuss a topic of potential debate with you, please read the following and sign at the bottom:

1. I pledge to initially assume baseline levels of both intelligence and kindness in Johnny. If he’s debating a position, it’s because he thinks it’s one that improves humanity. He can be wrong, but he isn’t foolish nor evil.
2. I pledge to change my opinion if I cannot find sufficient arguments in its favor to counter the ones opposed to it.
3. If I cannot counter the arguments against my position but still don’t want to change it, I will, at the minimum, clearly and specifically articulate the information that would make me change it, if such information was provided. In this case, I agree to cheerfully table the discussion until such information is provided.

Sincerely,

My father once told me that a very important thing you need to know how to do is break into your own house. He then spent the next several hours coaching me on how to do it, letting me think of solutions and try them out, gently guiding me, etc.

His explanation was this: If you ever lock yourself out or something, you’re actually the best person to solve that problem. You know your house better than anyone else, usually. And you’ll be more careful than someone brought in to do the job, like a locksmith – not to mention cheaper. But his broader lesson was that you needed to understand the way your things were protected. If your own house turned out to be shockingly easy to break into, that might be a sign you need to adjust a few things.

We tie a lot of things together in our modern lives. Imagine what would happen if someone stole your phone, for instance. Forget about protecting your assets from thieves accessing them via your device – how would you regain access to those things? Do you have a plan? What if the password storage system you have goes belly-up and you need to re-access accounts in a different way? Do you know how to navigate the various help desks and support teams and their labyrinthine ways?

It’s good practice to be able to hack into your own life when you need to. If nothing else, it’s a fun little self-assessment. But it might save you a major headache.

Marijuana is legal in the state where I live. I don’t personally smoke, but have zero problem with anyone who does. Recently, someone close to me underwent surgery and preferred to use weed over narcotics to manage pain (a sensible approach, in my opinion), so I went to our local dispensary to pick some up for them.

Something I noticed right away: The customer service was amazing. Not just competent, but incredibly cheerful, friendly, and above-and-beyond helpful. It was one of the best customer service experiences I could remember in recent years.

It was so good that it got me thinking about why, and the answer didn’t take long to realize. Dispensaries are on shaky ground. You have to do a lot of work to get local towns to be okay with a store selling what was, until pretty recently, an illegal substance. Lots of folks still don’t like it, and many a town planning meeting has been beset by people protesting such places coming into their neighborhoods.

As a result, those places need to be liked. They need to be safe, clean, friendly – all at levels well above and beyond any normal convenience store or other business. Not only might they lose customers if not, but they’re never far away from the wrong complaint getting their whole business thrown out of town.

This makes them very, very polite.

Compare this to an organization that has almost zero chance of losing your business. Think of a large, entrenched business with limited competition or, even worse, your local government. How polite are they? How helpful? Do you walk out of there feeling like a million bucks?

The lesson: Everyone behaves better when behaving poorly has a potential cost. You lose the service mindset when you don’t have to earn anyone’s business.

My children all prepare their own lunches for school, something they’re quite proud of. Last week my middle kid (Age 8) was making her customary peanut butter & jelly sandwich when she discovered the bread had gone moldy, so we tossed it and substituted a long roll. The next day when she got home, she commented that her friends probably thought it was silly that she had a PB&J on a long roll. She said, “None of them laughed or anything, but I’ll bet they were all thinking it was really silly.” There was a hint of embarrassment in her voice.

So I asked her: “What did your friends have for lunch?”

She couldn’t remember. I asked her about each of her friends by name to help jog her memory, and she couldn’t remember a single item any of them had for lunch. I told her, “You see? People don’t pay any attention to those little things. You might have thought it was silly, but no one else even noticed.”

She perked right up. It was a wonderful moment. It’s great to recognize early that all the little things you’re self-conscious about, no one else could remember with a gun to their head. Your minor foibles are invisible, so don’t sweat them.

Here’s a good thought experiment for you: think of a position you hold on some issue. Now think of an opposing position, one that you disagree with, on the same issue. Can you name three people or organizations that A.) support the opposing position and B.) you respect and can honestly say are holding their position in good faith?

If not, then chances are that you do not actually understand the opposing position and you live in an echo chamber. If you think the test of reasonableness is whether someone reaches the same conclusions as you, rather than how they approach questions of debate in general, then you are always going to have a limited understanding of the world, and won’t be able to change your mind when it’s warranted.

If you can’t think of three such people or organizations – go find them.