If you’re like most humans, you have certain spheres of your life where you feel very powerful – intelligent, commanding, belonging. In these spheres, you’re knowledgeable and proficient and you feel a sense of respect and status as a result.

Most people don’t feel this way in every sphere. You might have a wonderful circle of friends but feel underaccomplished at work. Or you might have a great career but a rough home environment. It can change from year to year, but usually, you have one or more areas where you feel like things are aligned well and one more where you don’t.

And if you’re also like most people, you’re naturally driven to spend more time in the areas of your life where the emotional resonance is very positive.

You’ve seen this happen, and it’s easy to conjure examples. The guy who has a great career but a rough home life spends more and more time at work, away from his family. So he gets even better at working and even worse at being a part of his family and the cycle compounds. Stepping away from work feels bad for him because he’s stepping away from where he feels respected and accomplished and into an area where he feels weak or even helpless.

What’s the answer?

Look deeper. Underneath your work, your family, your friends, your community… is you. That means your strengths are in you, and they don’t belong to any one sphere of your life. Think about why you’re accomplished at work. Do you make smart, data-driven decisions while supporting your team as a leader? Well, guess what, that’s a great skill that applies at home, too.

In other words, figure out why you’re good at what you’re good at, and then bring that power into the rest of your life. It won’t always map exactly, but it’s better than doing things completely differently when that’s obviously not working for you.

Somewhere in you is the source of your power. Use it everywhere you go.

Everyone would love to adjust the behaviors of those around them. Whether it’s tiny changes or enormous ones, you have things you wish other people did differently. And using your many powers as a thinking human, you can effect these changes in a variety of ways: you can use the power of persuasion, you can climb to positions of power and authority, or you can even directly incentivize these behaviors.

But I’m going to tell you something else you can do, and it’s as effective as any of those – maybe more. You can stop punishing the very behavior you want to see.

You do this. You don’t even realize it, but you do it.

First, let’s examine what I mean by “punish,” because without the proper definition, you’re going to miss the whole point. A “punishment” is literally anything that makes someone feel bad. It doesn’t have to be something you did with the intent to punish. It just has to be something you did that made someone feel worse than they’d feel if you hadn’t.

Why are their feelings more important than your intent in this case? Because they’re the ones deciding their behavior. And they aren’t deciding how to act around you based on your intent – they’re deciding how to act based on their feelings. So if you wan someone to act a certain way, it’s in your best interests to make them feel better when they do so, not worse.

Want some examples? Sure you do.

Here’s the classic one: A sullen teenager, often isolating herself from her immediate family, emerges from her room to take dinner with her parents and siblings. The father calls out sarcastically: “Well, look who finally decided to join us!” He wanted her to join, but the second she did, he mocked her. Does she feel good about the decision to join the family for dinner, or is she even more convinced that the right course of action is isolation?

Here’s another: An employee has a good suggestion about improving something in the workplace or some other helpful tidbit, so he proactively contacts his boss. She listens, but then says, “Oh, while I have you, what’s up with your TPS reports lately? You really need to improve these.” That feedback might be correct and even warranted, but by delivering it at that time, the boss just punished the employee for reaching out. The employee feels like “Geez, I call up to make a helpful suggestion and I get chewed out over my reports? Last time I’ll do that.”

Sometimes the changes you want other people to make – like spending more time with the family or being proactive at work – happen gradually. But they do happen, so when they do, you need to strongly encourage them. Not punish the very behaviors you’ve been hoping for.

A week or so ago there was an end-of-year event at my children’s school. Naturally, I was there along with a gaggle of other family members for the many students. These are my neighbors and I know many of them – some better than others, but mostly familiar faces. Along with the students in the school, there were other kids – cousins and siblings and friends – of many ages.

At one point one of the moms there was trying to juggle both her young baby and taking a picture of her graduating pre-schooler, so I reached out and scooped up the baby. She was quite appreciative, though also a little surprised; most people seem to have an aversion to handling the children of strangers in such a casual manner. (Especially men, but that’s a topic for another day.)

I just laughed and bounced her on one arm, and quipped: “All the children of this town are my children.” I ended up carrying that baby around for the next hour to give the mom a break, and I was as thrilled to have a cute, cooing thing with me as she was for the rest. It was a wonderful moment of kinship with my neighbors.

I wasn’t quite accurate, though. I said “all the children of this town are my children,” but that’s not quite accurate.

All the children of the world are my children.

Yes, you have a direct responsibility to the care and feeding of your own direct offspring or those under your direct guardianship. But the future of the human race is yours to steward as well.

Would you throw trash out your car window? I hope not. But if you wouldn’t, don’t throw garbage ideas into the minds of the next generation – that’s a far more impactful act.

And I go farther. When I walk around my neighborhood park, as I do frequently, I usually end up picking up whatever few scraps of litter I might happen to see and dropping them into the trash bin on my way around. Did I throw that litter there? Nope. Is anyone making me pick it up? Of course not.

Is it my responsibility? Absolutely.

And so is the care of all the children of the world.

Here’s what that doesn’t mean: it doesn’t mean I’m a busybody. I don’t tell other parents how to parent unless they ask (or read this blog, which amounts to the same thing). I don’t concern myself with making sure kids are being raised the “right” way, any more than I go knocking on my neighbors’ doors demanding that they go out and pick up litter.

But I do my part, as much as I can. I do not turn away. I don’t shrug and say “Well, that’s not my kid.” Because I’d be lying – that is my kid. They all are.

I do not expect others to be this way. That’s one of my universal principles, to not impose my value system on others. So none of my own beliefs come with judgment if others don’t agree with them; they’re a set of rules for me only.

But this is an important one – important enough to write down, and important enough to encourage others to do it too, even if I won’t judge you if you don’t. Look after these kids. Get their stuck kites down out of trees, cook extra food when you make dinner in case the neighborhood horde comes through your yard, and take your turn holding the baby. This is the world, and you can make it better.

Imagine having a five-person team for Tug-of-War. They line up to pick up their side of the rope, and they all face north. Then you tell the first person in the line that they’ll receive $100 if they move thirty feet west; the second person that they’ll receive $100 if they move 40 feet east; the third person that they’ll receive $100 if they move sixty feet southwest, and so on.

The other team of five, facing south, are each told that they’ll receive $100 if they move fifty feet directly north.

Which team will win the match?

Both team captains might have the same goal: win the match. But on one team, the individual incentives are aligned towards that goal. Each individual wins by doing behaviors that lead toward the desired team outcome. If you’re the manager of the first team, you will not win, and it doesn’t matter how well you “manage” otherwise. It doesn’t matter if you threaten, yell, or inspire. It doesn’t matter if you explain how important winning is to the team. It doesn’t matter if you tell the people that they’ll be kicked off the team if they lose. None of it matters at all.

Individual incentives must be aligned towards the goals of the team.

If you don’t get this right, everything else you do as an organization is worthless; you will fail. It seems obvious when thinking about a Tug-of-War match. It gets harder when the organization gets larger, the goals get more complicated, and the individuals get more diverse.

As a leader, this is one of your most important functions, maybe the most important: figure out what people want. If you can align things so they get what they want by moving towards the team goals, do that. If you can’t, they don’t belong on the team.

This isn’t easy, but it’s dead simple. Stay committed to it, and your organization will always be pulling a straight rope.

Imagine a surge protector – a “power strip,” with eight slots where you could plug something in. You’re paying the power bill on this bad boy, and you have plenty of things that need the power.

Someone comes along and asks you if they could plug their phone into the strip. You’ve got room, right? So you say sure, and figure you’re fine with just seven spots. But before you know it, you’re giving slots to a lot of other people, and soon not only are you paying the power bill for everyone else’s electronics, but yours aren’t even plugged in!

You are that surge protector. And you do this all the time.

You take your energy, and you give it to everyone else’s projects. You don’t save enough for yourself. The lesson is really twofold: first, your stuff has to get plugged in first. Before you figure out how many “spare” slots you have, you have to make sure everything you need is plugged in!

Second, if you’re going to let someone else plug their television into your power strip, they’d better at least be letting you watch, too. Maybe even choosing a show here and there. Because that’s your power – and that power is finite.

And here’s another way the analogy works: let’s say you need more slots to plug things in, so you buy a second power strip and plug it into the first. Well, that might work once – but any electrician will tell you that’s not a secret to infinite power. Everything is getting less juice, everything is working more poorly…

…and you’re creating a fire hazard.

So it is with you. You can’t solve this problem by just doing all of their stuff and all of your stuff. You’ve got those eight slots, and that’s it.

Figure out what gets plugged in.

I am certain of very little, but these lessons feel as solid as anything I’ve ever known.

1. Spending a few extra minutes, even if it means making the whole world wait so that you can resolve an interaction with your child in a patient & kind manner, giving them your full attention, will never be a wasted moment.
2. No matter what, when your child says “I Love You,” you say it back. If they’re using it to stall at bedtime, let them stall. If they’re using to soften a scolding for bad behavior, let them soften. If they’re saying it because they just want your attention while you’re working on something else, give them your attention. Make it a principle that love will cut through all else, always.
3. Always answer “Can I help?” with an enthusiastic “Yes!”
4. Trust them. They are competent, and they become more competent the more you trust them. Believe the best in them, and that means specifically doubting your own doubts about them. If you don’t think they’re ready for something yet, train them until they are – but don’t tell them they can’t.
5. You don’t get much time.

Happy Father’s Day, everyone. Whatever you do today, do again tomorrow.

Sometimes when my middle child is feeling impatient, she’ll tell me she doesn’t like to wait. So I tell her to stop.

She’ll look confused for a moment, because (of course), how can she “stop waiting” for something to happen that’s beyond her control?

But “waiting” is an activity. You might not be able to make the event happen any faster, but you can do lots of things besides “wait.” Go outside. Paint a picture. Build a house.

What are you waiting for?

Just because you want to part ways because of some changes, doesn’t mean you necessarily disagree with those changes. You’re not obligated to find fault with a decision before you choose to go another way, and don’t fall into the trap of thinking that you do.

Let’s say you’ve been a loyal customer of your local pizza shop for years. One day, they switch to a cheaper ingredient for their pizzas in order to cut costs. This might be a perfectly valid business decision! It might reduce their operating costs and allow them to stay in business or even expand. Most people might not mind the change. But if you mind it – if you find that the pizza isn’t tasty to you anymore – you’re allowed to stop going there.

People often fall into this mental trap where they say something like this to themselves: “Well, I don’t like their pizza anymore, but I get why they did it. If I was the business owner, I’d probably do the same thing. I can’t fault them or be mad, so I guess I’ll keep going there.”

Admit it. You’ve done something like that. With a business you frequent, a job you’ve had, maybe even a romantic partner. You’ve accepted the negative personal consequences of a decision made by someone else for someone else, just because you understood why they made that decision.

You do not have to do this.

You don’t have to find fault with a decision just to part ways. If the decision doesn’t benefit you, that’s enough to move on and change your environment.

“What, so everyone has to make every decision based on what’s good for me personally?”

No, of course not. But neither do you. That pizza place shouldn’t cater to you, specifically. Your preferences are your own. But you don’t have to cater to them, either. If an arrangement between multiple entities no longer works for all those entities, the arrangement can dissolve. It’s nobody’s fault, nobody’s wrong, but sometimes things just run their course.

When you choose one fork of the river and they choose the other, that’s just life. The river will have many forks. Take the paths that make you happy.

Today is the last day of school for my children. It’s a fairly significant milestone for all three of them: the last day of elementary school for my oldest; the last day of kindergarten for my middle, and the last day of preschool for my youngest. Due to how the schools in my town are structured, it’s also the last day all three of my kids will be in school in the same building.

Of course, things could change – I don’t have a crystal ball. Maybe they’ll restructure the schools again; wouldn’t be the first time. Maybe we’ll relocate or pick a different schooling option at some point. But even if none of that happens, this won’t be the last Last Day.

Things are always changing, and another way of saying that is “things are always beginning and ending.” So sure, as a father I’m going to get a little misty-eyed at the inexorable passage of time and the growth of my children. But there are plenty of last days left – and plenty of first days, too. And all the days in between. It’ll be many years before my last Last Day.

This is really just an in-between day. And like so many of those, on this one I am proud of my children. They are growing up brave and kind and clever, and I could not ask for more.

I am endlessly interested in what truly motivates people’s actions, especially when their actions don’t align with their stated motivations.

People are propelled by many things – tribal status, safety, ego, and a host of others – but since these motivations are so good at burrowing deep within our brains and disguising themselves as something else, we’re not nearly as attuned to them as would be helpful to us.

People will say “I’d do whatever it takes to get a job,” and then do maybe 5% of that, for example.

So, my first lesson: whenever someone says “I really want to do X,” remember that their true motivation was to say “I really want to do X,” not necessarily to actually do X.

Some level of motivation is also connected to what we want to believe about how the world works. People often seem to mean “I would do whatever it takes to do X, in a world where ‘whatever it takes’ is exactly the stuff I think should work.”

In other words, “whatever it takes” rarely seems to include “Change my worldview to better reflect the realities that I face.”

The broader lesson here for you, my friend, is that you actually can learn a lot about a person’s motivations by listening to what they say. But that doesn’t mean that they’re doing the same thing.