Early, light conversations with new people are often an opportunity to make a great impression, and people often want to leave those conversations feeling as though they’re well-liked by the other party. Here’s an easy little reminder for how to behave in those conversations – use the acronym CHARM.

Care genuinely about the other person and what they have to say. This isn’t a trick or a con – none of this works if you’re just trying to manipulate. If you’re not in a good place to be ready to care about other people’s stories, then don’t focus on meeting new people today.

Hear the other person. Like, hear them. Don’t wait for your turn to talk by coming up with pithy things to say.

Ask questions. If your first response to anything they say is your own opinion on the subject or unsolicited advice, then you’re not going to come across as someone who actually connects with them.

React accordingly. You’re allowed to have facial expressions and emotional reactions! You don’t have to keep a “straight face” during a conversation just to make it look like you’re listening intently. Being able to read another person’s reactions makes it easier to communicate with them.

Meet them where they are. You don’t have to use every conversation as an opportunity to advance your own agenda, talk about your favorite subject, or get someone to give you some benefit. If a person just wants to vent about their sick cat, let them. Show a little empathy, tell them you’re sorry about their pet. If you talk again, you’ll have gained that much more trust. And if you never talk again, you’ll have brightened someone’s life a little.

That’s it. Go talk.

Some people will choose not to interact with you. Many of those people will be “invisible,” in the sense that their decision not to interact with you will be made before you’re even aware that they exist. A potential job applicant that never applies to your open position, a potential romantic partner that doesn’t swipe on your dating profile, a potential customer that walks by your shop.

Tell most people this, and they’ll shrug their shoulders and say “their loss!”

That could be! But your loss, too.

We can’t interact with everyone, of course. There’s a real opportunity cost to every person we spend time on. But if a hundred people walk by your store and not one comes in, how many times will you say “their loss” before you take some interest in why they’re making that decision?

“The perfect employee/partner/customer will choose me regardless of what signals I’m sending,” is a silly thing to think, but many people do think exactly that. There’s a wide, wide chasm between what’s true about you and what people can realistically understand from early signals. Your signals could be wrong! People aren’t psychic, and maybe you’re doing a bad job of communicating “who you really are.”

Maybe it is their loss – but it’s your responsibility to communicate well.

When you dislike someone strongly, it’s really tempting to see anyone else who also dislikes them as a wise, thoughtful ally. To say the very least, that’s super dumb – and of course you know it’s super dumb, but that won’t stop you from being tempted in that direction the next time it happens.

Movies reinforce this stereotype all the time. If you have two bad guys in a movie franchise and they fight, it’s always because one of them is “turning good.” Hell, people do this with real world history! People cite the fact that Stalin fought Hitler as evidence that Stalin was a good guy.

So our brains try to trick us into black/white thinking. And if someone thinks they’re really enlightened, they might say something like “the world’s not black and white, there are shades of grey!”

But even that’s nonsense. “Shades of grey” thinking still assumes that there is such a thing as black and white, and just allows that some people may be at different points on the spectrum between them. But that isn’t true at all.

A more true view off the world is “Red/Yellow/Blue” thinking. First, it establishes a truth – there are a bare minimum of three viewpoints on any topic. There is pro, con, and neutral/unaware/don’t care. And with those three primary colors, you can mix into literally infinite viewpoints.

There is a spectrum between “red” and “blue” that contains an infinite number of “shades of purple.” But none of those shades contain an ounce of “yellow.” If you’re “yellow,” then movement along that spectrum never makes someone closer to or further from your point of view.

With Black/White/Grey thinking, if you think about Hitler and Stalin, you’ll be forced to conclude that there’s a better case for one of them to be a “good guy.” Since they fought, they can’t be identical. And if they’re not identical, then one must be a different shade than the other, but with a single line like that, “different shades” naturally means that one of them is closer to your shade than the other. So then you start to let your tribal impulses take over and start to think of dumb justifications why one isn’t so bad, because he fought someone you think is the worst.

But with RYB thinking, you can recognize that one might be red and one might be blue, and that there are infinite shades of purple between those two, but none of those shades contain an ounce of yellow. And no matter where someone is on that spectrum of purples, they don’t get any closer to or further from where you are.

A young man goes to a wise old guru and asks, “what’s the secret to happiness?”

The guru replies: “Don’t argue with idiots.”

The young man scowls and says, “that can’t be it, it must be something different!”

The guru replies: “You’re right.”

There are very few good reasons or good opportunities to argue, but sometimes the stars align and there’s actually good cause to have a debate. But when that happens, you have to make sure that you’re actually debating, and not trying to educate.

Imagine you’re trying to debate with someone over whether or not you should plant a row of trees in front of the community center. You start with some thoughts about ascetics and maybe reduced energy costs resulting from shade, and the other person says it’s a terrible idea because the trees will be an eyesore since they’re made of metal and glass. You say, “I’m pretty sure you’re thinking of skyscrapers,” and they say nuh-uh, because skyscrapers are big blimps that carry messages over football games, and now you’re definitely not debating that row of trees anymore because you’re stuck trying to get the other person to understand what zeppelins are.

You can’t educate and debate at the same time. If someone needs to be educated on the foundational elements necessary for the debate to happen, then debating them is pointless. And if someone is in the mindset to debate you, then they’re definitely going to be closed off to being educated. So you can’t do both.

In many cases, the real reason to debate someone is for the benefit of an audience that may be swayed by you (even if your debate partner isn’t), but you lose that benefit if all you’re doing is explaining rudimentary terms to someone.

This is why, by the way, you shouldn’t try to sway opinion too much if your primary goal is education. As soon as someone disagrees with you a bit, most people then dismiss everything you say as argument, even if it was meant to be (or should be) educational. So if your actual goal was educating folks, you just shot yourself in the foot by trying to push a particular agenda.

We can debate fiscal policy, for example, if you want! But we can’t do that if one of us doesn’t understand what interest rates are. And mid-debate is really the wrong time to realize that and try to explain it. Because as I’m trying to explain the fundamentals of interest rates, you’re still thinking that I’m trying to argue with you about something, so you’re trying your best to disagree with the definition of interest rates just because I’m saying it. Now neither thing is happening!

Walking away in that moment is hard – but trust me, it’s worth it.

“I Can Do This” is an incredibly powerful phrase. It’s not just a positive overall sentiment – it’s also instructions on exactly how.

1. “I” – no one else. You have agency, you are in charge. No one is coming to rescue you, you don’t have a fairy godmother, but you do have unlimited wishes, as long as you work for them. The understanding of your own power and responsibility in all things will lead you to great heights. Focus on what you bring to every challenge.
   
2. “Can” – you are able, but not guaranteed, to succeed. Effort is required. Life makes no promises to you, but your ability is bounded by your imagination far before it’s bounded by the laws of physics. Push yourself.
   
3. “Do” – not ‘think about’ or ‘deliberate on.’ Action is required. Movement. The solution to problems lies in making real changes to the universe, not in worrying or dreaming.
   
4. “This” – not ‘these things’ or ‘everything.’ One discrete task. A laser focus on accomplishing a very specific thing, with all your powers aligned to the task.

Each individual word of this phrase carries instructions and wisdom, and together they form a belief in yourself and a foundation of positivity that can move mountains. I may have found my favorite phrase ever.

People often tell me stories. In my job, I listen to many of my clients’ stories about their professional and even personal life. And in my own personal life, I love stories – so I’ve developed many skills to make sure I get to hear more of them. I’m genuinely interested, I’m an active listener, and I’m an encouraging audience. (Seriously, even if we don’t know each other, tell me a story! I want to hear it!)

Often people tell me these stories and I’ll ask: “If you didn’t tell me that directly, is there any way I could have discovered it?” I’m asking if the story exists anywhere else but in the brain of the storyteller. Most of the time, the answer is “no.”

Every story you tell has wisdom and inspiration in it. In fact, they are your wisdom, they are your inspiration. There what make you who you are, and they’re the intricate jigsaw-puzzle-piece-pattern around you that puts you into the world.

Someday, the body that carries around all of those stories will expire. But the stories don’t have to. Do everything you can to make sure that your stories outlive you, that they survive the expiration of the bag of bones holding them up right now.

When I’m with my clan, we often share and re-share stories of our departed members. We tell them to those younger in order to fill them with wonder, those that never met these legends in person. In the same way, I’ve been told stories of the legends before me. I never met my paternal grandfather – he passed a few years before I was born. But I’ve been told so many stories about him – stories that, in turn, I’ve shared with many others – that I feel like I do know him, that I have met him. Certainly, I “grew up” with him as a presence in my life.

This makes him immortal. We are the combination of the stories we’ve lived – the blood and bones carrying those things around is so, so unimportant in comparison. Live for stories. And then, in time, let them live for you.

We do not, in general, have a stable relationship with resistance as a teacher.

A man looks at a bear. The bear is climbing a tree, trying to swat down a nest full of stinging insects. They swarm around the bear in a frenzy, but the bear persists. Eventually the bear gets the nest down and even while the insects wage (what to them must be) the war of their lives against him, he opens the nest and licks at the golden substance within.

The man thinks to himself, “that must be amazing, to be worth all of that! I’ll do the same!”

The man has committed a grave error. He’s judged the outcome – about which, in reality, he knows nothing – simply by how hard it is to achieve.

Some people do the opposite, of course. They look at even the slightest bit of hard work or challenge and run the other way, and so miss out on many of life’s rewards. And some of us look at those people and disdain them, and in our efforts to distance ourselves from them philosophically, we go too hard in the other direction. We declare to ourselves, and others, that the harder something is to do, the more worthwhile it must be to do it.

Challenge is good. Resistance makes us stronger. But for what? We need to have a goal. If someone wants to summit Everest because it will be a tremendous personal accomplishment, make them proud of themselves, inspire others, join an elite group – wonderful! In preparing for such a feat, they also will probably do great things for their physical health and mental discipline. All fantastic.

But now imagine another person who looks at Mount Everest and says, “wow, it would be really, really hard to climb that – so something amazing must be at the top!” They will be very disappointed, to say the least, when they arrive at the peak.

The goal was the thing. We need a purpose to align with the challenge, even if we’re seeking the challenge for its own sake and not for any reward.

The man looking at the bear could say instead, “the bear was willing to do a lot to get at what was in that nest. But the bear has traits that I don’t have, like thick fur and great endurance. And I have skills that the bear doesn’t have, like money and access to grocery stores. So let me begin by figuring out what the bear’s goal actually was, and then figure out if I would even like that goal. After all, I’m not a bear, and I won’t necessarily even want to eat everything a bear wants to eat. But if I do decide that I want it, let me then decide if there’s a way to get it that doesn’t involve getting stung to death by a thousand angry bees.”

Now apply this to everything you do. Seek challenge and resistance when doing so benefits you. Avoid it when it’s simply in the way of your true goal, or when you’re tricking yourself into believing there’s some great treasure at the top of Mount Everest just because it’s hard to climb.

Someone has done something to upset you, so you express your frustration. Later, they do something kind for you. The temptation is strong to connect the two events, to offer less gratitude or praise than the kind gesture deserves because you’re still frustrated from before.

Don’t.

Don’t punish people for bridging gaps, and don’t cross your concepts. Reward that which is deserving, and correct where correction is needed, but don’t cross the two.

The same goes in reverse. My kids are all really fantastic 99% of the time. That doesn’t mean they earn the right not to be punished when a behavior needs correcting. It does mean they’ve earned my trust and we can work together to address bad behavior without it having to be a battle. But sometimes a kid still gets grounded, no matter how good they’ve been overall.

But when they are grounded, I still tell them how much I appreciate it when they spontaneously take out the trash or do some dishes. I don’t default to a mean-spirited “yeah, you’d better do that,” or anything similar.

This is a hard thing to do. We are emotional creatures, and emotions spill over easily from one event, one moment, to the next. That’s fine by itself – but be aware of it. Talk about it. But don’t let it rule you. Just handle one thing at a time, in the right way for each thing. You’ll do fine.

They say “ignorance is bliss,” but in my experience there seems to be a pretty strong correlation between how happy someone is and how seriously they can – and do – think about their life and the sources of that happiness.

There is a lot of natural happiness in the world, but there’s a lot of other natural resources too – that doesn’t mean it doesn’t take labor to convert the natural resource into something usable by humans. Children might be one of the purest and most bountiful sources of happiness in existence, but if you just have a bunch of kids with zero effort or thought put into preparing for and raising them, you’re not likely to be happier on net than if you had none at all.

Happiness, joy, contentment – these things take work. And to be effective, I think that work has to be pretty regularly examined and re-examined for flaws or potential improvements.

The challenge is in overthinking. Happiness isn’t binary. You don’t cross a threshold and wake up content one day. These things happen by inches and fractions of inches. So no matter what you do, you could always, perhaps, be a little more happy. It is up to each individual to decide when additional effort towards that goal won’t actually be a marginal improvement anymore. Call it the “Pursuit of Pareto-Optimal Happiness.” You won’t get it perfect. But I think time spent in contemplation is, on net, an asset.

There’s a brilliant scene in Pirates of the Caribbean (one of the all-time most perfect movies ever made, by the way) where Elizabeth Swan and Jack Sparrow are stranded on an island. With no means of escape, Elizabeth Swan uses the island’s cache of rum to create an enormous bonfire with a pillar of smoke so high that every ship for hundreds of miles – most of which are looking for her – can see it. They are rescued within hours.

In life, we spend a lot of time searching for stuff. A great romantic partner, the perfect job, a problem-solving product or service. Very rarely, however, do we take the time to realize that the humans behind those things are also searching for us. Sometimes a far more effective method than searching is to be searchable.

Elizabeth Swan knew that there were people who wanted to rescue her. So instead of focusing on escape attempts, she focused on being rescue–able. It worked.

If you’re looking for a great job, they’re looking for a great employee. If you’re looking for a wonderful romance, so is someone else. If you’re looking to buy a solution to a problem, they’re looking for customers with the problem they can solve. Take some time to think about those people – where might they be looking? How are they identifying their targets? How can you build a bonfire to let them know “I’m right here?”

On a very regular basis during any prolonged search, you should just be running things up the flagpole to see who looks. You should be willing to talk about your search in public, whatever “in public” means to you these days. People want to help you, and will – if they know where you are.