Happy New Month, and happy St. Chalie’s Day.

Today is Superkid’s birthday. On the day he passed, those closest to him talked about what we wanted to do to honor him on this day. Chalie was a lot of things, but more than anything else, he loved people and he wanted them to be happy. He worked so hard to bring people together, to find common ground, to help people move past the things that kept them apart.

And so that’s what we’re doing today, and what I’ll make my new month’s resolution, too. To forgive people, to seek to be forgiven, and to get over the things that keep us apart. I love you, Chalie, and I miss you. And I’ll keep trying.

The day before the worst day is the worst day. When you’re in it, you can be in it – there is an active place for what you need to do and feel. The night in the garden, there’s nothing.

It’s my view that a major barrier to people realizing their most altruistic tendencies is a lack of confidence in what will help. We know there are problems in the world, but often they seem so vast or so challenging that we’re paralyzed, not out of a lack of desire to help, but by ignorance in the face of such seemingly insurmountable obstacles.

If you’ve felt this way, I have a wonderful thing for you to do: Keep your eyes open for those who seem to have found a way to move the needle on a problem you care about. And then, pile on.

Imagine you care about the plight of abandoned or unsheltered animals, but doing anything meaningful about it seems beyond your reach at the moment. You work full-time so you can’t volunteer at the shelter, but your income is stretched too thin across too many bills to meaningfully donate money, either. What can you do?

You can find those people who are volunteering at the animal shelter, and you can help them. They’re making some sacrifice in order to give their time, and you can’t. But you can make them a snack the night before, and drop it off in the morning before work, along with a note that says how much you appreciate their work. For people volunteering to solve a problem like that, a little gesture can mean the absolute world. It can mean the difference between whether they have the emotional resilience to volunteer again tomorrow or not. It can mean the energy they need to save one more animal this week.

Transferring the burden of helping off of the shoulders of the helpers is as meaningful as working on the problem directly. And it can often be done differently, allowing for people with different life circumstances to all contribute. Including you.

How would you answer if I asked you: “Is my pizza late?”

You might ask me how long I’ve been waiting. I tell you it’s been 35 minutes. So what’s the answer?

Hopefully, you’re thinking that you still don’t have enough information, because that would be correct. The next question should probably be something like: “How long did they tell you it was going to take when you ordered it?”

If they said 25 minutes, then yeah, it’s late. If they said 45 minutes, then it’s not. And if they didn’t say, then it isn’t late.

Now, if they didn’t say, that’s its own issue and they could probably improve their communication. But it still doesn’t make the pizza late. Of course, there’s an amount of time that a pizza could take that would likely be “late” even without a clear expectation upfront. If you ordered 3 hours ago, that’s probably late. But how about an hour? On a busy Friday night? The point is that without clear expectations, there’s a wider range of reasonable disagreement over what “late” is.

Which also means you have a bigger chance of being the jerk if you accuse your delivery driver of being late when the pizza gets there 40 minutes after you order it.

This is a common human error: we ask for something or give a direction and we don’t attach a time expectation to it. In our heads, we have one, but we don’t communicate it. Then, when the ask doesn’t manifest in the time we imagined, we get salty.

Don’t have salty pizza. Be clear about the clock, and you’ll deal with far fewer late arrivals.

Anything you cannot compromise on is a weak point. Your non-negotiables are your biggest vulnerabilities.

There are two lessons here:

1. Minimize your non-negotiables. The more things you refuse to be flexible on, the weaker your overall position in life, your career, your relationships, whatever. You’ll always have some; make them count.
2. Protect your position. If there’s an aspect of your life that you simply need to be a certain way, then you need to take extra steps to ensure that, above and beyond what you’d need if it was just a “nice to have.”

Think about someone with a peanut allergy versus someone who just doesn’t like the taste of peanuts. The person with the non-negotiable is more vulnerable; the wrong salad can put their life in danger, and so they might miss out on delicious meals, etc. They also have to go above and beyond to ensure their meals don’t have peanuts – they eat at restaurants less, check more thoroughly, carry emergency meds, etc.

Now apply that to anything in your life. If your current salary at your job is a “non-negotiable,” then your position is vulnerable. You’ll put up with more that you don’t like rather than walk away for a lower salary with more satisfaction and happiness. So you need to protect yourself: If you truly can’t make a dime less, then you’re in a bad, vulnerable spot. If your current income is matching all your bills exactly to the dollar, think how vulnerable you are! You either need to reduce your bills (if you can – things like medical conditions or other factors can make that difficult), or find more income, even if it means giving up leisure time, etc. Otherwise, you’re so utterly exposed to even the tiniest hiccup totally destroying you. One stray peanut and your throat closes up.

So minimize the things that you can’t negotiate on, even if that means adopting a more flexible position overall – driving a used car instead of a new one so you don’t have to be as reliant on nothing ever disrupting your career progression is a wise choice! That way you can minimize the number of vulnerabilities you have to defend with outsized effort.

Avoid the peanuts, try the asparagus.

Have you ever had that moment where another person uses exactly the correct kind of language for the setting, and manages to do it in such a way that leaves no doubt as to the venom behind their words?

We live in a culture where the actual words someone says are often given far more weight than their intent, their meaning, or even their actions. We police “bad words” said even in benign or educational contexts while people use double-speak and entendres to bully coworkers or students.

Don’t be that person. Say what you mean, and mean what you say. Be polite, but choose the words that match your meaning, and adjust your intent to do the same. Someone who doesn’t speak your language but hears your tone should come away with the exact same impression as someone who reads a transcript of your words with no tone at all attached. And the actions you take should match both.

Sometimes the act of searching for something and not finding it is more damaging to you than just not having it. Maybe you’re looking for a raise from a boss, an apology from a friend, affection from a partner, understanding from a parent. And maybe you just aren’t going to get it.

The best thing you can do is stop looking for it. Constant attempts to find what simply isn’t there will do more damage to you than a quick realization that you’re barking up the wrong tree, followed by a pivot to a new strategy for reaching your goals. You can’t make something be there by wanting it, but you sure can make yourself miserable.

Don’t allow the most important parts of your contentment to be dependent on the actions of others. Don’t drink that poison.

Arcades still rule. A hundred years from now, it might be a thing you hear about on whatever the equivalent of a “weird history podcast” is, but my kids get as much joy from them now as I did then. And the games are way better.

Find pockets of fun. They’re all over!

There’s an old axiom in business that says that whenever you want something, you can get it “good, fast, cheap – pick two.” And there’s a corollary to that which says sometimes you don’t even get two.

And of course, each of those things is on a spectrum. Something can be the cheapest option but still not cheap enough to be in your budget or give you a positive ROI on your problem.

So for each solution, do a quick check – which is cheapest, which is best, and which is fastest? And for each one, then ask: “How cheap is cheapest? How good is best? How fast is fastest?”

Sometimes the best solution is just the one that gets you out of a bad situation the fastest. If you can’t solve a problem, maybe you can swap it out for one you can. “Out of the frying pan, into the fire” can be a good thing if you have a bucket of water – wouldn’t help with the pan, but might put out the fire.

The point is, don’t always try to optimize. Just try to move. Out of the frying pan, if you have to.

Give to get. It’s a simple concept, but hard to remember when you most need to “get” something.

If you need kindness today, remember that you have an infinite capacity to give kindness within you. Start with a small act or gesture toward someone. Keep it going. Soon, you’ll receive kindness yourself – maybe not from the people you were kind to! In fact, maybe it will just come from yourself, as the acts you perform allow you to take some pressure off your own shoulders.

Or maybe one small act of kindness starts a great reaction and you end up with a new friend.

Whatever you feel like you’re needing, give it. It may seem strange to think “I need money, so I should give it,” but consider – you don’t need money, you need something else. Finding out what that is and giving some of it in a different way can be a boon.

Whatever you need today, I sincerely hope you get it.