You know the expression “Two wrongs don’t make a right?” It isn’t true. But here’s the bad news: it’s not the way you think.

The intent of the phrase is a caution against revenge. You can’t right a wrong by perpetuating another wrong. That, for the most part, is true. Revenge mostly just hurts you. But a second wrong can definitely make a right… for the other person.

You have to be careful about this in your life! Sometimes you’re on the right side of some sort of conflict, and think “This is great, I’m going to get what I deserve.” You might! But if you react badly enough, you can swing the scale the other way.

Here’s an example: Imagine you’re driving your car, and another driver runs a red light and collides with your car. They aren’t going super fast, but both cars are damaged (thankfully, neither of you are hurt). You’re in the right! It’s the other driver who is at fault, and it’s their insurance that will have to pay to repair the damage to your car. It’s not as good as not being in an accident at all, but hey.

But now let’s imagine you have a temper – a bad one. After the collision, you get out of your car, stomp over to theirs, and begin screaming at them. At first it’s just heated, but moves quickly into downright hateful stuff. You pick up a rock and start smashing in their car further. Then you even strike them physically in a rage.

Guess what? Your second wrong just made them very right. By the time the police get to the scene, they aren’t going to be filling out a favorable insurance report. They’re going to be arresting you.

That’s an extreme example, but it’s an illustrative one. When you’re right – don’t blow it. Acting wrong can hand the win to the person who was wrong to begin with, and should have stayed that way. Win graciously, especially before you’ve cashed the check. Don’t push your luck, and don’t gloat. If you know you’re right, stay that way.

Some things you can’t mess up except by worrying about whether you’ll mess them up.

You can’t do a bad job at hanging out with your kids, jamming with your musician buddies, or walking around the lake with a partner. There’s no element of them more important than the fact that you’re just enjoying that time together. So don’t sweat the experience – just experience it.

By default, humans have pretty incredible immune systems. We’re constantly bombarded by tiny little micro-organisms that want to devour our various nutrients in ways that would render us dead. They generally fail because we have such a robust system of fighting them off. It’s incredible because you rarely even realize it’s happening – for every one cold you get, you fought of hundreds of other attacks and never batted an eyelash.

Some people have the misfortune of having an immune system that doesn’t work as well, or even doesn’t work at all. This is a great burden, because those people have to be sheltered from the world. A lack of an immune system isn’t itself deadly – in an environment that was 100% safe, they’d have no issues. Of course, no environment is 100% safe, and these poor souls have to live most of their lives in the safest environments they can.

On the other end of the spectrum, some people’s immune systems are even more robust than normal. They might just be genetically lucky, but there are also things you can do to strengthen an immune system. The right diet and exercise can help. Ironically, so can exposure to more attacks! If you have a normally functioning immune system to begin with, then facing exposure to sickness can train it to be even stronger, both in specific cases (such as the way vaccines work) and more broadly.

Now, all of that is about your physical immune system. But you also have another one – an emotional immune system. And it works largely the same way.

You are constantly bombarded by things that try to make you upset, afraid, or angry. If you have a healthy emotional immune system, most of them you don’t even notice! But if your emotional immune system is weak, then those things will frequently cause you to “get sick” emotionally. You’ll cry, scream, rage, strike, and so on – the emotional equivalents of coughing and sneezing. If your emotional immune system is too weak, then just like people with auto-immune diseases, you’ll only be able to live in the safest of environments, cut off from the world and all its experiences.

And just like with a physical immune system, it is possible for most people to strengthen it deliberately – and in much the same way. Exposure to emotionally straining situations will help you build the system you need to endure them. You should upset yourself. You should hear things you don’t like, suffer though some unpleasant circsumtances, and move through them. Regulate your experiences and focus on how little power they actually have over you.

Build your emotional immune system. The world is a wonderful place, and you don’t want to miss it.

Rage fades. As brightly as it burns, it’s like trying to cook dinner over burning paper. You can’t do it – as bright and hot as it might get, it’s out too quickly. It’s just tinder, it’s not fuel.

So sometimes you just let it burn a little. You put it somewhere safe and you let it burn out. Packing it down can do the opposite – it can give you coal. Something with some sustained heat to it. And that’s exactly what you don’t want.

Sound and fury, signifying nothing. It is what it is. Don’t make it more.

Imagine that you’re doing something. A task, a project, whatever. It’s somewhat complex, but utterly within your competency range. In other words, you’ve got this. It’s easily a one-person task; in fact, additional people would probably make the task take longer, because the additional coordination would take more time than an extra person would save by contributing to this particular kind of task.

Now imagine that while you’re competently attending to this task, someone else interjects. They have good intentions and are trying to help, but because of the aforementioned circumstances, they are completely hindering you. They’re making the project take more time, they’re annoying you, and they’re doing all this despite the fact that they’re competent. They could have done the task alone, just as you can – they just aren’t self-aware enough to back off.

You’ve probably experienced this, in one form or another. It’s annoying as heck, isn’t it? Frustrating and unpleasant! Your task is taking longer, you feel untrusted, and in order to set a proper boundary it feels like you have to dismiss the other person’s skill set. You have to say “You’re hurting more than you’re helping,” even though that’s only true because of the nature of the task, not the other individual. It’s a big pain in the butt.

Okay, now I have some bad news for you. Sometimes – not always, but sometimes – you’re the second person.

“Not me,” you cry. “Never! I’m always helpful, surely I’m never an extra cook spoiling the broth.” Yeah, you. Of course you’re helpful, but we just went over how that isn’t the problem.

Here’s a situation that’s really hard for people: You see someone doing something. You know in your heart that trying to help will only hinder, but you also don’t want to seem unhelpful – or even worse, lazy. So even though you know you’re actively hindering the other person, you “help” anyway. Maybe the boss is watching. Maybe you just can’t overcome the social awkwardness.

It’s a mark of great confidence, intelligence, and respect to be able to just let someone cook. Very often, it’s exactly the best move. If nothing else, pay them a compliment – and then do your own thing.

People are marvelous about working together given a few basic conceits. They want to understand the directions, that’s all. They want to know what they signed up for. You don’t need a crystal ball, but you need to be willing to trust them with your best guess. When kids ask “are we there yet,” that’s all they really want. When you don’t know, that’s okay. Just share.

Some things just need two parts to work, and there’s no substitute for either.

A lock and key is a useful object. It can secure things, limiting access to only you. It’s handy! But a lock without a key and a key without a lock are both utterly useless chunks of metal.

If you have a key but no lock, it doesn’t matter how many more lockless keys you get. Still useless. Same with locks.

Some things just need their other half to be useful – and people are very often like this. No human is great at everything, nor wants to do everything. If you hire a very introverted but clever data scientist to run a whole company, she may enjoy some tasks more than others. Maybe she’s great at operations and lousy at sales. That problem won’t get fixed by hiring more introverted but clever data scientists!

It’s not just that you can’t do everything. It’s that a lot of what you can do isn’t valuable without the other piece. A battery doesn’t do anything on its own, and an electronic device doesn’t do anything without the battery.

Two (or more) people might come together and create absolute brilliance, but the key – pardon the pun – is in putting them together the right way. If you feel like you’re running in place, it might just mean you need to do exactly what you’re doing, but with someone new.

One of my worst habits is wanting to do personal projects “all at once.” When I start something, I tend to overdo it rather than taking appropriate breaks. Conversely, if a project looks like it will take more juice than I currently have available, I don’t start at all until I do.

Today, I started a major project that I knew I couldn’t finish. But I made progress – real, solid progress. And now, the full task is smaller.

I haven’t beaten this bad habit entirely, obviously. But hey… it’s a start.

Tonight, my oldest daughter said: “What’s the point of cleaning something if you can’t mess it up again?”

She then immediately followed that little gem up with: “That was smart. You should write a blog about that. You could say: ‘Tonight my daughter said, “What’s the point of cleaning something if you can’t mess it up again?” And as I thought about that, I realized how right she was.’ And then you could write about what you think about that. Because that’s how your blog always goes.”

Oh. My. God.

Forget about AI, the real danger is in your children just absolutely nailing you like that. Part of me feels very seen and appreciated, but another part of me just feels gutted knowing how easy it was for my daughter to reduce me down to my core elements.

Hey, at least I’m consistent, right? And she’s very clever and observant about people. And, much to my delight, she pays attention to what her father says. This could all be worse.

Oh! And yes, of course she’s right. Cleaning is a reset. To put something into a ‘ready’ state. If you aren’t using that thing, whatever it is – why have it?

When possible, I try to use communication to help people. I try to talk about things that I know about so that that information can be of use to people. I try to structure my conversations so that they lead people to figure things out. I try to compliment people.

The things you know about and the things you need are often very far apart.

Practice at helping people isn’t practice at asking for help. Those are different conversational methods.