Sometimes you are 100% in the right in your disagreement with another person. They’re wrong and you’re not.

Doesn’t change a thing.

Your boss is doing one thing, and you think they should do another? Even if you’re completely right – so what? Nothing will change just because you’re right. No cosmic entity comes down and adjusts the world to be in balance with your correct view.

You still have to decide to quit or not. If you quit, you have to decide what else to do. If you stay, you have to decide how to navigate it.

This is the source of so much frustration in people. They get to a point where they’re sure they’re right, and then… nothing happens. It feels like it should! Once someone is “right” (which usually means finding a few people who agree with and validate you, but it could genuinely mean proving the correctness of your side), that person then subconsciously starts to expect the world to just change. And then it doesn’t, so what do most people do? They proclaim their right-ness with more fervor. Perhaps the universe just didn’t hear you.

Nope, sorry. Right or wrong, it’s still your life. You’ve got to manage it. Accepting that – truly internalizing that lesson – will save you so much frustration it’ll probably add five years to your life. It’s worth it to let go of being right.

An explanation, a definition, an accurate description – whatever you want to call it, putting a boundary around something so that it can fit within a framework in your mind. It’s good and bad. No, scratch that – it’s amazing and it’s terrible.

Why?

Because that particular tool can be used to make your life far better, or to trap you and kill you. It all depends on where you are in relation to The Box.

I’ll give you an example. Malfunctions within the human brain are nothing new, but giving discrete malfunctions names, causes, definitions, etc. – that’s relatively new, all things considered. So maybe a few generations ago a kid would just be hyper or active or “a handful,” and now that kid has Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. That’s drawing some clear, bright lines around something that may not have had those lines before. Putting a box around it.

But now, this can go one of two ways. A great one and a terrible one.

The great one: “Wow, now that we understand some of the causes and likely effects of this particular configuration of neurons, we can encourage where we need to as parents, we can adjust our discipline and communication so that the worst of the resulting traits are mitigated and our child flourishes.”

The terrible one: “Everything our kid does is excused and will not be improved in any way, because the ADHD diagnosis serves as an excuse for all behavior.”

People do both. Have you received a diagnosis of depression? That’s The Box. If you say “Now that I have a name and a definition, I can use that to understand my pain, to improve, to get better, to defeat it,” then you’re using The Box as a cage for your enemy, and that’s good. But if you say, “Well, the reason I don’t work towards the things I want to achieve is because I have this diagnosis,” then you’ve put yourself in The Box. You’re the one who’s trapped.

When we, as humans, feel like there’s some giant but vague shadow over us, preventing our successes, it can come as a relief to get a name for it. “Thank goodness,” we think. “I’m not fundamentally broken as a person, there’s just some very specific malfunction, and it’s real and it’s valid and maybe even other people have it, and so it’s not my fault.” That is the first step on the road to the death of every dream and aspiration you’ve ever held.

Think of going to the doctor because you feel generally ill. Fatigue, aches and pains, all that. But you don’t know the cause. After several tests, the doctor returns to tell you that you have a malignant tumor, and that’s the cause of all your ills. Imagine then saying “Oh, thank goodness! My illness wasn’t imagined; it was valid and real and justified, and now no one can judge me for feeling sluggish or weak.” That would seem a strange reaction. The point of looking for a root cause wasn’t to justify your sensation of illness – it was so that you could find the cause and then destroy it.

Remove that tumor! Defining a root cause for anything about yourself that you’re unhappy with is only the very first step. The acquiring of a target, if you will. The next step is to exorcise it from yourself! Put it in The Box, while you yourself escape from it.

The actual aim of showing off, if you think about it, is to convince people that you don’t need any more information.

I get it. We all want status and esteem. We all want people to respect and admire us. That desire is stronger in some than in others (much stronger), but at least a little bit we all want people to think we’re cool. So we show off, we flex, we strut.

In small doses, it’s fine. Be proud of your work, your accomplishments! Be happy to share with others, too.

But really, don’t try too hard to convince others that you’re done learning and improving. Because otherwise you might just be.

There was this riddle I remember as a kid that really stuck with me for some reason:

“If a hole is ten feet by ten feet by ten feet, how big is half a hole?”

Answer: there’s no such thing as half a hole.

I think I found it clever because it really got me – I had spent a while trying to puzzle out if the question wanted me to say “five feet by five feet by five feet” or “ten by ten by five” or actually figure out what each dimension would be in order for them to all be the same but still halve the volume or what (it was roughly 7.94 feet cubed or something). So when I read the answer it was like getting knocked in the head, and it made me laugh.

Because it’s true! There’s no such thing as half a hole. If you have a hole in a boat and you patch up one side of it, the boat still sinks.

You can’t jump halfway off a cliff. You can’t dig half a hole. You can’t solve half a problem.

Some things truly are “all or nothing.”

Today was just one of those days where it’s absolutely perfect to be a father.

Lazy lounging morning with egg sandwiches and snuggles. Then snowball fights and snowman building outside. When it got too cold and wet, hot chocolate and arts & crafts in the kitchen. Then a movie night and home-cooked dinner (devoured by kids that had worked up quite an appetite). Bath, books, bed.

Just perfect.

The thing is, I planned a lot for this day. I knew the weather was coming, so I had snow gear prepared, as well as a staging area in the kitchen for pulling it all off without making a mess. I had bought disposable tablecloths for the arts and crafts. Fixings for hot chocolate and meals the kids love. Everything squared away so I could say “yes” to as many requests as possible. So that we could engage with the day.

There aren’t too many days like this in your life, but there are some. Perfect ones, just waiting for you to engage them. Don’t get caught unprepared when they happen.

Sometimes I’ll sit down to write, and the topics that pop into my head first are topics I don’t actually want to write about. That’s usually a signal to me that my attention has been stolen; I’ve lost control of my focus.

The thoughts that grow, grow from the seeds you plant. If all you do is watch cable news or doom-scroll social media, you’ll grow angry, stunted thoughts.

Better instead to realign. Decide what you’d like to think about, and then give yourself the right start to those thoughts. I’m off to my books; good night!

When you come up with smart things, you should record them. And you should read them! Nothing is more embarrassing than when you forget a lesson that you yourself have taught.

I made a mistake this week that I’ve warned against – in this very blog! I violated the advice my father gave me, which is that while it’s fine to make mistakes, you should try at least to make all unique ones and not repeat any.

But all humans are flawed! So what do we do? Write it down again.

Hammer it in. Lessons repeated are lessons learned. Personal responsibility and self-ownership are hallmark lessons, and I shouldn’t have missed it. I’ll forgive myself – but I will strive to do better. I will own the mistake and get better.

I will try to make a new mistake next time.

Crystal clear water has a ton of uses. So does solid earth. But mud is… mud. There are definitely a few obscure uses here and there, but for the average person mud is an inconvenience at best, and a disaster at worst.

Lots of things are like that – at their absolute worst in the absolute middle. We’re often taught to compromise, take a middle-of-the-road approach, consider all viewpoints and reach a consensus, that sort of thing. But for a lot of problems, that’s the absolute worst case scenario.

Someone’s about to jump a big gorge on their motorcycle. One person advises: “Give it all you’ve got! Full speed is the only way you’ll make it across!” Another says: “Don’t go at all, it’s a terrible idea! Stay here!” So the guy decides to compromise: “I’ll go, but I’ll go at half speed.”

Worst possible outcome.

Appreciation for anything must come from nothing.

Kings – men born to royalty who have never tasted anything else – cannot eat like kings. They can only eat like men. They can only taste food with a dull tongue that has never been sharpened by hunger, never learned to savor.

But the men who have climbed from nothing, when they eat the meal they’ve earned, they eat like kings.

Lots of people have their normal, everyday wardrobe, and then they have their “work clothes.” For some people, that means casual clothes on the weekends but a suit during the week. Or it might mean pajamas on most days but a smart outfit for meetings. Whatever the case, most people who do this have a routine they use to make sure their “work clothes” are ready before going to work.

Makes sense! You don’t want to worry about finding and assembling your outfit when you’re trying to get ready to go to work. You want the suit of garments you’ll wear to be prepared.

Do the same with your attitude.

Some people go into “work mode” when they’re at work. Maybe they’re more relaxed in their speech at home, but want to be professional in a work environment. Maybe they’re casual about their responsibilities in their own apartment, but have to be buttoned-up at work.

The thing is, if you’re rusty, you want to prepare your thoughts the way you prepare your clothes.

You know that “back to school” feeling you get on the night before returning to work after an absence? You make sure your clothes are all together, your bag is packed, your car has gas in it, all that stuff. But what about your mind? Have you given some thought to how you want your attitude to be different in that environment?

Make some notes, write them down, and put them with your things. Read them out loud as you’re getting ready in the morning. Remind yourself what you’ll do with idle time, how you want to react to stress, and what you want to accomplish. Put on your suit of thoughts the same as anything else.

It’s the most important thing. Don’t neglect it.