When we build something new in our lives, we often make the smart move of supporting that new endeavor with a little extra “outside help.” For instance, if starting a weight loss journey, it’s not uncommon to have an “accountabili-buddy” to motivate you. Or perhaps you use one of those services that lets you bet on your own weight loss. Maybe you ask a spouse or roommate to hide, lock up, or dispose of unhealthy foods.

These things are scaffolding. They’re meant to support the construction of a new thing – in this case, healthy eating habits. Habits, like cathedrals, are hard to build. It’s perfectly fine to need to support their construction with something additional while you do so.

But there is a hidden trap here, one that can snare you if you’re not careful. That trap is coming to rely so much on the scaffolding that you never remove it – and thus, never really finish building what you set out to build.

Scaffolding is short term. You can’t expect to maintain healthy eating forever on the back of spouses hiding cookies and apps where you bet on your scale. At a certain point the new thing has to be an internal thing, something that will stand under its own construction and support its own weight within you. Scaffolding eventually collapses.

I am actually hugely supportive of the “scaffolding” technique of building habits. Inertia is real, and in order to change we need to defeat many demons. If you want to quit smoking, I support everything from nicotine patches to support groups to anything else you can think of. But you cannot rely on those things forever. You must, at some point, finish the cathedral.

So many people, in their initial interactions with others, hide their most unusual or unique characteristics. As a result, they delay heartbreak – delay it, but not prevent it.

For instance, imagine you’re excited about a first date with someone. You want it to go well, so you hide the fact that you’re an avid snake breeder and you have like a thousand snakes. The date goes well! And then the second date comes around and they find out about the snake farm and they run screaming. What was the point of hiding it? If something’s important to you, lead with it.

Here’s a fun example – the Nigerian Prince scams. You know those email scams where someone writes to you claiming to be a Nigerian prince with millions of dollars they just want to give you for some flimsy reason? They’re always super obvious, the grammar atrocious, the email address suspect, etc. Want to know something crazy? They do all that on purpose.

The people behind those scams are actually quite sophisticated. They have more than sufficient command of the English language to write a compelling and believable email. They could come up with a better initial “pitch.” But they don’t, on purpose. Their reason makes perfect sense once you know it: they want to eliminate, as early as possible, anyone smart enough not to fall for the full scam.

You see, you can trick a LOT of people into going 3-4 emails deep with you on a scam if you’re a good writer and con artist, but the number of people who actually go all the way to giving you their bank details is way lower. That’s a lot of wasted time – you don’t want to be emailing back and forth with hundreds or thousands of people, 99% of whom figure you out before you get a dime. It’s better (from the scammer’s perspective, of course) to just make what you’re doing so obvious that the only people who engage at all are the people who will fall for the whole thing. And clearly some people do: the scam wouldn’t exist if it didn’t generate enough money to be worth it.

So those scammers are horrible, but we can learn a valuable lesson from them. Put the things that are going to eliminate people up front. If you’re looking for friends, a relationship partner, a new job, anything – lead with the weirdest stuff. Because somewhere out there is someone who loves snakes as much as you do, and you don’t want to miss your chance with them because you’re busy wading through a sea of ophidiophobes, pretending to be something you’re not.

Have you ever seen the movie “The Princess Bride?” Of course you have, what a ridiculous question. (And if you haven’t, it’s one of the finest films ever made, so go watch it.) There’s a scene where the main protagonists are trying to plan their attack on the bad guys, and the lead asks for a list of assets from his compatriots. It’s sparse. He brainstorms out loud, wishing he had some random mundane item and it turns out they do – which makes him mad that it wasn’t listed among the assets in the first place.

(Go watch the scene if you don’t like my summary!)

The reason I bring this scene up is because it’s actually harder than you might imagine to conjure up a complete list of all your assets on the spot. Here’s an example: write down a list of everyone you know.

Daunting, isn’t it?

You could write for hours and still miss people. That’s one of the advantages of social media networks; they’re a sort of inventory management system for your friends, loved ones, and professional contacts.

And the reason I bring that up is because if you can’t even list your assets, you’re certainly under-utilizing them. You don’t even know what tools you have at your disposal! Want a sure-fire way to network better? Introduce people that both know you, but don’t know each other. Figure out connections that can add value.

When you introduce two people that may benefit from the connection, you improve both of their lives. That’s two people with a reason to be grateful for your existence, a reminder that you’re awesome, and at least a marginally improved situation that you helped cause. Do that enough, and the spillover effects back to you are HUGE. But how can you do that if you don’t even know who you know?

Every so often, inventory your own “assets,” especially the intangible ones. You might be one wheelbarrow away from a breakthrough – and it was there all along.

If you’re going to be an iconoclast, be a nice iconoclast.

John Darnielle, the front-man (and sometimes only-man) for The Mountain Goats, says that the reason he doesn’t curse in his lyrics is because his lyrics are controversial enough without giving people an additional reason to dismiss him out of hand. That’s a good lesson for anyone who likes to be able to speak controversially, at any time.

Rage and spit and fire and brimstone don’t convince anybody. They might intimidate people into disagreeing with you silently instead of publicly, but disagree with you they still shall – and in fact, probably more vehemently than before. And you’ll have no ability to maneuver that disagreement because you won’t even know it.

Tactics of rhetoric like screaming and flailing and getting all fired up can make people who already agree with you do so more fervently, or whip them into a particular course of action. But if your goal is to sway, then remember that swaying is an inherently gentle act.

The most controversial voice in the room always should be the calmest. Your first debate is with your own emotions, and you have to win in order to proceed to the next round. Truth and wisdom alone have gotten plenty of people stoned to death. If you want to be able to speak your mind, potentially convince people, and remain immune to the worst of the fates of the pariah – then be nice.

There’s a pretty funny joke I’ve heard a few variations of. Apologies if you’ve heard it before, but here it is:

This is the transcript of an actual radio conversation between a US naval ship and Canadian authorities off the coast of Newfoundland.

US Ship: Please divert your course 0.5 degrees to the south to avoid a collision.

CND reply: Recommend you divert your course 15 degrees to the South to avoid a collision.

US Ship: This is the Captain of a US Navy Ship. I say again, divert your course.

CND reply: No. I say again, you divert YOUR course!

US Ship: THIS IS THE AIRCRAFT CARRIER USS CORAL SEA, WE ARE A LARGE WARSHIP OF THE US NAVY. DIVERT YOUR COURSE NOW!!

CND reply: This is a lighthouse. Your call.

Hahaha! Yeah, it’s cheesy, but that joke makes me smile. I think it’s clever. I also think it’s wise.

In life, you’re the only battleship. Everyone else is a lighthouse. You can get all mad and blustery and indignant about other people not getting out of your way, but that’s just going to result in a lot of collisions.

Have you ever been walking towards a street you need to cross, and at the same time a car is headed down that street? You see each other, and there’s some awkward shuffling as each person tries to figure out who’s going and everyone gets slowed down as a result? I have a trick for that. When I see the car approaching, I turn and walk in a different direction. The driver will no longer see me as potentially crossing their path and they’ll just drive on by. I won’t get two steps out of my normal path before the car is passed and I can just cross the street, saving us both about 30 seconds. I don’t try to affect the other person’s behavior at all. They’re the lighthouse; I change course.

People almost never change their behavior without stimuli. So if you have a neighbor that does something that annoys you, it’s pretty silly of you to expect them to change. If they’ve let their dog bark at 11 PM every night for six years, they’re not going to suddenly now realize that it’s pretty rude of them to do so. You, only you, can create change. You can create change by going over and having a nice talk with your neighbor or you can create change by soundproofing your own house, but in either case you have to be the one to act.

The lighthouse isn’t going to move.

“If all your friends jumped off a bridge, would you do it too?”

There are few things in this world with a payoff as great as cultivating the people who influence you. Every single person you interact with will have some effect on you, even if you’re an incredibly stalwart person. That means that who you give the most influence to is vitally important.

The question of whether or not you’d jump off a bridge if all your friends did is entirely dependent on the quality of your circle of friends.

If your friends are all savvy, intelligent, and competent people, and ALL of them jump off a bridge, then there might be something to it. It’s not about blind faith in others! Those friends aren’t random – you chose them, and if you do a good job in that choosing then you can use that as a proxy for later decisions such as whether to trust their decisions to leap off of things.

Conversely, lessons so often taught on after-school television specials about not letting your friends dictate your behavior are really lessons about picking better friends. If you need to constantly choose between your own moral compass and the influence of your peers, then your peers might just be terrible.

Contrary to what you might think, this doesn’t mean I advocate an echo chamber or a circle of “yes men/women.” Quite the opposite! If your chosen peer group is filled with smart, savvy and competent people then you can actually feel more confident seeking out contrary opinions and views and giving them fair consideration. You won’t have to worry as much that some silver-tongued influence will get the better of your higher reasoning with emotional appeals, because you’ll have forums to discuss these things with other rational minds.

It’s no coincidence that demagogues so often find the chronically isolated among their most devout followers. No matter how smart and stalwart we are, none of us are immune to emotional bias or weakness of reasoning on occasion. We all have our bad days. If you don’t have a circle of minds to connect to your own that you trust and value, then a “bad day” can be an open gate for every bad idea that floats your way. But if you have ten other strong minds that influence you, that you’ve learned to trust over time and value their input? Then even if you get caught up in a bad idea, you have tethers.

If I want to talk someone into jumping off a bridge, all I have to do is catch them at the right (wrong) moment. If I want to convince a group of ten to do the same, they’d have to simultaneously be experiencing the sort of terrible emotional strain that would make them susceptible to that kind of influence, and that’s significantly less likely.

Whether they’re your close friends, certain family members, professional peers, or even a salon of thinkers you cultivate and interact with solely for this reason, it’s a good thing to have a regular forum of ideas.

Without it, you’re closer to the edge of the bridge than you might think.

I had an interesting conversation about relative suffering the other day, and I’ve been thinking about it since. No one lives a perfectly charmed life, and everyone will endure suffering at some point. Comparing your suffering to others is rarely healthy or helpful.

For instance, if you’ve lost a loved one and you’re grieving, it probably doesn’t help even one little bit to learn of someone else who lost two loved ones. Even if there were some sort of objective measure of pain and grief (which of course there is not), the person who lost two people doesn’t necessarily suffer more than the person who lost one.

I think grief and mourning are actually far more binary than we often think; or if not fully binary (i.e. grieving or not with no relevant degree of intensity), then at least the spectrum of feeling is narrower than we think. And that’s where perspective helps us – not to rank ourselves on some vast bell curve of pain and loss, but to help us recognize when grief isn’t appropriate at all.

Some of this is of course subjective – I won’t tell someone not to grieve over a lost pet even if I don’t personally do that. But it means if the thing that’s causing you abject grief is being out of chocolate milk, it may do well to know what causes suffering in others in order to have a little perspective.

And if, in chasing perspective, you also gain sympathy – so much the better.

Every aspect of your life can be stripped for parts to build some other aspect, if you need to. You’ll often do this inadvertently, but without direction it can be sloppy and destructive. You can get much better at it by doing it intentionally.

Imagine two of your friends, each in a relationship. The relationships aren’t working out, and both of your friends decide to end their relationships with their respective partners. One of them, let’s say Kim, ends their relationship maturely. Kim has a conversation, treats their now ex with respect, and quashes rumors among friends by being transparent (while still remaining respectful of their ex’s privacy, of course). They split up any mutual possessions and maintain friendships.

Now picture the other friend, Pat. Pat decides to make this into A Thing ™. Pat dumps the other person in a big blowup fight, trashes them publicly, creates divides among friends. Pat goes into hysterics at the mention of any of the places they used to go together and throws away or burns all the mutual possessions.

Kim has clearly done a better job salvaging the useful bits of that part of their life. Those bits can be turned into something else very easily! Lots of friends, a good network of communication, even some nice outfits that they’ve cultivated. They’re more ready to date again sooner, because they recycle well – not to mention just treating someone else more nicely.

Pat has to get all new stuff. A new “dating circle,” new places to eat and other date locations, etc.

This is everything in your life! When you leave a job, you want to make sure you’re keeping your network, your skills, your reputation, maybe even your stapler. When you move, you don’t just throw everything away and buy new stuff when you get there. (Note – it’s totally okay to SELL everything and buy new stuff, especially if it makes the move easier! But waste not, want not.)

Use your life efficiently. Some things are hard to build. Even if they reach a point where they no longer serve your goals and aspirations, you can – and should – use all that you can from what you’ve made.

You’ve heard the story of the tortoise & the hare, I’m sure. Big race, rabbit is a lock, turtle comes from behind because he never gives up, etc.

I really dislike how this story is told.

Every time you hear this story, its target audience appears to be tortoises. In other words, this story is always told as advice to never give up and keep chugging along, because then you’ll win!

Not only is that kind of silly advice, but it misses out on the amazing advice that this story actually holds if told correctly.

See, “slow and steady” might accomplish goals, but it doesn’t actually win races. “Slow and steady” is great advice from the standpoint of personal improvement. If you’re trying to lose weight, don’t worry about how fast you’re doing it – slow and steady is great advice. Lose weight in a healthy way, keep consistent, and you’ll get there.

But races involve other people. And in an actual race between a tortoise and a hare, the hare is going to win. Maybe you could tell this story as a sort of marathon-versus-sprint story, where “slow and steady” works because the turtle is a better distance runner than the rabbit or something, but that’s not the story at all. The real story contains a fantastic lesson, but it never seems to get emphasized.

The real moral of this story, the incredible value it contains, is this:

“Don’t blow an early advantage by being arrogant and lazy.”

That’s the power of this story. The tortoise didn’t win; the hare lost. The hare didn’t lose because of some inherent quality of the tortoise, either – the hare lost because it had a strong lead and took a nap. Arrogance and laziness lost that race. It had nothing to do with “slow and steady” versus quick. This lesson that if you just go “slow and steady” you’ll win every race is hogwash.

You’ll win every race you’re capable of winning, if you never get cocky and take naps while you’re still running.

Don’t mistake “being in the lead” with “already won.” This story should be told to hares, not to tortoises. If you tell this story to a tortoise, you’re saying “the other person might be better than you in the qualities measured by this particular competition, but if you just keep plugging away you’ll win anyway.” Ridiculous! If you’re the tortoise, you win only if the hare messes up.

So the lesson is: if you’re the hare, don’t mess up. And if you’re the tortoise, become the hare. You win the race by improving, not by just doing the same old thing over and over and hoping for a mistake from your superior competition.

And therein lies the deeper, perhaps truer meaning. Unlike the characters in the story, we’re none of us trapped in the skin of a hare nor a tortoise. We can be either, each of us, and we can change over time. We can start the race as a tortoise but choose to put in the work to become a hare. And once we’re a hare, we can remember the lessons of this story, and we can do it all – we can be good at what we do, and simultaneously avoid the arrogance and laziness that threatens to unseat us.

Quick and steady wins the race.

Earlier this week I had a day that didn’t go so well. I’ll spare you the unimportant details, but at the end of the day I looked back and was deeply unsatisfied.

I did something different with that feeling than I normally do.

Normally, when I feel that particular feeling, I try to salvage. I push myself, work on something, commit to not sleeping until I’ve accomplished something that makes the day a win overall. Sometimes that actually works and often it doesn’t. And when it doesn’t work, it makes things far worse.

So instead, this time, I just said to myself: “Take the loss. It’s one day. Get some sleep.” I didn’t try to work myself into a stupor to salvage it. And perhaps even more importantly, I didn’t say “I’ll work twice as hard tomorrow to make up for it.” That’s rarely healthy and is a good way to create a line of dominoes.

I woke up the next morning feeling great. And I had a great day.

I’m writing this because I’m sure that a single win like that won’t totally change my habits. I’m sure the impulse will still be there, the next time I have a bad day, to try to grind into the wee hours trying to figure out some way to scrape up a victory.

But writing this is the first step to reminding myself to cut my poor bones a little slack sometimes, too.