There is a difference between fighting a disease and improving your health, whether we’re talking about mental or physical. Physically, it’s easier to understand. If you’re sick or injured, you need discrete, specific treatment, but you wouldn’t just take antibiotics or wear a cast all the time, hoping it would improve your overall health. If you wish to improve your baseline physical health, you need to live a healthier lifestyle – better diet, more physical activity, etc.

The same is true of mental health, but we don’t tend to acknowledge it. People can have trauma, grief, or anguish that needs to be healed, but the treatments that work for those aren’t the same as the treatments that will just make you happier or more satisfied with your life overall. If you suffer a specific traumatic event, for example, you should absolutely seek professional counseling, therapy, or the like to help you work past it. But if you’re just sad in general, the same type of professional service isn’t going to help you any more than wearing a cast will help you be physically healthier.

If you suffer a particularly grievous physical injury, you may have a scar long after you’re fully healed. Some scars are permanent, and that’s just the way it is. The same is true for mental health. If you suffer a particularly traumatic event, you may have the mental “scar” for the rest of your life, even after you’ve healed the actual trauma. But we mistake scars for current injuries frequently when discussing mental health, to the point where we often don’t acknowledge that mental injuries can be healed at all. We see a traumatic event as permanent damage, instead of something you can heal from.

This leads us to another type of error, which is believing that anything other than a high level of baseline happiness and contentment must be from specific traumas. People are sad, so they think they need to be “cured.” But being cured is not the same as being healthy. A person with no physical injuries or diseases can be very unhealthy if they live a physically unhealthy lifestyle. The same is true for your mental health. If you’re feeling sad, lethargic, or dissatisfied, that doesn’t mean you need to heal your trauma. It means you need to meditate more, get outside frequently, drink more water, meditate, spend time with your loved ones, and do purposeful work.

Lifestyle interventions and convalescence go hand in hand in maintaining our health, both physical and mental (which are of course also related). You will be injured or sick multiple times in your life, and when that happens, you should absolutely seek the appropriate curative care. But the rest of the time, you need to focus on the life choices that create a healthy mind and body, because “healthy” isn’t the default. You need to work for it.

The other day I stopped at a gas station to use the air pump to inflate one of my tires. The air pump sits between two parking spots designated for the purpose; a man was in one of the spots already, filling his tires, so I pulled into the other one to wait my turn. While he filled his tires, I chatted with him for a moment and then took the hose from him when he was finished.

While I was filling my tire, he pulled out and drove off, and a new car pulled into the now-vacant spot. The man in that car hadn’t even fully parked yet when he rolled down his window and began cursing at me. He started calling me unkind names and said that he was there first. Of course, by this point, I was already putting air in my tire. In retrospect, what I imagine must have happened is that the man didn’t realize there were two spots and was waiting for the first car to leave, which is a perfectly honest mistake to make. I wasn’t in any particular rush; had he caught me before I was already mid-fill I’d have just let him go first.

I just said, “Sorry about that, be done in just a sec!” He continued to scream and yell the entire sixty or so seconds it took me to fill my tire. When I was done, I walked over and cheerfully said “All done! Here you go,” and attempted to hand him the hose. Fuming, he said “Just put it back in the holder.” So I did! Then I said “take it easy,” and got back in my car.

As I started my car and buckled up, he gestured for me to roll down my window. I did, and with a sigh he said, “I apologize for that. I don’t normally behave that way, and I’m sorry I yelled at you.”

I said: “Everyone has a rough day. I’m sorry too if I disrupted your day. Have a good one.” He smiled, and I left.

A lot of times, when someone is aggressive or rude to you for no reason, you won’t get a resolution like this, even if you’re as kind as you can be. Maybe one time in twenty will you get a satisfactory moment to provide catharsis to such an encounter. But you’ll get it zero times in twenty if you match aggression with aggression. No amount of return rudeness would have made me feel better in the long run, and there is no happy ending to that scene if I’d screamed back. Even if he hadn’t apologized, my heart would have been better off knowing I might have planted the seed for a moment like that in the future, even if I didn’t get to see it.

There is a person I used to be, who would have scowled and raged at this post. Good.

I have a very easy time dealing with most situations I don’t enjoy. I can “check out” mentally and perform most routine tasks on autopilot, entertaining myself in my mind very easily. I used to love chores like mowing the lawn as a kid for this reason; walking in straight lines was pretty easy to do without paying attention to it, and my mental holodeck was a fine playground.

The downside to this is that I don’t do very well when the situation I don’t want to be in requires my active participation. It’s easy for me not to be bored, but it’s far more difficult (for example) for me to participate in a conversation I don’t want to have. If the person I’m unwillingly talking to requires more than occasional nods and affirmative grunts, my energy drains rapidly.

Most of the time, this isn’t a huge problem. I arrange my life in such a way that I mostly don’t do stuff I don’t want to, and it’s pretty great. But no one can pull this off 100% of the time, so it’s good to practice a little perspective. I try to focus on the positive outcomes of my active participation, rather than the situation itself. It’ll do, when autopilot won’t.

When you’re in a bad mood, it’s hard to remember the things that make you happy. That’s one of the pernicious effects of negative emotions – they cloud your memory of the positive ones. But most of us have at least several things that would put us in a better mood almost instantly, if only we remembered to employ them.

So mark them! When something makes you very happy, note it in some way other than just relying on your memory. Make a list, or send a thank-you note, or srcawl it on your wall. Keep little reminder trinkets. Whatever it takes to keep a “happiness list” handy for the rough moments.

When you’re in that mood, don’t fight on its behalf. Don’t sulk and say, “Well I don’t want to call my best friend or listen to my favorite song, because I’m in a bad mood.” That’s the mood taking you over! But you are not your negative emotions. You have free will, and you can choose to dip into that happiness well any time.

There is a configuration for your life that will make it easier. Chances are, that configuration looks weird to outsiders. It might even look weird to you!

Someone was recently talking about married couples sleeping in separate beds, or even separate rooms. That might seem weird, or even look like the marriage is loveless. But maybe that couple has opposite work schedules, different sleeping preferences, or any number of other factors? Rather than sacrifice a good night’s sleep to seem normal, they configured their life to better suit them.

The point is, everyone is different. They have different needs, strengths, challenges, desires. Everything from when you set your alarm to how you eat at a restaurant is yours to control. Find the patterns that make your life easy and happy, and screw “normal.”

At times, it might feel like life has placed an impossible choice in front of you. Two vital things compete for some essential and limited resource – your time, your energy, your focus. Perhaps the night your biggest client is flying in to close a year-long negotiation is the same night your daughter stars in the school musical that she’s been working on all semester.

This isn’t about clever solutions (though hey, find them if you can – maybe the clients want to see a bunch of 8th graders perform Anything Goes!), but rather, it’s about the path forward, the Third Choice.

That choice is this: Do not allow life to do this to you a second time. At least, not in the same way.

When I was younger and had no children, I had the kind of career that featured frequent major make-or-break meetings like the one above. Things I couldn’t reschedule or miss without dire consequences. But since my career was my major focus, that wasn’t a conflict. I didn’t miss anything… until my first child was born. Then, suddenly, those conflicts were happening all the time.

And because I’m a little thick, it took me a bit before I made the necessary shifts. I replaced that job with one that didn’t have those kinds of meetings. One that better fit the life I wanted to live, and the impossible choices I wanted to avoid.

If you find yourself being forced to choose between pursuing your passion and giving energy to a romantic partner, just remember – a good alignment between those two means you don’t have to make that choice. It might be painful, but one of those things doesn’t serve the life you want to live, even if it once did. (And the answer isn’t obvious, nor always the same! And if you think it is, then maybe that says something about the element of your life that you should be reconsidering?)

Don’t hold two magnets together by their North sides, trying to force them together. Flip one around, and find harmony.

I will sometimes interact with people who will prejudge someone based on their belief system. These same people wouldn’t dream of prejudging someone based on their skin color, gender, or nationality. “Belief systems are different,” they’ll say. “It’s not a fact of your birth that you can’t change; it’s the moral philosophy you choose to live by. So it’s fair game!”

Allow me to present to you two very good reasons not to assume anything about someone just because you know what religion they follow:

1. Your experiences with that religion, especially if they’re negative enough to generate prejudice within you, were probably at the hands of people who were not following it correctly. If you got screamed at by the Westboro Baptist Church, and that caused you to automatically dislike Baptists, then you’re doing everyone (including yourself) a disservice.
2. Even if the majority of the followers of a belief system actually practice whatever actions you find so negative, this person might not know that. If you want to bring someone into your religion, it’s bad recruiting to start with the hateful stuff. So usually that comes later, after they’re loyal. If someone is in that early stage and you attack them, you drive them toward the more extreme fringes. If instead you simply talk to them, you may find lots of common ground – and save them.

If you’re on the outside of any group, then most of your knowledge about that group will come from the most extreme (and therefore most vocal and newsworthy) fringes. That’s a bad way to evaluate anything.

Some days you just don’t have it in you to do a lot. Or there isn’t a lot to do, and that’s okay! You’re allowed to have lounge days.

…I keep telling myself.

In reality, I always feel like a slug if I don’t accomplish something. So I try to have a little principle for “slugging:” Keep Costs Low.

Slugging is okay if I don’t impose a lot of costs that outpace my productivity. That means when I slug, I don’t overeat or spend a lot of money. If I’m taking a day off, at least my costs are, too.

You should mark the things you love, whether or not you’ll always love them.

If you love apples, go ahead and plant an apple tree. “But what if I don’t still love apples in ten years?” So what? You will always have loved them when you planted the tree, and we don’t need things to be permanent in order to celebrate them.

Language is a wonderful thing. Using the power of language, mankind has been to space. We’ve built incredible civilizations and wonderful art. I love language!

But now and then, it’s helpful to remember that language, and the civilization it carries, puts layers and layers of occlusion over fundamental truths.

We so often follow the words, and we stop looking at anything else. Want a real trip? Watch a foreign language film – or even better, TV show. Don’t put the subtitles on. Let yourself be totally lost in terms of words, but leave yourself every other element. The visuals, the tone of voice, the setting. Let your gut instincts tell you what’s going on.

You won’t pick up every nuance. But you’ll notice things you never did before. You may not know what the bad guy did, but you’ll know who the bad guy is, for sure. If it’s a secret, you’ll probably figure it out before someone who understands the words!

Go to a part of the world where you can’t understand what’s being said, and just observe. You’ll see who leads social groups, you’ll see who’s in love, you’ll see all sorts of things that the words hid from you.

Keep that observation sharp. Even with the words, those are helpful skills.