When you seek to improve yourself (and hey, since you’re reading this, I hope you are – this blog is 90% about self-improvement so what are you doing here if not?), there can actually be a very dangerous mindset shift that happens. Be careful, because this can harm you far in excess of whatever benefit you’re getting from your chosen path.

The dangerous shift is this: You start to resent others who aren’t doing what you’re doing.

You’ve seen it happen. Someone who’s been a lazy slob their whole life starts to get in shape and healthy, and suddenly they’re admonishing people who live the way they only recently used to. Or someone starts donating their time to a charity and then starts to get mad at all the people who don’t. Or even someone just trying to be more kind and considerate getting bitter about it not being reciprocated.

This is a poison, and you need to spit it out.

You can’t improve yourself and then get mad that the world hasn’t come along with you. It isn’t about the world – it’s about you. The world will get better, bit by bit, as the people in it do. But you have plenty of work to do on yourself, and getting mad at others who aren’t is hindering that work.

Look at it this way: the very definition of being the best person you can be is to rise above the average expectations of your society. The average society in your time and place condones or allows many things that you truly should rise above, or at least attempt to. But if you’re even marginally successful, that means that most people won’t be doing that same thing. That, by itself, is good! But don’t let it turn you into an isolationist, an island, a judgmental jerk.

Be better so you can help more. Improve, above all else, your soul.

My father taught me that if you can do something for the humans around you, then you have a responsibility to do so. This is not an admonishment to others, but a maxim for the self. You have tremendous superpowers if you simply have a roof over your head, food in your cabinet, boots on your feet. If you have hands that can lift and eyes that can read, you can do wonders for the world. A safe space, a hot meal, and a kind word for the people around you might mean everything – they do mean everything, when you don’t have them.

The interactions between people are complex. Sometimes we hurt each other, and rarely is that hurt contained in a single, discrete word or action. Far more often, there are patterns and sequences that we get caught up in, webs of hurt we weave around each other, even when we don’t mean to.

If you are genuinely remorseful of that (and hopefully you are!), you may be driven to apologize. Good! Do it sincerely. When you do though, you may discover that the thing you feel the most need to apologize for isn’t the thing the other person was most hurt by. (And vice versa.) The thing you’re apologizing for, the thing that weighed so heavily on your soul, barely registered to the other person. Meanwhile, some other thing you thought so minor it wasn’t worth mentioning has been lodged in their heart ever since.

This can be complex, difficult, and painful to navigate. But there’s a benefit, too – if you truly care about that person and want to use the opportunity for apology as a way of strengthening a personal relationship, then you’re in luck. You can use this experience as a way of truly getting to know something deep and meaningful about another person – how they experience pain. We almost never get the opportunity to really understand another person’s pain, and seeking that knowledge, even if it bruises your own ego, is an essential part of expressing ownership of the harm that you caused.

It isn’t punishment. It’s growth.

I hope you and all of your kin are finding peace, solace, and companionship. And if you have any left over, spread it around. Merry Christmas!

Be just a tiny, itsy bitsy little bit kinder to yourself today. Make that your gift, and then pass it along.

The most critical element of delegation isn’t trust. It’s patience.

Absolutely nothing can be delegated in less time than it would take you to do it, if you’re handing it off for the first time. The process of giving away work is work! The whole “if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself” mentality is just a side-effect of being impatient.

Don’t delegate because you’re busy. Delegate because you want to grow.

There are some mistakes you won’t ever undo, time you won’t ever get back, wrongs you won’t ever right. That’s not an excuse to keep making those mistakes. Sometimes you find out with certainty that you’ve lost the opportunity to win the race, and for a lot of people that simply makes them give up on even finishing it. Don’t. Crawl across that finish line in dead last if you have to, but don’t abandon the effort. It matters.

About a half-dozen times a year, my extended family and I pay a visit to the family cemetery. We put new flowers on numerous graves and speak with our departed. Some are more recent, like my father. But the oldest family member we visit died 110 years ago, in 1914.

We’ve been doing this as a family for so long that when the tradition started, it was started by people who knew Otto personally and beseeched her own descendants to not forget to tend to him when she no longer could. The tradition passes on, and our family line is strong. We tell the stories, passed down and passed down, as if we knew him ourselves. He died a century before my children were even born, and they know stories about him and put flowers on his grave, the latest in a line of five generations to do so.

May I be so lucky that some day my great-great-grandchildren are telling my old legends and still visiting my grave. May they be so lucky to still have such a family with whom to do it.

When called out on behavior that adds friction to a relationship, people sometimes say, “Sorry, that’s just my personality.” Cue eye rolls here, but let’s work with it.

The problem with that statement isn’t really the statement itself, it’s the timing. Imagine you’re in a meeting with your new boss. You’ve only been working for them for a few weeks, and in this meeting they tell you about ten things they think you’re doing wrong. Their tone is harsh, their pace is fast, and you’re left feeling like you made a bad decision joining the team. But hey, you’re proactive and want to bridge the gap, so you send them an email asking if there are any deeper concerns about your role on the team that should be addressed. And then you get back an email that says: “You’re a great addition to the team! I’m glad you’re here and I think you’re doing a good job. Don’t mind my tone during the meetings, that’s just how I manage, that’s just my personality, it doesn’t mean I don’t think you’re doing well.”

At best, you’re getting some big mixed messages and might be unsure how to proceed. At worst, the email comes across as insincere, only being sent as “damage control” after their initial tone puts you off. Let’s be clear: the manager shouldn’t do this. But I like to work with the world I’ve got and not dream about ideal ones that will never come to pass. So in this world, the one where people probably aren’t going to radically change their personalities or management style overnight, what can you do?

Change the timing.

The whole thing about the tone of that meeting was especially disruptive because it came along with specific criticisms or feedback. If you had gotten, much earlier in the process, an introduction that explained the style that would be coming, then it would be easier to decouple that style from the feedback itself. Imagine an early email from the manager that said something like:

“Welcome aboard! I just want to introduce myself a little more to you, and let you understand aspects of my management style. I’m fast-paced and tend not to sugarcoat, but I have a high degree of trust in my people. When there’s constructive feedback to give, I tend to give it a big burst and if I’m feeling frustrated with a larger problem, you can definitely hear it in my voice. But I promise you now, that’s not frustration with you, just with a larger circumstance – one that we’re working to solve together. I’m also very honest, so if I do have frustrations or challenges with you directly, I’ll absolutely make that clear. What this means for you is that I may jump on a call with you and quickly rattle off ten pieces of feedback, and my tone might seem short. If/when that happens, I hope you’ll remember in advance that none of that is an indicator of your specific performance, it’s just me getting my thoughts out as efficiently as I can. I absolutely encourage you to send me any follow-up emails with questions for clarification and/or action plans after that. I also encourage you to give me a similar description of your own working styles so we can adapt to each other and be an effective team!”

Now again, let me reiterate: the best course of action would be delivering feedback in a better way. But in a world where that doesn’t happen, wouldn’t getting that email early in the relationship help a ton? Wouldn’t it majorly take the sting or uncertainty out of that call later when it happens?

(Plus hey, people always get points for self-awareness with me. That’s probably true for most people!)

So here’s what you can do: Be proactive, and send yours first. Imagine as a manager, bringing a new person onto your team and they start off with a friendly “user guide” on how they tend to show up, respond to things, etc. A way to distill what often takes months or years of working together to intuitively know into an up-front, low-ego reference. They’d love it! And then it’s easy to ask them for one back. And now suddenly, you’ve eliminated 90% of the stress and emotion from future interactions.

Working together is hard, but we can make it easier.

There is a direct connection between low stress and high productivity. Here’s how to make that connection and benefit from it: Understand what matters.

Not all the time, but certainly most of the time, I see people stressing over things of absolutely no real consequence. Now obviously this is in large part a by-product of my living in the First World in pretty safe circumstances. But awareness of that is actually one of the things that helps keep me focused on what matters! Other people in my “bubble” also live in safety and comfort in the United States, but many of them just stress themselves out all the time.

This applies to their home life, their work life, all of it. Almost everything you’re stressing about has no actual bearing on the true results or goals you care about, no matter what they are. And that’s largely because people are bad at identifying real goals to begin with.

If you take the time to identify what you really want, and what’s really important, it becomes much easier to eliminate things that aren’t directly contributing to it. And that takes away 90% or more of the things you’re stressing over. You get laser-focused and more relaxed!