The Circle of Trust

My building is a mix of hotel rooms and private apartments. Since the room service needs to wash many sheets every day, the laundry machines in the basement are only open to the public after 3 PM. I went to buy tokens at 1 PM, but the concierge wouldn’t sell me any.

“Oh, I’ll wash after 3 PM. I just want to get the tokens already,” I said. She shook her head: “Unfortunately, I can’t do that. We’ve had people claim the same in the past, but then they’d wash already, and the staff couldn’t access the machines when they needed them.”

Everyone in my building lives in a circle of trust. The staff trusts the machines to be available at the specified times. The people trust the 24/7 concierge to be there around the clock. The concierge trusts the tenants to pick up their parcels soon after they arrive (so they won’t clog their tiny desk).

It only takes one person for the circle of trust to be broken. One package uncollected, one emergency at the wrong time, one round of laundry done too early.

When the circle breaks, it breaks for everyone. It doesn’t matter who did it. Now, every member of the circle has to work to re-establish trust. That’s a lot of work – a lot more work than the little bit of effort it takes each person to keep an existing circle intact.

We’re part of many circles of trust. Sometimes, you’ll break one by accident. At other times, there won’t be another choice. Most circles, however, you can maintain without much friction at all.

Play by the rules that matter. Protect your circles of trust.

Death Is Your Neighbor

When you live in a street with eight houses, it’s impossible to ignore a new neighbor. You can’t just blend in with hundreds of other residents, like in a big apartment complex. There’s no sneaking out, ducking away, and quickly closing the door behind you.

In a residential area, it’s you, the Millers, the Jamesons, Myrtle the old lady, and now…Death. That’s right. Mr. D moved in next door. In fact, he’s always been there. The question is: When will you acknowledge his presence?

You don’t have to love Death. I wouldn’t recommend going for dinner at his house. He’ll knock on your door when it’s time. You’ll know.

Ignoring him, on the other hand, won’t make him go away. It’ll just make you a grumpy neighbor. When you see Death getting his newspaper, wave at him. Say hi. Be friendly.

If you catch him knocking on Myrtle’s house, nod at him. Remember Myrtle. Shed a tear. Feel for her and feel for Death. His job is not one to envy.

I started greeting Death when I was 23. I hope I won’t stop. 75 is far too late to become a good neighbor. There won’t be enough time to get familiar before he knocks.

The word “mortality” sounds like “more” because when we think about it, it extends the time we have – not by adding hours, but by adding presence.

Welcome to the community. Remember to greet your neighbors.

Soggy Rolls

“I love it when they’re soggy,” I said. “You know, a little chewy from the juice of the tomato, or the cold cuts, or whatever you put on.” I was talking, of course, about the rolls. One hand on the steering wheel, the other on an aluminum-foil-wrapped “Brötchen,” as we call them in Germany, my friend agreed – and sunk his teeth into the delicious mix of dough and salami.

You’d never make soggy rolls at home. You don’t bake them fresh, garnish them with mortadella and cheese, then wrap them in foil and put them in the fridge. The only time you have soggy rolls is when no other kind is available. They’re a sign of adventure.

Back then, my friend’s mom must’ve made at least eight rolls for us, a little overkill for a one-hour drive. I was just tagging along – mental support for his job interview. The car we drove in was a blue jeep. His interview happened in a grocery store. He said it went okay and shared all kinds of details on the way back.

Eventually, he got the job: A coveted spot in a work-and-study program at one of Germany’s biggest retailers. It was a great opportunity, especially given his grades. He would go on to make the most of it, and I’m happy I played a small role in his story.

Whatever I can remember about this day, it all spools off from that moment I see him biting into his mushy sandwich. We all have memories like this, minted not from pleasure or extreme emotion, but from the details along the way – details which, ultimately, stand for something much bigger.

Cherish your soggy rolls.

Goal Fatigue

Despite my guiding force in life being annual themes, I do choose one goal to pursue at any given time.

Usually, it’s a big one, but I don’t think about it every day. I set the intention once, then let my subconscious take over. The goal is always there, somewhere in the back of my mind, quietly steering my actions toward the right ends. I don’t care if I achieve the goal in a year or five or ten, but often, the mere act of choosing it makes it happen a lot faster.

Overall, my life is already fairly goal-less, and yet sometimes, I can’t help but feel tired of goals altogether. I get goal fatigue. I think that’s okay, and I want you to know it’s okay for you to be tired of goals as well.

Life used to be inherently goal-less. Survive! That was our ancestors’ only motto. Will you make it another day? Great! Now go out and play. Paint a cave or something. Whatever you feel like.

We’ve come a long way since then. We can choose where to bundle our intelligent energy, and it’s an absolute marvel to see what that can do.

Option, however, does not equal obligation. It’s perfectly fine to take six months off from “Achieve!” and make “Survive!” your new, intermittent motto – for if survival is easy, there’s a lot you might want to do just for fun! You could play video games for hours, read lots of books, or paint a cave (or a canvas), and it wouldn’t matter how well you do any of them. You could hike more, organize weekly pub nights for your friends, or simply be more available as a parent or partner.

Instead of dictating your life’s direction, you’d listen. Life would tell you what it needs and what it wants you to do, and you could decide individually for each request: Is this reasonable? Or should this be a hard no?

Eventually, you’d pull the strings (and yourself) back together. Maybe life provided a new, clear direction on its own, and if not, chances are, your previous goals are waiting right where you left them. You’d dust them off, look at them – with some new perspective, of course – and decide whether they’re still worth keeping. Some won’t be. Others might glow even brighter than before.

You’d pick one of those shiny orbs and insert it back into the machine. Your blinders would fold forward, gears subconsciously click into place, and you’d be back on track in no time, back to “Achieve!” the fun, honorable, and empowered game most of us get to play these days – just don’t forget to take another break when you feel goal fatigue.

Why Shoot for the Moon?

I only have one goal. Right now, it is to sell 100,000 books. I’ve had this goal for about 18 months, and I’ve come just over 1% of the way. Ridiculous, isn’t it?

When I chose to make books the focus of my career, I thought about what would be a good number of books to sell – a number that would make it feel real and give me confidence in saying, “Yes, I’m a full-time author. This is my calling, and here’s the proof.”

100? Too little. 1,000? At today’s royalties, that might be $3,000-$5,000. Not quite a full-time salary on an annual basis. How about 10,000? Now we’re getting somewhere! That could be $30,000-$50,000.

With the readership I’m grateful to have built so far, I could probably sell that many copies if I tried really hard. But that’s the problem: I’d have to hassle every single person I know for months, relentlessly spam my audience, and probably burn a lot of goodwill I’ve accumulated over the years. Is 10,000 books worth becoming an annoying broken record? Probably not.

Well, let’s add another zero: 100,000. Phew. That sounds intimidating. I have no idea if I can pull this off. There’s definitely no basis for it. Nothing about where I am right now indicates that, “Yes, this is doable.”

So how could I achieve this? After much deliberation, it seems the only way is writing a stellar book – a book that sells itself. Unless people gift, recommend, and talk about the book ad nauseam with their friends, there’s no way I’m selling that many – and that’s exactly the kind of filter I need.

Choosing a big goal way out of our comfort zone keeps us honest. It obliterates bias, gimmicks, and short-term thinking. It ensures we try something new and try our best – that if we achieve the goal, we’ll achieve it the right way. Plus, even if we fail, we’ll have failed originally, and the result might still be better than what we’d otherwise have considered a gold medal. 50% of 100,000 is still five times more than 10,000.

We shoot for the moon not because our egos are big but because doing so keeps our egos small. When you shoot for the moon, you only get one shot.

Pick the goals that keep you who you are while forcing you to evolve. Even if you miss the moon, you’ll have taken a trip among the stars.

When You Help Someone, You Help Everyone

That’s May Parker‘s philosophy – and why she works at F.E.A.S.T., a homeless shelter whose name stands for “Food, Emergency, Aid, Shelter and Training.” If she can provide any one of these things for someone, May would call that a good day – and so can we.

“Help one person” is a powerful motto not because it gets us out of our own heads (it does) or because it’s the only way that truly works (it is), but because we’ll never know where the ripple effect of our unconditional support ends – and we mustn’t be so presumptuous as to assume we can.

A cup of coffee is rarely just a cup of coffee. Who’s to say what empowering thought patterns unravel, which gears click into place and start spinning behind the scenes? We? No. We’re not in charge of the universe. We’re in charge of sending out more positive ripples, some of which may never break, echoing forever through humankind – an unstoppable force carrying hope through the vast emptiness of space.

Will the person you helped smile? Hold the door for someone? Be nice to their kids? Maybe they’ll give their assistant a bonus, inspire their entire team, or start a global peace movement. Maybe none of those things happen – or maybe all of them will. You won’t know, but that’s no reason to not help. It’s reason to help as much as you can.

Someone helped Oprah before she was Oprah. Someone helped Gandhi, Mandela, and Malala. Now, they help everyone, in some cases long after they’ve passed.

It’s the butterfly effect in reverse: You help someone spread their wings, and halfway around the world, a dictator resigns. We can’t all be billionaires, Oscar nominees, and Nobel Prize laureates – but we all have the power to help.

When you help someone, you help everyone. Help someone today.

The Ruthless Decapitation of Noise

…because “elimination” is not a strong enough word. I can eliminate weeds, but they’ll grow right back. So does noise if you don’t quell it at the source.

Noise is any task you attack in service of a goal you don’t truly care about. It’s the entirety of your phone’s notifications, including incoming calls. Noise is information, blubber, filler words, and meaningless opinions.

I once told a friend I’d have 100,000 Twitter followers in no time. But what is it for? When I asked that question out loud, my friend said I was being dramatic, having achieved a grand 0.38% of my goal.

At first I didn’t understand, but now I think, “Yes! Drama is right!” I want to make the biggest hoopla I can about beheading this pointless effort before it reaches 50% rather than 0.38%. The drama is not for the people – it is for me. To shock myself into action, make the importance of the stance I’m taking crystal-clear, if only in the mirror.

Noise is the greatest disease of our time. We can’t afford to approach it willy-nilly. Slap some balm on the symptoms, “Oh, that should do.” No. It won’t. Noise is a monster. It will eat us alive.

I don’t want to live a slightly less noisy life. I want to live a quiet life. I want to do what Neville did: Cut the head off the snake. Kill the horcrux once and for all.

I’ll never forget one scene towards the end of the first season of Game of Thrones. In one instant, one slice of a sword, one beheading, the show went from period drama to power struggle of the ages, from your usual plotting to a twisted war among the most inhumane humans you’ve ever seen – and nothing was off limits. I dreamed about it. I can still see the scene clearly months later.

The momentous, unrelenting swing of that blade – that’s the kind of force with which we must quench noise from our lives – and if the kind of shock we feel at a beloved character’s surprise decapitation is what it takes for us to conjure that force, so be it.

If you don’t decapitate noise at every source you can find, it will keep creeping back into your life, forever undermining you from beneath. Don’t let it. Be the Queen of Hearts when you must, even if it means yelling “Off with its head!” – or grabbing the sword yourself.

A Journey Is Joy With Extra Letters

“Enjoy the journey,” they say. As far as I was concerned, I wasn’t on a journey at all. Just a teenager, stuck in a 1,000-person village, bored out of his mind.

“You think boredom is your ally? You merely adopted boredom. I was born in it, molded by it. I didn’t see endless possibility until I was already a man. By then it was nothing to me but blinding!” There is a little more truth in the second half of this bastardized Bane speech than I care to admit – and a little less in the first half than you might fear.

In reality, I went on journeys all the time – they just mostly happened in my head. I read. I watched movies. I played video games. I went outside. Tried all kinds of sports, and invented some of my own. Boredom taught me patience, resourcefulness, and creativity. That’s a great starter kit of traits for the modern world.

Looking back, my childhood was full of joy, and that’s why it’s easy to enjoy the journey now, no matter which direction it takes.

If you can find joy in the little things, be happy on your deserted island, and turn boredom into a springboard for your imagination, the external journey, the one society urges us so desperately to undertake, becomes a bonus level.

There’ll be nothing you won’t already have, and joy will naturally eclipse any journey you elect to go on. It is, after all, the same word with a few more letters in-between.

First, Take Back Your Power

In Spider-Man 2, Peter Parker loses his powers. One minute he’s swinging from skyscraper to skyscraper, the next he’s flat on his back in some dirty alley. His webs won’t shoot, his eyes won’t focus, and the whole superhero gig seems out the window.

Ultimately, Peter’s powers return when MJ, his great love, is in danger. Even before, however, he tries various things: He deliberately renounces being Spiderman, attempts to win MJ back from another man, and tells his aunt the truth about his failure to save his uncle years earlier. Despite failing, these were acts of empowerment – made with the power Peter had at the time, aimed at growing his resolve.

After releasing my first book, I dove right into the next one. It was slow. I spent over a week on a single chapter. I redid the structure. Something felt off. Suddenly, two months were gone, and I was starting to drift, just like I had with book number one (which was written across a scattered three months out of twelve).

One day, I decided to start a daily blog. At first sight, it seemed like yet another distraction. Actually, it was the act of empowerment I needed. A grounding exercise to combat the limbo of book-writing, ensuring I show up, practice, and ship every day.

Take your power back first. Use the room and resources you have. Confidence can come in small doses. It could be a cup of coffee, a t-shirt with the right slogan, or a song. Sometimes, it’ll have to be slightly bigger – a new computer, a different job, or hanging up the mantle you loved to wear so much.

Mostly, it’s about changing the momentum: switching from passive to active, from reactive to focused, and from tiptoeing backwards to taking a step forward and looking ahead.

You might not return immediately in full force, but swing or no swing, at least you’ll be on your way.

Days Beat Dreams

Somewhere out there, there’s the perfect workout for you. It maps exactly to your height, flexibility, and muscle-to-weight ratio. If you did this workout every day, you’d live a hundred years.

Unfortunately, you don’t know where this workout is. You don’t even have a map to find it. Sure, you could start drawing your own, but you’d have to explore the terrain from scratch. In a foggy swamp, the only path is to fail your way to success.

You might start by looking at cardio, from running to cycling to swimming. You’d research weight training, read lots of books from lots of people with varying opinions, and buy weights from 1 kg to 100. Soon, you’d have to understand more niche sports to cover dexterity, like archery, pen spinning, or rope skipping.

Ten years in, you might be right back where you’ve begun: Your body has changed so much, you need to start over. Worse, however, between all the research, planning, assembling, and synthesizing, you forgot to train! You barely worked out at all!

In a better world, they’d have laid a single sheet of paper with your perfect workout into your crib the day you were born. In the one we have, you must start before you’re ready.

The best workout is the one you do every day. Not necessarily with physical ease, but definitely without mental strain.

I have averaged about 50 push-ups for 686 days in a row. That’s 30,000 push-ups. On some days, I don’t feel like it, but on most days, I do. It wakes me up in the morning. It gets my blood flowing. My workout only takes a minute. I can manage it well, but I still feel the effort. When I’m sick, I just do 10 push-ups. Or 20. Or 1. But come hell or high water, I work out every day.

I know swimming is ideal for me, but I don’t have a pool. Public ones are hard to access, often crowded, and cost good money. Maybe one day, I’ll have a pool of my own. Until then, I’ll keep doing push-ups.

Days beat dreams because dreams are, by definition, impossible to attain in their purest form. Every day, on the other hand, holds the potential to make a little progress. If you keep adding days, they’ll grow into something big, and sometimes that something is bigger than your wildest dream. It’ll never look just like your original vision, but it’ll come with the unsurpassable benefit of you knowing it’s real.

Don’t hope for the perfect workout, the perfect job, the perfect relationship. Don’t try to map the entire terrain. Start where you are, and take it one day, one task, one connection at a time. That’s how you finish the marathon, win her love, or wow your customers.

The only dreams that matter are the ones we make true by choosing to wake up.