When you’re supposed to write but you feel sad, you have three options. First, you can write sadly and turn the sadness into meaning. Second, you can try to convert the sadness into another emotion. Or, you can just wait until the sadness passes.

The first option is often productive, but we can’t always bring ourselves to it. It takes courage, and that’s not in infinite supply. The second option is hard and seldom works, and when it does, it’s usually because we go and do something else — and that activity changes the emotion, but it also sends us off course. The third option is the path of emotional endurance, and that’s a hard-won but extremely valuable skill.

It’s tough to sit there and slog it out. You don’t know what thoughts you’ll have. It’s you vs. you, a sparring match with yourself inside your mind. Even if you’re good at accepting whatever thoughts roll over you, you still don’t know if the wave will wash you away, and that’s scary too. Sooner or later, however, the emotion always fades, so the bigger of a “later” you are comfortable with, the more reassurance you’ll gain that you can get through any emotion.

Tolerating “later,” enduring emotions, is a practice in and of itself, but there are other ways you can train. Meditation helps. Being self-aware is a must. And structuring your thoughts, via writing or otherwise, can keep you from acting out emotions without reflecting on them. Plus, as with any habit, the more emotionally challenging situations you endure and survive, the more your emotional endurance will increase.

It might not be the skill of skills, but it’s up there. Learn to let emotions come and go, and you’ll still be here long after both your brightest and darkest days have passed.

Youtube is the Olympics of internet commenting. People try very hard to be the first to comment, to give a clever response or add a little context and get thousands of “thumbs ups” for it, to be the one comment that gets “hearted” by the original video poster. They even challenge each other to get “10,000 subscribers with no videos” — that is merely by commenting and then having people subscribe to their channel because of their comments. It’s the ultimate status game and ultimately pointless.

I comment on Youtube about once a quarter, and it’s usually when I see someone who deserves more attention, not someone who’s attention I can benefit from. Every now and then, I’ll try to point people in the right direction, when they’ve found some success but are stuck copying other Youtubers. Most of the time, however, I comment because I’m grateful. Someone made something that resonated deeply with me, and though I might not always explain the connection, I want them to know their effort does not go unseen — even if it’s not seen by many.

The only comments worth making are the ones you want to share with the creator for their own sake, not to score internet points. Anything else is noise and meaningless — and if you actually have a strong take you truly believe in, you should have the guts to post it under your own name.

Every now and then, people have started long chains of arguments under my Medium articles or Quora answers. That’s fair, even cool, but who reads the comments? Why not post your own answer? Well, publishing something on your account is a higher-stakes action than merely leaving a comment. Suddenly, you’re forced to really think things through. After all, you’ll be the one getting the comments, and that can be scary. But most comments are never read by anyone, and so the comment sections under millions of articles on news websites, infinite Reddit posts, and endless Youtube videos are, by and large, deserted wastelands where true attention never passes through.

If you are going to play for attention, do it properly. Post. Publish. Release. Do the scary but right thing of sticking your name on something you’ve made, and then opening it up for the world to see. And if you don’t want attention, then don’t get sucked into a sucker’s game. Only comment when you mean it. When they need it. And when it really makes a difference.

Right when I moved into my new flat, I bought a bunch of hooks you can attach to the wall without screwing them in. They can hold towels, utensils, and other little bits and bobs.

After first stocking the kitchen, I attached one of them between the coffee machine and the sink so it could hold the small cloth I use to wipe the countertop. I placed the hook towards the left so I could attach another one next to it as soon as I knew it worked as intended.

Of course the next day went by, and then the next one, and the next one. Eventually, “attach hook” ended up on my to-do list, and there it stayed for weeks. I wanted to lump this tiny, five-minute task together with others, but every time, I ended up postponing the whole batch.

Soon, I started getting frustrated with myself. “Why do I keep putting this off? Let me just do it.” One day, I grabbed one of the hooks from the box, and as I turned it over in my hands, I asked myself a question I now realized I had asked myself many times before — each time I mentally approached this task, to be exact: “But what will I hang from it?”

Like lightning, it hit me: I don’t need another hook. There’s nothing else to hang. The cloth already has its place. I don’t need another one. There are no utensils to put there. Everything works perfectly as it is.

The only reason I went on this long detour is that there was enough space for two hooks — and so when I first imagined what my hook-situation would look like, I defaulted to two hooks.

Space is opportunity. Where there’s nothing, something might follow. Our brains are great at filling the void. They see a canvas, and they want to splash it with paint. But not all space must be filled in order to meet its potential. Letting space be space is also an opportunity.

Nothingness is not empty. It can give us calm. Room to think. Freedom to breathe. If we smother space without blinking, we shut the door to those benefits — and we might not realize we’ve ruined our kitchen wall until we’ve plastered it with hooks from which we have nothing to hang.

Every item you can buy one of, you could also buy two. But do you need a second one? Or would you prefer a little bit of extra space? Think before you buy, and remember: If it’s not annoying, it probably doesn’t need to be fixed.

I wasn’t looking for a flat with a garden, but when the apartment I found happened to come with one, I was thrilled. Now, I often feel I’m not using it as much as I should. That’s bonus guilt, and it’s unnecessary.

When you get a surprise pot of free gravy with your schnitzel, it’s tempting to drown your dish in it just because you have it. But what if you don’t like that much gravy? What if you don’t want gravy at all?

Winning isn’t a sin. Freebies are free because they come without strings. If we attach some made of FOMO, that is on us.

I don’t have to tan for three hours every day to make appropriate use of my garden. If all I do is stand on the grass for a minute each morning, that is plenty as long as I think it’s plenty.

Don’t fret about the gravy — and not just the literal kind. You don’t have to use all of it just because it was free, and you’re not obliged to accept everything good that comes your way.

Time and energy are two sides of a rubber band: You can stretch either one of them for a while, but sooner or later, the other one will follow.

When you extend the timeline of a project, at first, the same amount of energy spreads over more days. You do a little less, but if you do so consistently, you’ll get a similar result a little later. If you keep dragging your heels, however, there comes a breaking point when energy needs to catch up. You’ll either have to put in a lot very quickly and finally ship, or give in and call it quits. Snap! That’s the rubber band zipping back into its relaxed, equilibrial state.

While this might be the scenario we’re more familiar with, the opposite also holds true: If you push on a rubber band, nothing will happen at first, but eventually, it will move. Reduce the time until the deadline is close enough, and voilà, a lazy student springs into action and writes his paper in a day.

As frustrating as a last-minute attitude can be at times — especially when we’re the ones struggling with it — it does have a silver lining: Just because you don’t have a lot of time to spend on something does not mean you’ll do a bad job. In fact, the opposite is often true. By compressing the timeline, you squeeze more energy into a smaller window. That makes it unlikely you’ll dedicate all of it to doing the task in the same, humdrum way you would if you had more time. Instead, you’ll use a smaller amount to do the work, and the rest will spill over into creative ideas.

That’s how we got Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech. How the Foo Fighters released One by One after a complete, last-minute overhaul. It’s how Casey Neistat produced 800 daily vlogs that felt like movies, and how Sam Smith wrote a Bond movie song in a day.

Not every goal needs to be a magnum opus — and many a great opus wasn’t intended to be magnum at all. Pay attention to the rubber band, and don’t be afraid to keep it short. You might not feel as if you have enough time, but none of us ever do, and sometimes, that’s exactly why we do our sweetest work.

Last week, I bought a 15-euro plumber’s wrench to fix the wheels on our grill. Initially, we had screwed them in by hand, but that wasn’t enough, and they’d already come off once. If I never use that wrench again, was it worth it?

Buyer’s guilt is a game we play entirely in our heads. We see a product presented with all its clever applications, and when we only rely on one of them, we feel like we’re missing out. Actually, no one cares. There are no written standards for getting your money’s worth. It is 100% subjective. You decide.

Maybe you only use your genius chopping-and-slicing tool to dice tomatoes. So what? Are you happy when you can dice tomatoes more quickly? Then all is well. You don’t have to squeeze 100 oranges every day for a juicer to be worth it, and even if the design software is only good for one logo, that logo might still make all the difference.

There’s no need to feel guilty when you’re already content. “Enough” is a wonderful thing. I’ll gladly pay 15 euros to have peace of mind each time I push my grill across uneven tiles, because “max potential” is only in our minds — and if there’s anything worth stretching, it is not our tools, but us.

If I tried to say something clever on this blog every day, I wouldn’t have lasted a week. After thousands of articles, I can still count my smartest insights on two hands.

I can, however, show up every day and tell you something true. I can tell you that I believe in making the more expensive but higher-quality, longer-lasting purchase because the pain of the cost will quickly fade, but the joy of having a solid tool you can rely on stays. I can tell you that I rarely fall for jump scares, but my girlfriend does, and since I never know whether she will or not, I’m still tense when watching a horror movie — and that makes it more fun, not less.

Whether it’s in working, talking, or making art, true beats clever because clever has both limited availability and application, but true is always true, and honesty is its own end, not just a means.

You can’t be the smartest person in every meeting, but you can work hard every day. You can’t shine with your wits at every first date, but you can always let yourself be seen. You can’t crank out masterpieces on a daily basis, but you can pick up a brush every morning.

Authenticity is self-sufficient. The pride of having done your best, shared your real opinion, or made an honest effort is all the reward you’ll need — and if that’s not a mighty clever way of ensuring you’ll sleep peacefully at night, then intelligence really isn’t all it’s cooked up to be.

There’s a popular meme on crypto Twitter where people remind each other to “touch grass.” Often, it’s used in a snarky way. “You’re bitter because you spend too much time staring at screens. Go outside.” Every now and then, however, someone also issues a plain, friendly reminder: “Hey! Don’t forget nature. Get your dose of sunshine.”

When my girlfriend’s aunt learned that we had a garden, she said: “Oh, great! You can do earthing.” Now, the earth’s electric charge somehow drastically altering our physiology is probably a stretch, but it doesn’t take a research team to guess that, yes, being in nature is good for you.

Of course, six weeks after the move, I’ve been outside only a handful of times, and that’s why I’m now typing these words while touching some grass. Your own little patch of nature is a great luxury, but it’s by no means necessary. Most of us have access to some kind of green within walking distance, and I can only recommend to you — as to myself — to make use of it.

While I’m working outside, I get less flustered. The nature all around me will inevitably do its thing. It doesn’t get distracted. The grass grows whether the sun shines or it rains. It’s a nice reminder that there’s a bigger world with a bigger plan beyond the edges of my screen — and I can see it, right beyond the edges of my screen. I’m a small piece of the universe, doing its thing. What happens to me matters little — but I should continue as doggedly as the grass grows all around me.

There are enough days when nature makes going outside uninviting. Don’t knock away its extended hand when it reaches out. Touch grass — and everything you touch afterwards will come a little more naturally too.

When I was 14, we played with a big group of kids during a party at my neighbor’s house. It was spring and not too warm yet, but after running around outside, playing soccer, and trading Yu-Gi-Oh! cards for a while, we still ended up sweaty and thirsty. After we went back into the house, a bunch of us queued at the guest toilet, and for some reason, I’ll never forget what one of the guys said as he dug his hands into the sink and splashed water on his face: “I love cold water like this! So refreshing!”

For my entire life up to that point, I, like most people, used to shy away from cold water. But after that moment, I never looked at it the same way again. Seeing someone so honestly excited about splashing ice-cold water on their face on a 15-Celsius day in April changed my perspective forever. It’s as if, before, I was completely zoned in on the negatives of coming in contact with cold water, and now, every time I imagined it, I saw that guy having the time of his life in that tiny guest bathroom sink.

“Cold water is refreshing. It’ll get your blood flowing. It cleans away the dirt. It awakens and re-centers you.” These are the kinds of things my mind now tells me whenever I approach the tap in the morning — and most days, I end up splashing cold water on my face. It has become a morning ritual akin to folks dipping into the river back in the day. “They, too, had to make do with cold water! It was good for them! There’s nothing to whine about here.” Yeah yeah, alright, calm down.

My perspective on cold water changed so much, at one point, I took cold showers for 365 days in a row. 13-year-old me wouldn’t have believed he could survive that. 23-year-old me thought it was a great idea, and he learned a bunch of lessons along the way. Nowadays, I still occasionally turn the knob to cold, and I sometimes randomly wash my face with cold water in the afternoon, just to refresh my mind and reset my perspective.

The point is that for one, a dash of cold water can go a long way — from the tiny courage and confidence boost to improved blood flow to a moment of reflection amidst a busy day — and for another, small moments can lead to big changes. Someone flicks a tiny spark at you, and if the stars align and your mind is open, your entire soul will be set aflame — and the afterglow might last forever.

When you feel stumped, tired, or confused, try cold water. I love it. So refreshing!

When you grab your perfume in the morning and realize it says “Hero,” does that make you feel more confident after you put it on? When someone says “Have a good day,” and you’re not sure if they mean it, do you give them the benefit of the doubt and have a good day regardless? I do, and I’d like to think it makes all the difference.

They say life is what you make it, and since almost everything depends on how we interpret it, that’s absolutely true.

Five days after he got married, a young Levi Stanford almost died in an accidental explosion. The aspiring musician lost his left hand — a devastating blow for someone used to playing both the guitar and the piano. After months of recovery and training with a Captain Hook–like arm, eventually, Levi started making music again.

“Say what you wanna say,” he sings in If You Believe It!, a music video for an original song he filmed in over 60 locations.

If you believe it and you know it’s true
Then take what you can dream for
You will achieve it
As you push on through

Stanford took what many people would have taken as the ultimate downer and turned it into fuel for more, better, and happier. Nowadays, he travels the world when he can, inspires others through his story, and, of course, still makes music.

Don’t let them bring you down, no
When time is fading so fast
Only you can know what’s good for you

Most of us will never have to bounce back from something as traumatic as Levi has experienced — and that’s all the more reason to cherish the little butterflies of positivity that fly into our lives every single day.

The next time you come across an uplifting message, hear some encouragement, or stumble upon an upbeat music video, remember: It’s up to you. You can dismiss it or embrace it. Only you can know what’s good for you — but if you see something that might be good for you if you look at it from the right angle, don’t be afraid to change your point of view.