Effectiveness

You're in a group, a friendship, a romance, and certain things just aren't working.  It might be money, it might be scheduled events, it might be communication.

You've tried everything you know to try, and everyone involved is doing their best.  What's happening?

Someone in the situation is incompetent - for example, someone simply can't handle money - and their incompetence dooms any attempts.

There's no fixing this with them or for them.  They will not improve and they will not learn.  Exit this interaction - you can do other things with them, but not what they are incompetent at.

If a thing needs to happen, and the person who needs to make it happen isn't, and you don't think it's the nice thing to require them to correct their behavior, then you are misunderstanding the situation.

Necessity and nice aren't opposites.  Necessity means that the change has to happen - nice matters only in how you tell them.  Tell them nicely and politely what the problem is, and what your first thoughts on a solution are.

If they choose not to do what's needed, then you're not in a situation where nice applies, you're in a confrontation with a person who refuses to do what you require.

You may have wanted to be a concert pianist or an astronaut as a child.  Now you discover that you have a mind for details and an intuitive grasp of numbers.  You are making amazing progress as an accountant.

Which should you follow?  Your dreams, or your aptitudes?

Both, of course!  You should do what you're good at, what you're built for, what your life choices makes easy and fun for you.  Don't push yourself to be what others over the years told you was right - double down on what you do best, do it even better, and earn more, have more fun, and take better care of those around you.

All work and no play makes for a dull life.  But all play works worse, and playing in ways that hurts your productivity (be it work, study, or caring for people in your life) isn't a good alternative.

You need to play, and you need to play at times and in ways that don't slow down other parts of your life.  To do this, ask yourself what you have to do for those other parts.  Do you need to exercise, pack a lunch, pick up children, go to the grocery store, sleep...

Once you know the things that can't be moved in your life, such as work, study, and children, and you know what you have to do to be effective at those, you can see where you have time to play.  Perhaps you can go partying Saturday night?  Perhaps Tuesday evening is your social time?  Maybe weekends before your family wakes up you can go birdwatching?

More than letting it go, you have to be happy to see it go.  I mean the parts of your life that aren't working - the friendships that have gotten cold or toxic, your love for alcohol and parties that have you hung over and anti-social the rest of the week...

You have to change.  You have to make space for the new, and to do that you have to prune away the old in your life and in your personality.  Do it - and more than that, do it with anticipation.  Because on the other side of the pain of loss of those old, familiar friends and behaviors and thinking patterns is the new you that will be better adapted to the life you have, the life you want.

State your goals clearly.  Find out your values.  Be clear and be honest.  World peace is neither a goal you have, nor a value, it's an evasion.

Now consider whether your goals and your values are in agreement.  Can you reach your goals while acting as your values dictate?  If you can, you're great.

If your values and your goals disagree, you're going to be stuck in place.  Maybe this is already happening to you?  Maybe you sabotage yourself constantly, and refuse to do actions contrary to your values that would move you toward your goals?

In this is happening to you, you need to change your goals or your values, or both.  It won't be easy.

Religion provides a moral compass and an emotional refuge.  It's a central part of normalizing our society.

When we use some of the lessons and promises of religion to guide our lives, we become confused.  The infinite joy that will follow this life, and the other beliefs that underpin many religions, are poor standards to measure and improve this messy, painful existence.

It's better to keep some of the assumptions of religion on the religious side of your thinking, and improve life using standards intended to result in the best life you can lead.

You can lower your expectations to become happier.  Everyone knows this.  But you have to keep your goals high, or your life decays and you have to lower your expectations further and further.

The more correct way to think is that you lower your expectations for happiness, but you keep your goals high to progress through a good life.

Drama is anything that isn't discussing a problem, compromising, and then resolving the problem.  In other words, drama is a way to have more problems.

If you have people in your life who add drama, get them away from you.

If it's you... stop.

Pain is a part of life.  Do what you can to lessen it, but once you are hurt by someone, divide the pain to get the most out of the experience.

Some of the pain was bad luck - you could not have avoided it.  Just accept that life contains bad luck.

Don't bury how you feel about what happened - acknowledge your emotions.  They're real and they matter.

Some of the pain was your mistake - learn from it, and do better.

Once you've done this and have processed what happened, has the experience opened some doors for you?