Complex situations overwhelm us, so we avoid them.  They overwhelm everyone else.

Size and strength, and then ruthlessness in business used to be what life rewarded.  Nowadays, those who are comfortable in complex situations get the best rewards in life.

Accept that you will never understand everything about a situation.  Do as much thinking as you can, to understand what's really happening.

With this, you can outdo others and, over time, become comfortable with complexity.

As time passes we are less and less the person we used to be.  We take on new identities and discard the old ones.

Other than a few things, like traits of those close to us, the past doesn't offer us much that is useful.  Put it in your photo album, in your diary, and live forward.

You're frustrated, again and again, because your cherished friends make horrible choices.  You explain, you show, you lead them toward better decisions.  They nod their heads, listen carefully, agree... and then make the exact same horrible choices.

Give up.  The mountain they have to climb to choose better is too high.  All you are doing is frustrating yourself.

Accept and love your friends the way they are, bad decisions and all.

Shame is pressure on your decisions, learned from childhood.  It's undefined.  What it urges you to avoid may not hurt you.

Consider what you are ashamed of - and then decide that you should avoid doing it, or that the shame is wrong, and you're fine with it.  But be careful - if those who you care about speak against something, listen.

Part of why smokers have difficulty quitting is that they are also erasing a familiar identity - that of a smoker.  They are saying goodbye to a cluster of habits, associations, and memories that are a part of them.

You become identities - a parent, an employee, a bicycle rider.  But why not choose these identities?  As with so much else, you can choose and change your identities, and start to build new clusters of habits and associations around the new identities that more closely match the person you will become.

Fear is an ancient signal of danger.  In the stone ages we survived by respecting our fear.

In a physical situation your fear needs that respect.  You can be hurt or killed.

In a social, financial, or romantic situation progress has shrunk bad consequences down to some shame and some ego pain.  If you can take these, then fear is no longer a reason to stay away.  If you fear a thing, it's because it's important.  If you can take the consequences, you should go straight at the thing you fear instead of away from it.

Pride in an accomplishment is great - it's one of the rewards of committed work.

But pride that makes you irrational, makes you refuse to compromise, costs you solutions that you have taken off the table.  Afterward, you've lost a friend, and you didn't get what they were suggesting... but you kept your pride.

Put this bad pride aside and work toward solutions in a practical and friendly way.

It's the journey, not the destination.  But you must stop the journey, and savor the now - play with children and pets, enjoy the sunsets and the first sip of coffee in the mornings.

The journey gets you to your destinations.  On the way, stop and savor the now.

It's useful to compare yourself with others - you can learn what they are doing right, and copy it.

But you can also feel envy.  Others buy positional goods - fancy cars, shiny watches - for this exact reason.  They want you to feel bad, so they can feel good.

Status matters, but feeling bad isn't necessary.  Show status only when it matters - when it doesn't, don't compare.  Be mindful when others are trying to establish status, and let them compete with anyone but you.

How do you enter social circles you aren't qualified for?  How do you acquire traits and skill sets you don't have?

There are three parts - confidence, always; the specific skills; and the knowledge.

You must build the knowledge on your own time.  You'll get the skills by joining the social circle, doing the thing you can't yet do.

Fake the confidence, until you have the skills and knowledge - the confidence will grow.