I am grateful to my longtime mentor, Neil Bainton, for his perpetual nudges toward clarity.

We’d meet for a meal where I’d talk about my plans for my business or whatever, sharing the various options and possibilities I was considering.

Neil would never get mired in the details. He always brought the conversation back to one simple question: “What do you want?”

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One of the first rules of living in a cold climate is that you must dress for it — not just outdoors, but indoors.

The idea of turning up the heat seems like an appealing solution…until you receive your first bill. Then, you realize that thick socks, slippers, a thick sweater, and even a hat and fingerless mitts are necessary for comfort indoors.

If you are still cold after putting on all this clothing (it happens), paradoxically, you’ve got to get outside and get some exercise. When you get your blood moving, you will be warm even in freezing weather. It’s the key to making it through the winter. And when all else fails, a hot bath.

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Years ago, I was teaching music lessons six days a week and managing my music school on top of that.

I like to be busy, but I was starting to get tired. To my surprise, the thing I was getting tired of was not the bookkeeping and appointment setting and other mundane tasks. It was teaching the music lessons.

I found myself with less patience and more resignation. The energy I usually put into problem-solving, digging deep and going beyond the minimum to find just the right approach for a given student — it just wasn’t there.

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As a business owner, I often hear from friends (and friends of friends) who are headed down that path. They’re looking for advice and encouragement.

Often, I can’t help very much — we have a mismatch of values and priorities.

One woman called wanting to learn about finding commercial space for a school she hadn’t started yet. She was disappointed in my recommendation that she start humbly (for instance, leasing from a church) instead of forging ahead with a multi-year commercial lease in a high-traffic area. Her plan was to raise money, which sounded terrifying to me.

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Certain ideas can trick us into thinking that they are truths of the universe, even though they were invented by some dude somewhere.

For example, some brief research on Wikipedia suggests that the idea of a soulmate goes back to Plato — and maybe the word itself can be credited to Coleridge? (Citation needed.) And yet how many people have agonized over their missing soulmate, even to the point of dissatisfaction with a perfectly good partner, because they believe that soulmates exist and they haven’t found theirs yet?

There’s nothing wrong with you if you haven’t found your soulmate. That’s because soulmates aren’t a real thing.

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