Arguments are a breeding ground for discontent. Yet many arguments, especially with people we love, are birthed from simple misunderstandings that are blown out of proportion.

Understanding other people is a tall order because everybody is different—but that’s what makes life worthwhile: our time on this planet would be mundane if we all had the same personalities, desires, values, and beliefs. And yet, even with our myriad distinctions, we all want the same things out of life: happiness, purpose, fulfillment.

Too often, however, we believe our way is the rightway: we believe our path toward contentment is the single correct path. So, instead of attempting to understand other points of view, we try to force people onto our path, shoving aside their beliefs to showcase why we are right and why they are wrong.

This type of fervent, unwavering certitude is rarely a good idea—even if you are “right”—because it discounts the other person’s thoughts and feelings, which leads to defensive posturing, which leads to arguing, which leads to discontentment, which leads to further posturing, misunderstandings, arguments, discontentment. What an ugly cycle.

To avoid this spiral of misunderstanding—and eventually arrive at a place of shared contentment—we must avoid acting on impulse, and we must instead work through the four stages of understanding others:

Tolerate. Tolerance is a weak virtue, but it’s a good start. If someone’s behavior seems bothersome, it is best to avoid the knee-jerk reactions of fight or flight, and instead find ways to tolerate their differences. For example, let’s say you’re an aspiring minimalist, but your partner is an enthusiastic collector- a clear dichotomy of beliefs. Your partner believes collecting porcelain figurines or vintage guitars is the bomb diggity; you believe their treasures are clutter. So you’re left scratching your noggin, wondering how to convert them to your singularly valid viewpoint, which can be mind-numbingly frustrating. Don’t worry, though, you needn’t get on the same page right way; you need only understand you both have your reasons for being on separate pages. By tolerating someone’s quirks, and allowing them to live happily within their own worldview, you may not understand their obsession with creepy statuettes or unplayed musical instruments, but at least you will be on a path toward understanding that person as an individual—and that’s a big first step. Congrats!

Accept. To truly live in concert with others, we must quickly move past tolerance toward acceptance. Once you’ve made a concerted effort to at least tolerate the other person’s quirks, their beliefs begin to seem less silly and, in time, more meaningful—not meaningful to you, but meaningful to someone you care about. Once you realize your partner’s collection has a purpose to them, it is easier to accept because it is a part of who they are as a whole person; and while you may not like a particular behavior, you still love the entire person, foibles and all.

Respect. Accepting—not just tolerating, but truly accepting—someone’s idiosyncrasies is difficult, but not nearly as challenging as respecting that person because of his or her idiosyncrasies. Think about it: it took you this many years to arrive at your current credo, so it might be a tad unreasonable to expect someone else to meet you there overnight, no matter how cogent your counterargument. Okay, so perhaps you’d never hoard figurines or guitars, but there are many beliefs you hold that, at face value, seem ridiculous to someone else. But even when other people don’t agree with you, even when they don’t understand your stance, you still want them to respect your beliefs, right? So why not extend that same respect to the people you love? Only then will you move closer to understanding; only then will you begin to realize your worldview isn’t the solitary axiom by which everyone must live. Sure, it’s nice to have a clutterfree home, but it’s even nicer to share your life with people you respect.

Appreciate. With respect in your rearview, understanding is right around the bend. Continuing our example, let’s say your partner experiences great joy from their collection. Why would you want to change that? You want them to be happy, right? Well, if their collection brings contentment to their life, and if you truly care about that person, then their collection should bring joy to your life, too, because happiness is contagious, but only after you get past the arguments, past the stages of tolerance, acceptance, and respect, and honestly appreciate the other person’s desires, values, and beliefs. Many of us navigate different roads toward happiness, but even if we travel separate routes, it is important we appreciate the journey—not only ours, but the journey of everyone we love. When we appreciate others for who they are, not whom we want them to be, then, and only then, will we understand.

So the next time you reach a fork in the road, remember T.A.R.A.: Tolerate, Accept, Respect, and Appreciate. If you travel this path frequently, your relationship will flourish, and you’ll experience a richness of experience that wasn’t possible without a deep understanding of the people in your life.

This path works not only for significant others, but for friends, coworkers, and anyone else with whom we want to strengthen our connection. Of course there will be times when values clash, and you won’t be able to appreciate the person for who they are. And there will even be rare times when T.A.R.A. is the wrong path altogether: if someone engages in self-destructive behavior—drugs, crime, racism—then you should not appreciate their conduct. Sometimes it’s okay to say goodbye, walk away and travel down a perpendicular path.

Special thanks to Patrick , for train conversation about respect and appreciation.

When was the last time you updated your beliefs?

It sounds like a strange question: after all, you believe what you believe because what you believe is true!

But is it?

It’s a question many people never ask themselves because, frankly, it’s far easier and more comfortable not to. The idea that we could be acting on faulty information, and maybe have done so for years, is a difficult pill to swallow. Even more difficult is the mind-bending process required to test what we think we know in order to gradually establish new, improved beliefs.

The first step is to acknowledge that you may believe things that are untrue. It’s not an exaggeration to say that most people never make it past this step. Take a look around and note how many of your friends and family and coworkers still cleave to ideas about the world, about life, about themselves, which they learned or developed as children. From there, recognize that you may have ideas that are similarly incorrect or incomplete, and that there’s no easy way to tell whether your ‘big picture’ is missing something significant. The same applies to everyone.

The next step is to separate yourself from your ideas. Part of why we cling to outdated notions is that they’re ours, and that they belong to us; are one with us. We can’t picture a world in which these potentially incorrect things are incorrect. It would be like growing up believing your cool uncle is a wonderful guy only to find out later in life that he’s a serial killer. Even with an abundance of evidence, this would be a troublesome mental leap to make because he’s your cool uncle; that’s your jumping-off point for all other data you assess on the subject.

To extract yourself from a given belief, recognize that it’s just one among many possibilities. Then take a deep breath and prepare yourself to rebound if your belief turns out to be incorrect or is brought into serious question. Because on that day, at the moment when you find out that some treasured way of seeing the world is not supported by fact — or is no longer supported by fact, as is often the case — it’ll suck. And you’ll feel like an ass. And you’ll hate all the people who stumbled across this information before you did, because they might think they’re smarter than you, and they’re not.

Then exhale. It’s all good. You can be smart and not know everything, and you can know a lot and still operate under the influence of flawed facts.

In order to determine what’s factual and what’s wishful thinking, it’s best to derive information from multiple sources, and avoid heavily biased ones when possible (though it’s arguably impossible to remove all bias from the process). In general, everyone has reasons to want you to believe one thing over another, and you’ll need to identify sources of information that are supported by solid science, math, and mountains of historical evidence, rather than stern beliefs, gut feelings, emotional enthusiasm, or the like. Because while the latter is based on a biased point of view, the former is testable and changes as new data becomes available. That’s the information you’ll want to use when calibrating your beliefs.

You can, of course, believe whatever you want after going through this process. Just understand that there’s a difference between beliefs built atop a foundation of factual evidence, and those perched astride junk information that’s popular because it’s shouted louder than other ideas or has the support of the majority.

There’s never a bad time to reconsider what you know to be true. No belief should be safe from your investigation, and all should be regularly revisited. Consider conducting a regular internal review, to check and see if you’ve learned anything recently that might be in opposition to a belief you’ve held so long that it’s become personal dogma.

Ideas about money, conspiracy theories, philosophies, spiritual beliefs, how society should operate, your own talents and skills and self-worth, are all worth revisiting from time-to-time. Only by establishing a habit of checking your own ideas can you be certain that at any given moment you’re making decisions based on the most up-to-date set of personal beliefs available.

People concoct a myriad of excuses to explain their bad decisions:

If I had more money, I could be happy.
If I had better genes, I could lose weight.
If I had more time, I could exercise more.
If I liked vegetables, I could eat healthier.
If I had gone to college, I could be successful.

If this, then that. It’s the if statement that fails: such utterances are debilitating, self-fulfilling prophecies. They hold you back. The best thing to do is remove the if clause from your declarations, revealing your true potential:

I could be happy.
I could lose weight.
I could exercise more.
I could eat healthier.
I could be successful.

Because if you wanted to, you could live a meaningful life.

Our friends, family, coworkers, neighbors, loved ones, and even complete strangers appear to have an unfortunate superpower: they can change our mood—from joyous to sad, from chipper to insecure, from smiling to upset—in an instant.

A single cavil, niggle, or snide comment can send us into a spiral of anxiety, agony, anger, and despair.

Why? Because we’ve outsourced our happiness.
Without realizing it, we cling to the admiration of others.

If they like me, I’ll be happy.
If they don’t, I’ll be unhappy.

This isn’t love—it’s relationship consumerism.

But who told us that we need their veneration? Even the people closest to us—our parents, our spouse, our child—who told us that we’d be a lesser human without their so-called respect?

No one.

That’s merely the story we tell ourself. Sadly, we’re correct. If we need someone’s acceptance, they will forever wield a rubber stamp over our internal state.

When we no longer need their validation, however, we immediately recover the power we relinquished. In turn, we reclaim our freedom.

How is this possible?
By letting go.

How do we let go of the need for approval?
We mustn’t do anything.
We must only cease our clinging.

What others think,
what they believe,
what they expect—
these are bars to a prison cell.

To break free, we must realize that those bars are lining their cage, not ours. We can walk away at any point.

Their opinions don’t matter.
Because nobody’s opinion matters.
The only thing that matters is the truth.
And the truth is that we are already complete.
Indeed, in an empty room, all alone, we are complete.
So the need for praise can only incomplete us.

Once we understand this—not in our head, but in our heart—we will be free. Ironically, in this state, we will earn more respect than ever.

We just won’t need it to be happy.

Everyone develops their own creative process over time.

Some sculptors, Betty woodman for instance, build sculptures with clay. Others, like Michelangelo, carve from marble. Though I’m no Michelangelo, my creative process tends to mimic the latter, building way too much and then removing massive amounts of excess until I uncover the beauty beneath the banality.

I call this process Subtractive Creation. Unlike most carving sculptors, though, I also have to quarry the marble from which I pitch, chisel, and polish.

The essays on my blogs are published with around 400 words, even though they often start with 2,000 or more.

When I edit this way, the final result is far more meaningful to me, and to the reader. The care and handcraftedness shows in the final work. How to edit this way, that is, to spend one-third of the time writing effectively, and two-thirds of the time editing—shaping the work into something more concise, more powerful, more beautiful.

Subtractive Creation seems to be an appropriate metaphor for the rest of life as well: there will always be life’s excess, always more, always too many inputs bombarding us from every direction—but instead of abhorrent multitasking, instead of trying to get things done, we can make life more beautiful via subtraction.

We can filter out the noise. We can let go of sentimental items. We can get rid of negative relationships. We can avoid the American Dream. And when everyone is looking for more, we can focus on less.

Sure, there’s an infinite amount of materials with which to build our lives—but sometimes the best way to build is to subtract. The best lives are often well-edited, carefully curated lives.