)
Continue reading "David Yarrow on Art, Markets, Business, and Combining It All (#443)"
Continue reading "Tribe of Mentors — Naval Ravikant, Susan Cain, and Yuval Noah Harari (#442)"
Step 1: Ignore every step-by-step system for success, including probably this one
Look, I know you want to be that big badass with the sweet ass house and all the fancy letters after your name, but let’s be honest for a second. Insane, spectacular success is achieved by doing something exceptional and extraordinary.
To achieve something exceptional and extraordinary, you must—by definition—do something that few or no other people are doing or willing to do. Therefore, wild, insane, spectacular success can only be achieved by actively going against what others have done and/or believing you can do things that others believe they cannot do. Therefore, anything that can accurately be codified into a step-by-step system on the internet is full of shit and not going to help you achieve this kind of success.
Do you think Steve Jobs ever sat around Googling, “How to revolutionize the way everyone communicates?” Fuck no. Do you think Thomas Edison went to the library looking for books titled, “How to build things that can change the world?”
No, they got to work on things that felt important and things that few to no other people could conceive, much less …
Everything you do in life is a trade-off. Anything you say, do, or pursue has a cost and a benefit. Those costs and benefits may not always be immediately apparent — sometimes the costs and benefits are dislocated in time, the benefit being immediate and the cost in the distant future. Sometimes the costs or benefits are subtle and psychological. But nonetheless, there is always a trade-off.
We like to believe that we can find a life of only pleasure and no pain, of only success and no failure, of only acceptance and no rejection. But this is impossible. Gain and loss are simultaneous. For everything you say or do, there is an infinite number of alternative choices you must forgo in order to say or do them.
As your Economics 101 class taught you, “there is no such thing as a free lunch.” If you’re eating an awesome cheesesteak, you’re giving up the chance to eat a hamburger. If you’re eating a hamburger you’re giving up the chance to eat a double-stacked burrito. And if you’re eating a double-stacked burrito, then you’re giving up the ability to ever respect yourself again.
This is decision-making in a nutshell. What …
We sit silently. My friend stares deeply into her empty glass, occasionally shuffling the ice around with her straw. "Wow," she says. I sit and wait for her to say something else. What started out as a festive night somehow became a long, deep discussion about love, what it consists of, and how rare it actually is.
Finally, I say, "Wow, what?"
"I'm just thinking that I've never experienced that."
"Well, maybe you just haven't met the right person yet," I say — the totally cliche thing that every friend says in this situation.
"No," she says. "I mean, I've never experienced that with anyone. My parents, my family, even most of my friends." She looks up at me, her eyes glassy and wet, "Maybe I don't know what love is."
The Conditional Coolness Economy
When you’re a teenager, being "cool" is traded like a currency. You accumulate as much coolness as possible and then you find other kids with a lot of coolness and you bargain to share that coolness to make each other even cooler.
And if at any point you come across a kid with far less coolness than you, you tell that nerd to fuck …
Self-awareness is like great sex: everyone thinks they have a ton of it, but in reality no one knows what the fuck they’re doing.
The fact is that the majority of our thoughts and actions are on autopilot. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing either. Our habits, routines, impulses, and reactions carry us through our lives so we don’t have to stop and think about it every time we wipe our ass or start a car.
The problem is when we’re on autopilot for so long that we forget we’re on autopilot. Because when we’re not even aware of our own habits, routines, impulses, and reactions, then we no longer control them; they control us. Whereas a person with self-awareness is able to exercise a little meta-cognition and say, “Hmm… every time my sister calls me and asks for money, I end up drinking a lot of vodka. That might not be a coincidence,” a person without self-awareness just hits the bottle and doesn’t look back.
The Three Levels of Self-Awareness
Below are three levels of self-awareness along with a caveat. Why three levels? Who the hell knows? Just go with it.
Level 1 - What the Hell Are …
Updated: June 2020
Chances are, if you're reading this, you're scared by the idea of catching some sort of STD. Or at least you have been in the past. That night you got drunk and didn't have a condom but went for it anyway. Or maybe you hooked up with someone who had a reputation for sleeping with every third person in the phone book.
Perhaps you freaked out and rushed to get tested the next morning. Maybe you started Googling around frantically to convince yourself that you're OK, only to find horrifying images and statistics about how people lost internal organs, limbs and never, ever had sex again because they were so hideously deformed by some pesky infection... Your mind begins racing, your liver DOES hurt, you think to yourself. It must be an early onset of AIDS. Obviously...
The unfortunate thing about STD "education" is that it focuses on very specific information: symptoms, treatments, and every worst-case scenario. The real-world experiences and probabilities are absent. Down-to-earth guidance on how this information should affect your behavior is usually glossed over -- telling you to abstain from having sex (yeah right) and to use a condom (even though …
Depression blows. Anxiety isn’t any fun either. And perhaps the only thing worse than the well-intentioned friends and family who implore you to just “get over it” or advise you to “keep your head up” is the fact that there are approximately 3,102 crappy books out there promising to wave a little wand and sprinkle fairy dust in your ass, and everything will instantly be better.
In my experience, the best books on dealing with anxiety and depression are the best because they are honest about the situation. There is this thing that sucks, and you’re not going to magically make it go away. You have to deal with it, engage it, wrestle with it a bit and become stronger in the face of it.
I get hundreds of emails every month from people who struggle primarily with anxiety and depression. Many of them are looking for a solution or a piece of wisdom or advice. Unfortunately, the only thing I’m qualified to send them is this new care bear emoji I got on my phone. And that’s probably not a long-term solution for them.
So instead, I will send them here, to these books.
I’ve read a lot …
A while back I wrote a post titled 6 Signs You're in a Toxic Relationship. In the months since I published it, the article has attracted a ton of comments--and you know it’s hit a nerve when big, grown-up websites who get paid to post smart grown-up things ask if they can copy/paste it, ostensibly to make a bunch of advertising money off people acting like assholes in their comment sections.
(I know, I’m such a sellout.)
But I think it’s helped a lot of people. Since writing it, I’ve received a staggering number of thank you emails, and around two dozen people told me that it had inspired them to end a relationship (or even in a few cases, a marriage). It seems it served as a kind of wake-up call to finally let go and accept that sometimes, relationships can gag you with a shit-spoon.
(So, I guess I’m a home-wrecker and a sellout. Sweet.)
But along with the praise, I also received a ton of questions like, "So if these habits ruin a relationship, what habits create a happy and healthy relationship?" and "Where’s an article on what makes a relationship great?" and "Mark, …
Years ago, I thought of myself as someone who would probably never get married. I thought I was just “wired” for relationships that were fun but ultimately short-lived. I dated a lot, slept around, and always had an exit strategy.
Fast forward to today and as a happily married man, I’m honestly surprised by how easy it was for me to transition to a committed, life-long relationship. In fact, it feels damn good!
The truth is, while I did a lot of work on myself, a lot of it was just looking for a good partner.
I get hundreds of emails each year from people struggling in their relationships. And a lot of those people are either engaged or thinking about getting married. I often want to wave a giant neon flag at them shouting, “Don’t do it!” because getting married for the wrong reasons can have dire consequences--not just emotionally, but financially, as well.
After working with dozens of couples on this issue, I’ve put together two checklists below that summarize everything. The first checklist is the BAD reasons people get married. The second checklist outlines the GOOD reasons to get married. Check it out.
Terrible Reasons to …
Let’s get real: If we’re really honest with ourselves, we all have a little self-loathing going on from time to time. OK, maybe a lot of self-loathing going on, depending on the degree of trauma you’ve sustained, and how many episodes of Teletubbies you were subjected to as a child.
But here’s the good news, self-hatred is just part of the human condition. There’s nothing inherently "wrong" with you because you intensely dislike or feel ashamed of certain unsavory aspects of yourself. Everyone does. Even Oprah has to hate herself some of the time, I’m pretty sure. And I’m no exception either, of course. After all, I’m writing a listicle for a website -- I must hate some deep, dark corner of myself.
We all have dreams we’ve failed to live up to, ideals we’ve failed to embody, actions we wish we had or hadn’t done, ways in which we wish we could be different. This is normal. And we all must deal with these parts of ourselves that we don’t exactly like. Some of us deal with it through avoidance -- we sleepwalk through life, never making any serious decisions, following others, and avoiding …
"Is he/she worth waiting for?"
"Are they feeling the same way I do?"
"Am I kidding myself thinking this can work?"
"Would I be better off dating the mailman instead? At least he comes to my house every day."
"Does my boyfriend even exist or is this just an elaborate Nigerian credit card scam?"
Long-distance relationships suck. I’ve never met anyone who said, "Yeah, my boyfriend lives 14 hours away in Finland, it’s great!" On the contrary, everyone I’ve met in a long-distance relationship ends up with that agonizing feeling: that your heart is slowly being carved out of your chest by a butter knife and replaced with unsatisfactory Skype calls and blinking chat windows.
I get it; I’ve been there. All three of my significant relationships have involved long distance in some way.
As a young man who was terrified of any sort of commitment, I found that I could only allow myself to fall for a girl if she was at least 500 miles away. The first time, we both genuinely tried to make it work, but things fell apart spectacularly, mostly because we were both too young and immature to handle the distance.
The second time, …
Continue reading "Finding the Side Door: Startup Lessons from RXBar, 5-hour Energy, and More"
Continue reading "Books I’ve Loved — Alain de Botton (#459)"
Continue reading "Books I’ve Loved — Whitney Cummings (#454)"
"To win true freedom, you must be a slave to philosophy."—Epicurus
The great philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein was once sitting in a park having a philosophical discussion with a friend when his friend, quite animated, stood up and said loudly, "That is a tree! I know for a fact that that is a tree!" An awkward pause ensued as the two men realized that passersby had stopped and were now staring at them. Wittgenstein, thinking quickly, turned to the people and said, "Do not worry, this fellow is not insane... we are merely doing philosophy."
When most people think of philosophy, they likely imagine indecipherable books that stretch on for a thousand pages, saying and solving nothing. They envision stuffy old men in misbuttoned shirts, untied shoelaces with mismatched socks, shuffling about hallways of some archaic university, mumbling to themselves, completely unaware of the humanity around them.
As an undergraduate in university, when I told people that I was considering choosing philosophy as a major, they often looked at me with some mixture of horror and confusion, as though I had just told them I was considering shoving a stick of …
Continue reading "Dustin Yellin on Making Art, Weaving Madness, and Forging Your Own Path (#467)"
I’m going to be honest: most courses you take in university aren’t worth a whole lot. That’s not because the professors are bad or the coursework is pointless (although sometimes that is definitely the case). I mean that most of the courses you take will never be all that relevant to the rest of your life.
But then, every once in a while, often by accident, you stumble into a course that is hugely impactful on your life. That happened to me in my sophomore year. I needed to take an elective from the humanities department, and not wanting to get sucked into a seminar on “Romantic literature of the 1840s” or whatever, I went for the least humanities-sounding thing I could find on the list: a philosophy course called “Logic and Reasoning.” It probably ended up being the most valuable course I ever took in my life.
From day one, I loved my logic course. Each morning, we’d all come into class to find a question like this on the board:
“Every time a train arrives at the station, there are many passengers on the platform. You arrive at the station and see many passengers …
I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, “How are there so many idiots in the world who can’t seem to see what is right in front of them?” You’re thinking, “Why do *I* seem to be blessed (or cursed) with the ability to see truth through a torrential downpour of bullshit?” You’re thinking “What can I do to make people understand? How can I make them see what I see?”
I know you think this because everyone thinks this. The perception that we understand life in a way that nobody else does is an inherent facet of our psychology. That disconnect we feel is universal.
Here’s a factoid to ruin your Sunday morning breakfast: the human mind did not evolve to be good at understanding truth—the human mind evolved to be good at understanding what is most useful for the human mind. And spoiler alert: what is useful is usually not true.
Hoffman, D. (2019). Do we see reality? New Scientist, 243(3241), 34–37.
It turns out that we are not very objective in our beliefs. It turns out that our perceptions and reasoning are heavily influenced by cognitive biases.
Imagine that you’re looking at an image on …
Contents
What are emotions and what do they do for us?
Experiencing an emotion is kind of like going through high school: when you're in it, nothing feels more important. But when it's over, you're left wondering what the fuck that was all about.
Over the years, I’ve made a regular habit of criticizing our overreliance on our emotions. I’ve written articles with titles like "Fuck Your Feelings" and "Happiness is not Enough" and compared my readers’ temper tantrums to a dog shitting on a carpet.
(Sorry about that, by the way.)
But the truth is, emotions do matter. They are incredibly important. They are just not important in the ways that we think.
Emotions serve a purpose: they are your brain's way of telling you something good or bad is happening in your life. They are feedback. Aaaaaand that’s about it.
No cosmic significance of the universe telling you to go back …
For the last few years, I’ve had an idea for a satirical self-help article called, "The Productivity Secrets of Adolf Hitler." The article would feature all the popular self-help tropes—goals, visualizations, morning routines—except expressed through the exploits of Hitler.
"Hitler starts his day at 5 AM each morning with a quick round of yoga and five minutes of journaling. With these strategies, he's able to focus his mind on his highly ambitious goals."
"Hitler discovered his life purpose in a beer hall in his 20s and has since followed it relentlessly, thus infusing his life with passion and inspiring millions of others like himself."
"Adolf is a strict vegetarian, and makes sure to find time in his busy schedule of genocide and world domination to explore his creative side: he sets aside a few hours each week to listen to opera and paint his favorite landscapes."
I know that I would find the article hilarious. But that’s because I’m a sick, twisted fuck. But in the end, I’ve never quite worked up the courage to write the thing, for clear and obvious reasons.
I’ve been doing this long enough to know that a) a bunch of people …
On March 11, 2011, a 9.0 magnitude earthquake rattled the ocean floor off the coast of Japan. It was the fourth largest earthquake ever recorded. It was so powerful, it moved Japan's main island by 2.4 meters. It shifted the Earth's axis by about 10 centimeters and sped up the planet’s rotation by a few microseconds.
If you wake up in 300 million years feeling slightly under slept, now you know who to blame.
The damage from the earthquake and the tsunami it produced was biblical in scale. With only eight minutes of warning, waves swept as far as ten kilometers inland, killing thousands and destroying entire towns within minutes. Official estimates put the total death toll for the entire disaster at over 15,000 people.
But wait, it gets worse. Authorities quickly discovered that a number of the nuclear reactors at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant—one of the largest in the world—had been severely damaged. Huge quantities of radioactive material were leaking out into the surrounding areas, including into the Pacific Ocean. In the span of a single afternoon, a destructive act of nature had turned into a man-made nightmare, the likes of which hadn't been seen since …
Take a moment and think about something in your life that you are terrified of anyone knowing about you. It could be a belief, a personality trait, a sick desire, or some horrible failure in your past that you’d rather pretend never happened. Whatever it is, the thought of this thing being exposed mortifies you. It causes you to want to curl up in a ball, pull a blanket over your head and hide from the world.
This feeling is what psychologists call “shame,” and we all have it to some degree. Deep inside each of us, there is some unsavory part of ourselves that we camouflage from the world and pretend is not there.
Well, except psychopaths... but we’ll ignore them for the moment.
Shame can fuck us up. Feelings of shame are associated with all sorts of awful stuff like depression, uncontrollable anger and hostility, poor physical health, and being a narcissistic asshole.
Harder, D. W., Cutler, L., & Rockart, L. (1992). Assessment of shame and guilt and their relationships to psychopathology. Journal of Personality Assessment, 59, 584–604.
Feiring, C., Taska, L., & Lewis, M. (2002). Adjustment following sexual abuse discovery: The role of …
In December of 2003, Joyce Vincent died of an apparent asthma attack in her north London flat. The television was left on. The mail continued to be delivered. Her rent was set up to be automatically deducted from her bank account. The days rolled by and no one noticed she was gone.
Those days turned into weeks and the weeks into months. There were large trash dumpsters on the side of the building next to her unit, so the neighbors never thought much of the smell emanating from her flat. The floor was full of noisy kids and teenagers and no one questioned the constant thrum of television noise in the background.
Eventually, Joyce’s bank account dried up. Her landlord sent her letters of collection. These letters, like the others, simply fell into the stacks scattered about her floor. They went unanswered. Finally, with more than six months of overdue rent, the landlord got a court order to forcibly remove her from the premises. The bailiffs broke down the door, and it was only then her body was discovered. By then, it was January, 2006, more than two years after she passed away.
In that time, nobody ever came …
Im not sure if you’ve heard, but there’s an election going on. Seems like a pretty dull affair, to be honest. Not much to discuss. In a country that is the shining example for governmental efficiency and democratic representation for the rest of the world, I expect nothing but continued solidarity between political parties, not to mention widespread approval of the country’s leadership. So…
...congratulations New Zealand!
You did it, kiwis. As usual, you were so functional and reasonable that we almost forgot you were there at all. Kia ora.
All right, who’s next? Let’s see—*checks notes*—Ah, yes, the United States. Okay, this one should be pretty straightfor—
(10 minutes later…)
“Holy fucking Christ. Make it stop! MAKE IT STAHP!!!”
*Crawls under the bed sobbing*
If you were to ask anyone in the US, it feels as though something imperceptible is either broken or is in the process of breaking. This brokenness gets blamed on a lot of things. People on the left predictably blame Trump, his incompetence, and his complete lack of ethics. People on the right generally point to the growing movement of “woke” social justice …
Here’s the tricky thing with beliefs: we all think ours are correct. When actually, almost everything we believe, at some point in our lives, will eventually be at least partially wrong. Yet, we never think about this. After all, if we didn’t think our ideas were right, we wouldn’t believe in them!
But our beliefs are never completely correct. In fact, psychologically speaking, we’re highly fallible, emotionally-driven, self-contradictory meat robots who are occasionally so dysfunctional it’s kind of amazing we can wipe our own asses in the morning.
So, if we accept this as our starting point:
The next question becomes, “What’s the best way to determine which of my beliefs are incorrect?”
What’s a process we can develop for questioning ourselves and spotting our erroneous beliefs before they royally screw us over?
Well, a logical starting point would be to name many of the most common mistaken beliefs we tend to hold onto. That’s right, there are basic beliefs and assumptions that you and I regularly buy into with little basis in reality.
The goal …
There’s two things every nerd should know: How many calories do I burn walking a mile? How far is it to Mordor? Today, we’re answering both of them (and much more). Walking is a great form of exercise and something we often recommend to folks starting our coaching program. Some have had great success walking, […]
The post How Many Calories Do You Burn While Walking? A Hobbit’s Guide to Walking (with Calorie Calculator) first appeared on Nerd Fitness.
Fasten your seatbelt, because today we’re going to highlight a truly amazing nerd in the Rebellion. Meet Megan, a member of Nerd Fitness Coaching who is currently celebrating losing over 200 pounds! (That’s not a typo.) Megan’s journey is so amazing that the Today Show recently spotlighted her! My favorite part of Megan’s story? She […]
The post How Megan lost 200 pounds (& ended up on the Today Show) first appeared on Nerd Fitness.
So you want to learn about the best core exercises? Well my friend, you’ve arrived at the right place! We help men, women, and intergalactic bounty hunters grow strong as part of our 1-on-1 Online Coaching Program, and we always put an emphasis on core muscles when we build client workouts. Here’s what we’ll cover […]
The post The Ultimate Guide for the Best Core Exercises (How to Strengthen Your Core) first appeared on Nerd Fitness.
If one thing’s true about parenting it’s this: it’s bloody tiring. Any parent will tell you that as soon as Player 2 or 3 enters the game, the sleep level difficulty instantly shifts from ‘tutorial’ to ‘expert’. But have no fear, we’ll set you up with some tips to help you regain a little energy. […]
The post How to Fight the Tired Parent Syndrome first appeared on Nerd Fitness.
There’s one question we get asked more than any other: “Is diet soda bad for me?” People want to know if Diet Coke will make them fat and make them sick, or if it’s all just a bunch of hoopla about nothing. We help our clients navigate challenges with soda (diet or not) in our […]
The post Is Diet Soda Bad for You? (Should I Drink Diet Coke for Weight Loss?) first appeared on Nerd Fitness.
Meet Sarah, a member of Nerd Fitness Coaching who has one of the hardest jobs you can have today: a nurse in a hospital! Want to know what’s incredible about Sarah? During the toughest year and a half of her career, Sarah also managed to get healthy and build a body she’s proud of! If […]
The post A Nurse, a Pandemic, and a Success Story first appeared on Nerd Fitness.
I’d like to introduce you to Brian, a fellow Rebel in our Online Coaching Program who is currently celebrating losing over 75 pounds! Incredible. Brian’s achievements are truly amazing, considering all he’s gone through: Old injuries? Check. Losing and regaining the same weight over and over? Check. Frustration over never maintaining progress? Check. But then […]
The post 4 Strategies for Losing 75 Pounds first appeared on Nerd Fitness.
Meet Gabe, a proud member of Nerd Fitness Coaching. He has a story I think might help you. You see, Gabe had a stark realization many of us eventually have: we aren’t getting any younger! Sorry Gramma, but I need to use a bad swear in this gif (yes, my 91-year-old gramma reads these emails): As […]
The post How Gabe changed his life (in 4 steps) first appeared on Nerd Fitness.
It’s time to learn how to lunge! The lunge is a perfect bodyweight exercise that doesn’t require any equipment, so I’m excited you want to learn more about them. When we design workouts for our coaching clients, we often include lunges so they can train their lower body ANYWHERE. Today, we’ll share with you the […]
The post The Ultimate Guide for Performing Lunges (Forward & Reverse) first appeared on Nerd Fitness.
It’s time to learn some yoga poses! Whether you’re comfortable on a yoga mat or you think a downward dog is just something your puppy does, you’re in the right place. We teach yoga in our Online Coaching Program where some of our clients have used it to improve their back pain…like Brain here: He […]
The post 21 Basic Yoga Poses for Beginners: Plus Videos of Complete Routines first appeared on Nerd Fitness.
Strategy: To increase your risk tolerance, remind yourself of risky decisions that have turned out well.
As with the list of things you've done that few other people have, this is not merely a list of accomplishments. The key point is to identify risks you've taken, bold moves, and other decisions you made that could have gone south but ended up paying off.
Of course, what's "bold" for you may be different from me, and vice versa. But here are a few of mine...
Among other things, the German philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was known for an outrageous mustache that frightened away potential soulmates. He also said a lot of outrageous things, which caused him to be shunned by much of society at the time.
One of those things was a simple, provocative question: “What if I had to live this life over again—would I be able to stand it?”
You know how there's something you've been putting off? Maybe you've had it on your to-do list every day for the past fifteen days. Every morning, you think, "I'll finally do that thing today" ... but you don't. The next day, you dutifully carry it over again ... and you still don't complete the task.
Never underestimate the strength of psychic resistance. Dread is a powerful emotion.I speak from experience, of course. And after I noticed I was spending a ton of energy worrying about something I had to do but not actually doing it—I made a plan. The plan is two-fold, and I offer it here for your use as well.
TLDR: Being uncomfortable is not the same as being unsafe. Avoid things that are fundamentally unsafe, but move in the direction of your discomfort.
When I think about my early years of world travel, there are a few times where I genuinely felt unsafe. Those aren't memories I care to relive, and overall I feel very fortunate to have been to all sorts of places that most travelers avoid: Libya, Syria, Somaliland, Afghanistan, and so on.
Most of the time—by an enormous margin—I felt safe everywhere I went. I was almost always treated well and helped by total strangers.
In what now feels like a previous life, I used to travel around the world almost every month. I slowed down a bit two years before the pandemic started, but I still took time for an international trip every six weeks at most.
I was also involved in the early days of the "travel hacking" world. I founded a service, the Travel Hacking Cartel, that served 12,000 members over nearly a decade. I also blogged regularly about credit card deals and other interesting opportunities: getting a hair-loss consultation to earn SkyMiles, for example, or spending $8,000 on useless stickers in exchange for 300,000 frequent flyer miles.
I don't do much work in that world any more, but I still benefit from everything I learned and all the mileage balances I accrued over the years.
If you originally found my blog for travel deals, you might miss hearing about them—so I figured I'd pop my head up to do an extended post for those who are interested.
I just came from the pizza parlor that doubles as a global headquarters for child trafficking. I counted up some ballots that proved the election was stolen.
On the way back, I stopped by the drugstore to get my microchip. I tried to tell the pharmacists about how 9/11 was an inside job, but they didn't seem interested.
Okay, let's slow down. I'd like to address a topic that has become increasingly relevant: how to talk to someone who believes in a conspiracy theory.
Every request you accept comes with a cost.
If you want to be more effective, if you want to "get more done," or even if you just want some breathing room in your life, you need to say no more often.
For some of us, of course, this is easier said than done. The inability to say no is one of the things that contributes the most to overwhelm. It can even lead to feelings of guilt or shame—you feel guilty for “letting someone down” even though you’re struggling to keep up on your own.
What should you say no to? That's up to you! But here's a start: anything that you don't want to do.
If you want to be more courageous, you have to make brave choices. Sounds simple enough—but how do you know which of those choices to make next?
When I first thought about the question for myself—what’s the bravest choice I can make right now?—I didn’t have an obvious answer. And that felt a little discouraging!
It was like being in a room with inspiring people, all talking about the big important projects they’re working on, and when my turn comes I say something like “Oh, I don’t know … I’m pretty much doing the same stuff as always.”
I believe that time anxiety is the most pressing problem of the modern world. Once you work your way through Maslow’s hierarchy and your basic needs are taken care of, you start worrying about time—and you never stop.
It's a simple question: what have you done that few other people have? Think about it.
Naturally you might start to list your accomplishments or achievements. Some of those might make the list, but many would fit in a different category. A lot of things you accomplish are things that other people have done as well. In addition, perhaps you've done something that isn't quite an accomplishment per se, but it's rare to meet someone else who's had the same experience.
Those are the things that should go on this list.
