Do you find yourself dreading the holiday season, or just not excited about it? If so, I promise you're not the only one. đâ
One report from the National Alliance on Mental Illness suggests that 64% of people with mental health issues feel worse during the holidays.
Whether you have a diagnosed mental illness or not, you might just be sad, depressed, or anxious during this time. This is ... normal.
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Highlights: in the year 2050, we still haven't met the aliens, Zoom is like Myspace, and American football goes away. There's much more in the post.
Last year I read Remembrance of Earth's Past, a science fiction trilogy by Chinese author Liu Cixin. The total length runs to more than 1,300 pages, but I loved it so much I would have kept reading if there was another book in the series.
The story has several themes and takes place across tens of thousands of years. Repeatedly, scientists and political leaders living in one point of history are trying to plan for something that will occur hundreds of years later, long after they'll be dead.
It turns out that trying to predict the future is tough!
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TLDR: An asymmetrical risk is one where the potential reward greatly outweighs the potential loss. Identify and take more of these risks.
Every so often, a news article that offers "expert advice" on getting upgraded at the airport makes the rounds. Inevitably, the advice includes something about how you should "dress well and ask nicely."
Real travel experts always roll their eyes at such advice. These days, almost all upgrades are handled through computer systems based on elite status, travel disruptions, and other automated factors.
The travel experts then write their own articles explaining why the advice is dumb, and the process repeats a few months later.
I'm with the real travel experts: the advice on asking for upgrades is just clickbait. Yet I can't help but remember a time many years agoâway back in 2007, I thinkâwhen I was traveling from Copenhagen to Chicago.
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One time, Will Smith was working on a film set in Toronto. It was the middle of winter and they were shooting night scenes, so the actors and crew worked 6pm to 6am. Brrr! đ„¶
During breaks, Smith could have huddled in his trailer, complaining about the bitter cold. Instead, he ran around making jokes and delivering hot chocolate to crew members. He acted on a question that he later explained is constantly on his mind: How can I make this experience more magical?
Working in the cold sucks, but the job had to be done. Rather than complain about it, and rather than just endure it, Smith set out to make the experience better (or "more magical") for everyone else.
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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...
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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: âWhat if I had to live this life over againâwould I be able to stand it?â
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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.
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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 shameâyou feel guilty for âletting someone downâ even though youâre 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.
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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.
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From time to time, it's good to be reminded of your insignificance. Last week provided an opportunity in the form of a Chinese rocket that was falling to the earth.
Perhaps you heard about it. Thankfully, all was well in the end, but until it landed, no one knew where the rocket would touch down. It could have been anywhere on earth! Just think about it: for all the advances of science and technology, we had no idea where on the entire planet a rocket would decide to return.
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I have long believed that thinking about regret is a powerful motivator for action. When you're feeling indecisive, trying to figure out if a particular step is a good one, consider how you'll feel if you don't take the step. Often this leads you to what seems like the right direction.
But while mental models can be helpful, most of them also have limits. Lately I've realized there's a flaw in the logic of focusing your attention on the avoidance of regrets. Simply put, regret is an unreliable emotion.
Think about that for a momentâwhat does it mean?
It means, in short, that regret is both difficult to anticipate and even harder to characterize in retrospect. If you feel certain about your choices in either directionâeither looking back or looking forwardâyou may be basing your interpretations on selectively chosen information.
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A common TV trope features someone who's down on their luck and forced to borrow from someone with questionable moral scruples: a loan shark, the Mafia, a representative from Wells Fargo.
As fate would have it, they fall further and further behind, until they're in an even greater bind. Soon they're being pursued by the loan shark, who threatens to break their legs, or by Wells Fargo, which forces them to remain on hold for hours. The rest of the story unfolds as the protagonist desperately tries to resolve their dilemma. What will they do? How will they get the money? "Getting the money" makes for a good plot foundation, since money is something that everyone wants. And when you don't have it, it becomes all that you think about.
Every December for the past fifteen years, I've completed an exercise I call the Annual Review.
This year is different in some ways, but then again, so is every year for one reason or another. In fact, that's one of the things that's so beneficial about the Review: in the midst of whatever craziness is happening, it helps to ground your attention and give you something to work on over the next year. This post contains an overview of the process, along with links that might be helpful for your own review. If you'd like to go waaaaay back to the original post from 2008, you can do that too. Enjoy! Read More
When we all went into this thing in March, I tried to remain as positive as possible. I still believe everything I said before, about how I want to come out of this time better than I was when it started, etc. We can only worry about whatâs within our control. And of course, letâs try to be kind to one another.
But then the spring turned to summer, and the summer to fall (at least in my part of the world). And nothing really got better! Quite the opposite, in fact. Now weâre all setting low expectations for standards of wellbeing. âHope youâre hanging in thereâ is the new âHope youâre doing well.â And letâs face it, lots of people arenât doing well. So, finally, Iâve come to the point of feeling defeated about the whole yearâand I know itâs not just me.
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