Quarter Four - 2023
Changes in diet and exercise can make massive differences for me, both mentally and physically. When I veer from a diet that fuels me well and fits my needs, both in terms of micronutrients and macronutrients, I notice significant changes in how I feel, especially when those changes last for more than a day. My energy slumps and I’m more likely to get tired in the middle of the day. My mental clarity dips, which means it takes longer for me to focus, my focus doesn’t go as deep, and my mind is less dynamic in terms of how well it connects ideas. This then affects my productivity, which drops off significantly. Additionally, it connects to my emotional regulation, which is worse when I’m not eating as well as I usually do, as I am more irritable and more frequently enter negative emotional states. Physically, my body does not recover as effectively, which leaves me with more pain and tightness. My strength in the gym also suffers, either resulting in workouts feeling harder than usual or my inability to lift the same weight as I can when I am eating well. Lastly, the likelihood of getting diarrhea and other bowel issues, along with more zits on my face, increases significantly. It’s a combination of outcomes that I particularly dislike, which makes navigating the holidays and outings at restaurants somewhat tough. But those are the cards I have been dealt, so I navigate them. I have gotten much better at navigating these changes compared to the confusion it used to place upon me, yet I still have a long ways to go.
When managing a relationship, look internally before externally. Especially when you perceive a problem, looking inward to find causes before looking outward for them is a useful approach. Before saying what we think is wrong with our partners, it is better to ask ourselves what may be off within ourselves and why we may be interpreting the situation at hand as a problem in the first place. In my relationship, I have found that at least half the time I think there is a problem, it is something inside of myself that I need to address. An example of this is my tendency to nitpick when I feel like I don’t have enough control or I feel underproductive. In the past, I would enter a high alert mode where I would pick up on the smallest things to tell my wife were wrong or off in some way. Over time, I came to observe that those little things were always there and I didn’t complain about them in the same way when I noticed them outside of this state of insufficiency. That was a hard, but very useful, pill to swallow. When I notice myself nitpicking in my head, I now notice this and connect it to the lack of control and under-productivity. This saves my wife a lot of pain and frustration, which would usually come after hearing 5 small complaints in the span of a few minutes, and helps me to re-orient to sorting out the problem within myself. Even voicing to her that I’m in this state of a lack of control or under-productivity is appreciated by her, as it sits much better than the avalanche of complaints.
The power of the generative drive. I learned about the concept of the “generative drive” through Andrew Huberman’s guest series with Paul Conti. They recorded four episodes on tools and insights for improving mental health, and one of the key ideas shared during the series was the generative drive, which is our internal drive to create and build (or in other words, generate) things, whether it be by ourselves or with others. This drive propels us toward creative and personal pursuits that deeply engage us and leave us feeling satisfied, delighted, and content. When we are mentally healthy, our generative drives are high and they are the main drivers of our behaviors. When we are not mentally healthy, our generative drives are weak or are superseded by other drives, such as the aggressive drive and the pleasure drive. Aligning ourselves internally so we can activate the generative drive as our dominant drive is close to an optimal state of being. Our generative drives do not fatigue us, but instead fill our energy buckets for more engagement.
Jingle jangle. My undergraduate research advisor used this term a lot in our work together, as it is an important concept to recognize in the world, and even more so in the social sciences. It symbolizes how there are some concepts that sound similar in name but are totally different (jingle), along with some concepts that are quite different in name but are the same (jangle). For example, my previous point was about the generative drive, which is very similar in definition and function to terms like “purpose” and “intrinsic motivation” in the field of psychology, despite not sounding similar. The other case is pervasive, as people often use the same word to mean different things depending on the context, such as “motivation” and “achievement.” Because these are such broad terms, they can mean very different things depending on the context in which they are used. The more we can avoid these fallacies, the more sense we can make to one another and the easier our communication will be when trying to make sense of our complex world.
The lonely chapter. When you take the road from your current self to your better/ideal self, you have to shed a lot along the journey. You change your habits, which means you change the way you spend your time and the places you spend your time, which then means you change the people with whom you spend your time. To make these changes, you first must let go of what you have in the present. This transition from the old to the new brings a lot of loneliness, as it places you in between the friends you used to have and the new friends that you’ll make along the way. The loneliness of that transition is compounded by the uncertainty present in forming a new identity. You don’t fully know who you’re going to be yet because you haven’t had the chance to be that person over and over again to consolidate your new identity. It’s an uneasy position. But if you can brave these uneasy waters, new and better lands open to you on the other side. It’s an immensely valuable journey to take, which I would recommend to each of us, and a big part of the value we get from it is how we traverse this set of unique challenges.
Saunter. John Muir, in tandem with Theodore Roosevelt, founded the national parks of the United States. Muir didn’t like the term “hiking,” as he thought it was too focused on the destination, taking the focus away from the truly meaningful experience of the journey itself through the divine beauty of nature. He revered the natural world so much and wanted people to experience it as it is, not as a destination to check off on a list. I’m not sure if he meant it in the way I am interpreting it, but I think there is a broader application of this concept. We can saunter through life, moment to moment. Life itself is full of incredible beauty and amazement if you allow yourself to see it. There is so much to observe, feel, and take in along the way. If we can wrap our heads around it, everything in our existence can be something to simply marvel over in awe, from the best experiences to the worst. Muir wanted us to experience this in nature, which is a desire I share. I also want us to see it and experience it in everything. Even though “everything” is a stretch, and perhaps even an impossibility, I think it’s wise to use it here because it is always available to us if we just open our eyes and see.
Be careful with content consumption, especially related to current events. October 7th was a heavy day for nearly all of us throughout the world in one way or another. Witnessing the beginning of a more intense and official war in Israel and Palestine, which inherently brought with it the knowledge of an incoming enormity of casualties and deaths, in addition to the infinite moral debates across the world about the war, was too much to bare. I was overwhelmed by the events that happened that day and that which conspired, and continues to occur, in their aftermath. I found myself consuming lots of content about the war, the history of the conflict, and the daily updates out of the Gaza Strip and Israel. It rattled me emotionally and made a dent in my well-being, leaving me mentally scattered and tired after consuming content and at the end of my days. After about a month of engaging with content about the war in this way, which was well over 20 hours of my time, I had to take a step back and evaluate the way it was affecting me. The effect was too big to ignore. I came to the conclusion that, although I was very informed about the matter, consuming content in the way I was at the time was inhibiting me from engaging with it more meaningfully. I needed to take care of myself first. By not caring for myself, the quality of my engagement with the topic would be much worse, leaving me less likely to develop a more true and complete understanding of the situation. I also realized that I only have a certain amount of control over the issue from where I currently sit in the world, and trying to more deeply understand something that sits outside of my work and expertise, beyond the great lengths I had already gone, would not make the world a better place compared to other investments I could make with my time and attention.
Be a straight shooter who lands softly. In my family, there are many examples of straight shooters. In other words, people who do a great job of telling you how they see things and being direct with you. Nevertheless, nearly all of them do not do so well at landing softly with their directness. It can come across as brash, intense, aggressive, or insensitive. I don’t think these categories are exclusive. I believe that we can tell the truth and be direct with others without leaving others feeling attacked, beaten down, or offended in some way. By being thoughtful in our communication by using very simple techniques, we can say what we want to say without others quickly shutting down and putting up walls to us. In the next point, I discuss some of those simple techniques.
Mirroring, proactive listening, and “sounds like…” Chris Voss was a negotiator for over 20 years, working with the FBI on various crises and hostage situations. Listening to him about his techniques and approach to negotiating have been very informative for me in how I interact with others. Three techniques in particular jumped out to me, which I wanted to share here.
Mirroring - Our use of language is very particular to each of us. We use the words we use for a reason, whether we are conscious of it or not. When we hear others using those same words, it leaves us feeling more at ease and understood by them, which means we’ll be more open and likely to engage with them personally. So when talking to others, we can connect with them better if we pay attention to the specific words they use and repeat them back to them in our response. For example, if someone tells you they’re furious and disappointed, using those words in your response to them is more likely to open them up than not doing so.
Proactive Listening - Before making a statement to someone else, think through how you think that statement might sit with them. It may be harsh, hard to follow, confusing, surprising, exciting… the list goes on. Proactive listening is couching your statements with an acknowledgment of how someone may feel when you say something to them. For example, “I know this might sound harsh to you, but I ask that you stay with me here. I don’t think you were paying very good attention if you asked that question. We talked about that exact topic two questions ago.” Couching the statement allows the recipient to prepare themselves for what is to come, leaving them prepared for something that could hurt. If you knew an attack was coming your way, wouldn’t you want to be able to put on your armor first?
“Sounds like…” - This one was the most surprising to me, as I was always a bit resistant to telling people how I am interpreting their feelings in the moment. Voss’s spin on it was eye opening, as he sees a lot of good possible outcomes by sharing with others what you’re interpreting in their communication. First, whether you’re right or wrong, it is likely to make the person feel like you are paying attention to them, which is better than not receiving any attention at all. Second, if you share an interpretation and the other person thinks you’re wrong, they are highly likely to respond and tell you that they think you’re wrong. Although hearing you’re wrong may not feel good in the moment, opening someone up and getting them to speak up is a good thing, as it gets them to share how they really feel, which is a point of connection for you to better understand them, solve a problem, or build a relationship.
Be into it. Jerry Seinfeld has a great bit where he talks to the audience about why they pay to see him. He claims they pay to see him because they know he’s truly into what he’s doing. He is dedicated to what he does and it is apparent in how he shows up and does his work. He puts in the hours, makes sacrifices, and trains day after day to maintain his level and reach new heights, just as an elite athlete or top surgeon does. We don’t pay nor invest our valuable time to see someone who is half-assing it. We place a high value on commitment and excellence, while we place a low value on mediocrity. This is a common tendency across societies. This point about being into it connects to what my parents always shared with me throughout my childhood: there is no point in doing something if you aren’t going to give it your all and do it well. When you’re into it, giving it your all and doing it well take care of themselves, as you invest and immerse yourself into the task, not settling for mediocrity.
Being likeable and relatable is inextricably linked to going through hard things and being rocked by life once or twice. People who have had easy lives or do not talk about the way challenges have impacted them tend to be people to whom we relate less. We usually do not relate so much to people because of their successes and easy wins. Positive and easy experiences do not humble us, but instead are more likely to inflate our egos… and we don’t like people with big egos. Those common positive experiences are also not as binding as common negative experiences. When people struggle together, they have a greater likelihood of building strong bonds through solidarity with each other, which likely happens in part because those experiences of struggle are more relatable and humbling for those who endure them. Getting through hard things also leaves us with higher levels of self-esteem. Seeing others who have followed similar hard paths that remind us of our own can make us feel better about ourselves, taking us back to memories of overcoming difficulties that fortify our sense of self. Lastly, humans aren’t perfect, which makes failure and struggle, two very imperfect experiences, very “humanizing” when we see them in others.
There is a relationship between the quality of my fingernails and cuticles and the quality of my focus. This is one of the most particular points that I’ve written so far in these quarterly reviews. I think it merits explanation, as others may relate to the mechanism at play. Each night when I write before I go to bed, I have a variety of possible ways that can happen. The optimal way is when I am immersed in the writing and reflection process, never or rarely looking up or getting distracted. The worst way is when it takes me over 45 minutes because I delay, get distracted, and feel a little agitated over having to write a lot when I want to sleep or do something else. When this happens, a lot of that agitated and distracted time is occupied by me biting or picking at my fingernails and cuticles. This response to agitation and anxiety is quite common, as it brings immediate relief and helps us to temporarily escape these feelings. Nevertheless, the task at hand remains, whether I pick and bite or not. Becoming mindful in these moments is something I have worked on and improved a lot over time, but I still have a long way to go to stop myself completely.
The typical company ladder from skilled technician to manager is unwise. Across private industries, people are rewarded for their great skills in one area by being paid more to do something completely different from the areas where they excel. Plainly said, it’s absurd to believe that a great plumber, software developer, surgeon, welder, chef, investor, or researcher (to name a few examples) is automatically a great manager of other plumbers, developers, surgeons, welders, chefs, investors, and researchers. Yes, management does require a certain level of proficiency with the work of the positions they manage, but this is merely a small portion of what a manager does. Managers spend most of their time helping others to become better at the things they do, organizing work so that it is more effective and efficient, managing team dynamics and various personalities, perspectives, and needs, setting goals, tracking how the work is progressing to achieve those goals, and other administrative tasks that connect to the higher purposes of the work. As you can see, these types of tasks differ greatly from the list of tasks done in the more technical, non-management role. Even worse, promoting a great technician means that you dilute the pool of great technicians available to do the technical work as they move into management instead. What’s more, when these technicians decided to pursue a job, they often trained to do that job and chose to follow that path because they were motivated to become great at that job… not to become a great manager. Overall, it’s a system that is likely already causing a lot of problems and is bound to continue to do so if it remains the same.
Do not speak poorly of your partner in public/outside of a 1-on-1 setting. Having disagreements with our partners is inevitable. We are all unique, which means we all interact with the world and react to the objects and actions within it differently. We also all have some level of personal ego and sense of pride, which means we can feel slighted when an event or set of words cuts at that ego or pride. In my view, given we spend the most time and share the most intimate space with our partners, we are most likely to feel slighted by and disagree with them because we simply have more opportunities with them for it to happen compared to anyone else. We must be aware of how, when, where, and around whom we work through and dig into the details about these disagreements and feelings of being slighted. Not speaking poorly of our partners in public is a good rule to manage this, as it gives us a clear line that helps us avoid creating more problems, disagreements, and feelings of being slighted in the relationship. This behavior provides an additional bonus, which is that it helps us to show up in the world as loyal partners, which builds trust. That trust then makes it easier to resolve conflicts in the relationship, as we are more aware that our partners are showing up in good faith by keeping that trust.
An important part of self-care is asking yourself good questions. When we think of self-care, we often imagine the cucumber slices on the eyes, a creamy face mask, a green detox smoothie, a bathrobe at the spa… These do make us feel better in the short term. There is no denying that. The question I often ask myself is, what leads a person to feel like they need that to solve their problems in the first place? And why did those problems arise and then not resolve themselves easily? With this lens, the self-care activities I described seem reactionary instead of the ideal, which would be more proactive. My conception of proactive self-care involves reflection and asking ourselves good questions to better understand our tendencies in terms of the common challenges we experience, our common reactions to those challenges, and then what those common reactions lead to in our lives. Unfortunately, the detox smoothie doesn’t help anything if we return to drinking it with the same inadequate reactions to our problems. Our relationships won’t improve if we continue reacting in the same manner to the challenges that arise. Our work won’t improve if we continue operating in the same way we always have. We won’t improve as people and get closer to our ideal selves if we don’t reflect on how we’re living and then make changes in response to that reflection. To sum it up, we need to do more self-care for the versions of us that exist a year from now than an hour from now.
Question the things that are easy for you to believe. When we hear, see, or read certain pieces of information or perspectives, we pretty much always have an immediate emotional reaction that signals whether we are inclined to agree or disagree. Depending on the side to which we are inclined, we will have quite distinct reactions. When we disagree, we are much more prone to question and doubt the information or perspective. We become skeptical, picking apart all of the flaws we can find and making counter-arguments. When we agree, our reaction is much more relaxed. We don’t question or doubt the information nearly as much as we do when we disagree. Our skepticism is often null, taking the information or perspective as it is and committing it to memory. If we were universal arbiters of truth, then this reaction would be appropriate. Despite how much easier the world would be if that were the case, it is not. This means that our inclination to agree or disagree is an unreliable indicator of truth. If our goal is to understand the truth, which I would argue it most definitely should be, then we must be skeptical of what we agree with much more than we are inclined to be by nature. Asking yourself what someone would say who disagreed with that information or perspective is a great start.
Review the content you consume over a week and rate it all honestly. Given the ubiquity and quasi-infinite availability of content to consume, we need processes to assess our consumption. A great suggestion from George Mack is to go through the content you consumed over a week’s time via your watch history and ask yourself whether it was good for you, indifferent, or you regret watching it / it wasn’t good for you. This could be a simple list, where you have each piece of content listed vertically in the left-hand column, then three columns of checkboxes to the right with those three categories (good, indifferent, regret). When George conducted the exercise for himself, he noticed that he regretted watching 72% of the YouTube videos on the list and identified some important patterns, such as avoiding the home page and leveraging the search function more frequently. This review led him to consuming content more intentionally, which helped him to take back a lot more control of his time. I do not doubt that a similar result would come to you if you did the same.
Always read or listen to the original source to be your own judge. It is so frequent to see posts in response to hearsay and not the original source. Many people are misinterpreted, misquoted, and caricatured, leading them to receiving reactions in the public to things they simply did not say or things that did not happen. All of us have seen and likely participated in this, knowingly or not. Given how much information comes across our eyes on a daily basis, it’s nearly impossible to avoid in our current media environment. A great way to avoid this is to suspend judgment upon seeing the reaction and then engage with the original source in its entirety. If we were on the wrong end of being misrepresented or caricatured, we would want people to engage with what we had to say in its entirety, not just a small portion or a headline. It’s also a good reminder that we are thinking human beings who structure our points of view through lots of context, background experiences, and inclinations, which we should always strive to take into account when making sense of someone else’s perspective. This doesn’t mean you have to accept it, believe it, or applaud it. You can reject it, detest it, and even protest it if you’d like. All I ask is you ensure you’re responding to the argument and perspective in its entirety, which is the treatment I’m sure you would prefer receiving if the roles were reversed.
Avoid ‘opinion shopping’ and feeding confirmation bias. Another challenge of our current media environment is the accessibility of “evidence” that support whatever we are inclined to believe in a given circumstance. If we have a certain point of view, we can Google that perspective and very easily find information that supports our position. We should do everything in our power to avoid this behavior, as it is highly likely to lead us astray and give us incomplete information. We need to expose ourselves to as many perspectives as possible on topics where we have taken a position, with a particular focus on the positions that we oppose the most. This way, we become truly educated on these topics. Opinion shopping does the opposite. As Charlie Munger said, “I never allow myself to have an opinion on anything that I don't know the other side's argument better than they do.”
When advocating for or supporting a cause, identify a clear and specific finish line first. There is an infinite number of causes out there in the world to support, oppose, simply not care about, or anything in between. Many of these causes do not succeed, and a big reason why they do so is because they are not specific enough in identifying their goal and their planning to reach that goal is not up to par. It is impossible to achieve a goal that does not exist, is too general, or is constantly moving, hence the failure of so many causes. I also believe that a significant piece of this is a lack of courage and clarity on the part of each cause to declare their vision in detail. There is a fear that if they are too specific, they will not be able to garner enough support. The catch 22 here is that by being too broad, their efforts are not focused enough, so they end up being ineffective in making meaningful progress. They become consumed by gathering interest and support rather than supporting the cause itself. We have a responsibility to these causes to keep them in check in this regard. We can express our dismay with their lack of specificity and planning, conditioning our support upon their becoming more specific and prepared. Given we want to live in a world that does in fact improve and make good progress on important matters, we have to do our utmost to ensure the causes themselves are using best practices to contribute to that vision.
Our parents are human beings with flaws, just like us. When we grow up, most of us have a very strong instinct to trust our parents and guardians almost blindly. We look to them as the fountains of truth and wisdom, often deifying their recommendations and perspectives without question, thinking we have so much to learn and don’t have enough wisdom and knowledge to act properly. As we grow older, become adults ourselves, and enter the world where we spend more time with many other adults, this blind trust comes crashing down. The many flaws of basically every adult are revealed to us, even adults we looked up to, saw as role models, or are widely considered to be highly competent in their fields of work or study. This happens in part because of the many good examples we see in the adults we meet who verifiably showcase genuine competence, although these domains of competence are usually confined to specific areas and do not generalize broadly. Given how much time we spend with our parents and guardians, along with the intimacy and openness of those relationships, their flaws are revealed in much greater force. Although they’ve learned a lot through their lives, they also still have a lot to learn, just like we did as kids. That never goes away completely, although some might fake it out of denial, which is yet another flaw to find in adults. It can feel quite disappointing when this truth slaps us across the face. Over time, we should come to accept it with grace, as that’s the way we should engage with ourselves and the many flaws we have as individuals. Many of our strengths and good qualities come in tandem with our weaknesses and flaws, in a yin-yang interaction. Nobody is perfect. Let’s not forget this.
Intrinsic versus instrumental values. When we think about what we value in the world, we often fail to differentiate between and categorize all the values that are out there. One helpful distinction I have come across is intrinsic versus instrumental values from clearerthinking.org, founded by Spencer Greenberg. Instrumental values are things like money and food, which can only be valuable because they are a means to some other end. Intrinsic values are things like truth, freedom, diversity, purity, beauty, respect, and happiness, which are things we value for their own sake. They are not a means to some other end, but rather they are the ends themselves. Understanding which intrinsic values are most important to us can help us to feel more connected in life, whether that is with other people who share these values or in professions where these values are represented and manifested. Clearer Thinking has a nice test of intrinsic values, which you can see here.
A good definition of wisdom. In a conversation between Spencer Greenberg (from the point above) and Chris Williamson, they discussed the topic of wisdom. It’s a word that is widely used but rarely defined. One of the definitions they surfaced was the following: “When you align your intentions, actions, and outcomes.” I thought it was incredibly simple yet effective. Think about someone you know who is really good at having clear intentions with what they’re setting out to do, identifies a way to execute those intentions, and then executes that strategy to achieve the outcome they intended. If you know someone like this, I doubt you consider that person to be anything but wise. Of course, one caveat is whether those initial intentions are good, as someone could be great at doing bad in the world. So a missing component of the definition is an assessment of the goodness of one’s intentions before the intention-action-outcome alignment. So perhaps a nice addendum is “When you align your intentions, actions, and outcomes to do good in the world.”
Economic rights. As the CEO of Magna International, Frank Stronach created an innovative way of running his company. Instead of the traditional boss-worker relationship, he partnered with his employees. Every employee at Magna shares in the profits of the business, no matter their position in the company. They all earn a salary, and on top of that salary, they are incentivized by the success of the business, earning more based on the success of the business. Stronach recommends that 5-20% of all profits go to employees in a model he champions as the “economic charter of rights,” in which all businesses with more than 300 employees share their profits with employees, scaling from 5 to 20% over four years. His implementation of this middle has led him to believe this model is transformational for the way work is done in companies and the quality of that work. It also makes them more efficient with their time, as their pay is not solely tied to time spent working. It’s a model that inspired me which I would like to implement if I ever started a business and employed people in an organization.
So much of our assessments of value are based on comparison. ‘It’s all relative” is a ubiquitous phrase. Whether it’s about your happiness, your position in society, your physical health, your family, your friends, your significant other, your intelligence, your financial state, or most other aspects of our human experience, comparison is inherent in our value judgments. There is something deeply encoded within us that tells us that the value of what we are or what we have depends on where we stack up in a comparison. Even within economic systems that attempt to level the playing field, we still find ourselves pursuing uniqueness and forms of value that few others, or no others, have. A perfect example of this is the tulip mania that occurred in a prosperous Dutch society of the 1600’s. An economic bubble was created, and eventually burst, around the pursuit of rare bulbs of tulips. The value of these rare bulbs was not based in any sort of practicality. It was based on speculation and the desire for the wealthiest in society to have something that their other wealthy counterparts couldn’t have. It’s a story in our human history exemplifying the extent to which humans are willing to go to surmount others in the comparison olympics of life.
For those who are familiar with meditation, minimalism, and similar spiritual/personal practices and paths, you are probably familiar with the alternative to the comparison olympics, which is to extract yourself entirely from the games. Instead of primarily basing value assessments on comparison, you base it on what can bring you closer to peace, enlightenment, meaning, and contentment. Instead of thinking solely about value in comparison and economic terms, which one could argue are highly correlated, you think about value in more intangible and personal terms. You realize that being a person who personifies your values, spending quality time and connecting with others, expressing love, observing the world and the self, and experiencing a sense of awe and wonder come at either a very minimal economic cost or no cost at all. Of course, we need to meet our basic needs, and that requires the acquisition of economic resources to then make transactions to acquire those needs. Beyond that, what is required to live a great life is much more psychological in nature than financial.
Productive arguments between two people in a relationship must go deeper than the surface. A year of marriage has brought many arguments and disagreements. We don’t see that as a bad thing, as we know we’re different people with different ways of seeing the world, which inevitably introduces conflict. Nevertheless, these conflicts have the potential for going various ways. Unfortunately, many couples often do not gather meaningful insights from those conflicts when they occur. They are simply seen as something to resolve, forget about, or pass by, sticking at the surface level. I’m grateful that we have taken a different path, although at times it is tense and painful. Our conflicts have grown to open the door to a high level of vulnerability that supports identifying where certain responses are coming from. For example, when I made some complaints to Gabi once about her leaving clean towels out without folding them and putting them away (a very small point, I know), she shared with me that she got angry about it because she’s not used to men being involved in domestic affairs around the house, as her dad never commented on these matters at home and left her mom, her sister, and her to take care of it all. My personal experience was quite different, as my dad worked from home for many years and my parents divided household chores very equally, in addition to openly talking about it when one or the other hadn’t done their assigned task yet. Without getting to this deeper point, we wouldn’t have understood why there was a problem in the first place and why our reactions were so distinct. When we understand the causes and their origins, we can then prevent similar situations and have a more precise awareness of what’s happening. In a marriage or any long term relationship, turning these conflicts into productive learning moments can make a world of difference.
We cannot make decisions based on the past - we must look at the present first and then use the past for context. Where are we now is a more important question than what got us here when it comes to deciding on a path forward. This isn’t to say that history is unimportant, because it is in fact very important. It just isn’t as important as the present and our vision for the future if our goal is to achieve a better set of outcomes in the long term. This is a lesson I took from a conversation Yuval Noah Harari, one of the world’s most famous historians who wrote Sapiens, had with Rory Stewart and Alastair Campbell shortly after the October 7th attacks in Israel. It was particularly impactful for me because it came from someone who has dedicated his life to history, which would make him nearly the most likely candidate to say that history is most important when making decisions. Hearing a contrary response made me think deeply, which got me around to agreeing with him. The past tells us so much, from who was advantaged and disadvantaged, who suffered and who excelled, to the specific ways in which it all unfolded if our sources give us enough details. And of course, we want to look back to understand which advantages and disadvantages were unjust and how that happened. Nevertheless, if we solely base our decisions for what to do now based on the past, we ignore all of the other factors at play in the present. Rectifying certain injustices without prioritizing where we are and where we want to go can lead to an impermanent rectification, potentially leading to creating even greater injustices and worse societies on the other side. We must be mindful of these possibilities, as they can carry significant consequences, even for those who were treated unjustly and would be the beneficiaries of rectification. As I write this point, I fear the ease of falling into certain thought traps for us if I mention certain conflicts where this can apply, as the applications are incredibly broad. The Israel-Palestine conflict, reparations for descendants of enslaved peoples, the Russian war in Ukraine, apartheid in South Africa, the outcomes of world wars, providing global aid to countries where other powerful nations waged war like Vietnam and Cambodia, colonization in the Americas and Africa… the list goes on. Despite our political divides, our willingness to come together for a better future for all of us, with a clear recognition of historical wrongdoings in the process, will bring us further forward.
You scratch my back, I scratch yours. When you look both across species and within our human species, there is an overwhelming winner for the best strategy to use for creating productive relationships and societies. It’s called “tit-for-tat" or, as I titled this section, “You scratch my back, I scratch yours.” If one person acts positively toward you, it’s in your best interest to return the favor, so you return it. If you act positively toward another, it’s in their best interest to return the favor, so they return it. Establishing these reciprocal relationships generates trust and cohesion, which allows groups to function much more effectively when working toward a collective goal. Going beyond the collective, this reciprocity allows individuals to achieve more than they would over the long term if they had instead tried to maximize their personal return while reducing the return of others through taking advantage of them and not reciprocating. Looking at groups of silverback gorillas for example, Robert Sapolsky observed that grooming behavior took place much sooner and more frequently within groups that had these kinds of reciprocal relationships as a norm, which was associated with greater longevity and fewer health problems for those gorillas. Additionally, when running computer simulations on the prisoner’s dilemma, this tit-for-tat strategy has been shown to be the optimal strategy for long-term gains when players have to play together multiple times.
Instead of asking for general feedback, ask for just one specific thing to do differently. Within days of relearning this while listening to a podcast, I was already seeing the benefits of implementing it. In a conversation with my wife that wasn’t going where we wanted it to, I paused and asked, “what is one thing I can do differently next time?” The question completely changed the tone of the conversation, severing the tensions in the air. I had been used to quickly responding with questions like, “what should I do differently?”, “what did I do wrong?”, and “what can I do better?” These questions are too open and can easily overwhelm someone in a tense situation, leading them to respond defensively or to not provide an answer at all. Just asking for one thing simplifies the request for feedback immensely. You’re not asking for them to tell you everything you need to change. That list could take an eternity to construct. Asking for one thing also shows respect to the person you’re asking, as you recognize implicitly that (1) their feedback is important to you, (2) it takes effort and a lot of mental energy to give feedback, and (3) you want to make it easier for them to provide feedback.
Beware spending too much time processing and going back to the same problems over and over again. When a problem arises in a relationship, it is incumbent upon us to sit down together, discuss what the problem is, its origins, the ways to resolve it if/when it comes to the surface again, and how to prevent it. This is a fairly simple and effective process. When we manage to do it well, working from start to finish, we can see the benefits quite tangibly. A common challenge in relationships, even when this process or a similar one is used, is the recurring return to processing those same problems. Instead of focusing on the behaviors and changes that help manage the problems, and even liberate us from them, couples frequently return their focus to the problems that have already been worked through and managed, hashing out the same conversations over and over again. This recurring return to the same problems ends up invalidating the meaningful, hard work done to identify the roots of problems and their solutions. It also shows a lack of trust in the relationship, as there is a lack of shared belief that each person will stick to the solutions identified in the conversation about the specific problem. Avoiding invalidation and a lack of trust makes a world of difference in a relationship, so doing our best in these regards can lead us to greater probabilities of relationship success.
Food is incredibly powerful for us as people. Sitting together and sharing a meal with someone seems to have a unique quality to it. It improves our social evaluations of the people with whom we eat, we feel more connected to others with whom we share meals, we experience more satisfaction in our lives when we eat with others more frequently, the nutritional health of children is better when they share more meals with their families, and we even eat more when sharing a meal with friends. Anthony Bourdain used to remark about how eye-opening it was to share meals with people he had never met before and suddenly see them open up about very personal and profound things about themselves. Fundamental parts of my relationship with my wife are going to the grocery store to buy food together, cooking together, and sharing meals. There is so much loneliness and isolation in today’s societies, particularly so in western, industrialized societies. I think that we can leverage the sharing of meals for good in our world.
“Always preach, sometimes with words.” Tom Catena is a missionary and doctor who runs a hospital in the Nuba mountains of South Sudan. He is the only surgeon there, serving a region that is devastated by war, working long days and nights. When listening to Tom speak about his life and work, he sounds incredibly fulfilled and engaged in his life, despite having no cellphone, very limited possessions, and a job that has severely limited resources compared to that of a doctor in most other countries. In an interview with Peter Attia, he quoted Saint Francis, saying the quote that starts this section: “Always preach, sometimes with words.” In his work, he does not throw the Bible around preaching the message of Jesus. He simply serves the people who he can help with his knowledge and skills, trying to be the best example of Jesus’s message instead. Tom is an example all of us can follow, whether it be from a religious or secular lens. If you have a vision of the good that can be done in the world, you can “be the change you wish to see in the world,” as Gandhi said. Strive toward manifesting the ideals in which you believe through your actions. Prioritizing one’s actions over one’s words will make a great difference in making the world a better place. Actions also speak louder than words, as my parents incessantly told me throughout my childhood.
Truth is the ultimate adventure. Imagine where you would be if you always did the following:
Said what you believed to be the truth.
Decided your actions based on what you believed to be right.
Pursued the truth to its ultimate end when you were not completely certain.
Tested your conception of the truth in the world to see whether it’s actually true.
Take a moment to sit with this. Close your eyes and revisit some of the decisions you would have made differently. Explore the ways you have reached your current self, whether through being guided by doing those four things above or not. I know that my life would be immensely different, in both good ways and bad ways. I also know that the journey of that imagined scenario, allowing the truth through your unique lens to pull you through life, would be the thrill of a lifetime. The dull moments would be rare and the engaging moments would be plentiful. You would be tested in the best of ways. Even if what I shared above is an ideal to shoot for, that most, if not all, of us are not courageous enough to manage, striving toward that ideal could do us and the world a whole lot of good.
Tools for emotional regulation. When I ask others about the strategies they use for managing their emotions, they usually don’t have a set of clear tools they use unless they’ve spent significant time working with a psychologist or are psychologists themselves. To simplify it, I wanted to share a few strategies that work in different circumstances:
Name feelings and thoughts. Before we even get to the step of trying to regulate our emotions, we first need to learn what they are and to identify them and their associated thought patterns. Can you differentiate between sad and angry? Can you differentiate a feeling that is likely to last for a short time versus one likely to last for a long time? Speaking is also one of the most effective ways to test your knowledge and understanding, along with thinking usefully. What better than to grow knowledge and understanding of the self?
Reframe. David Yeager and Ali Crum have done some great work on the stress-is-enhancing mindset, which is a reframing approach to stress. Instead of avoiding stress, you change your approach to it, focusing on the ways that stress is an important thing to experience to grow and adapt. In other words, you reframe stress. Any emotion and personal experience can be reframed to shape it as something that has a positive impact on you. We can learn and grow immensely from the most challenging of moments, but we must first see the opportunities to grow through a reframe.
Distract. If the two options above do not work, distraction is a great way to get space before you revisit an event. Sometimes experiences are too heavy and traumatic to fully handle in the short-term, and thus we need to slow down, step away, and come back fresh. Distraction is an avenue to this, although I recommend using it sparingly.
Avoiding disappointment via lowering expectations has its downsides. High expectations often propel us to holding a higher standard for ourselves. Although this practice leads us to a greater risk of disappointment in the case we do not succeed, the level of success we can achieve when we do have high expectations tends to be higher. The expectation of what could be on the other side of the door is a great motivator. We never know what will actually be there, but the idea of it is often inspiring and exciting. If it weren’t, there wouldn’t be much reason to try. Anticipation is also the state where we experience much of life’s pleasure. Happiness is in the pursuit of the goal, not in its attainment. So if we try to lower expectations to remove the downside, it will undoubtedly come at a cost to what we can gain on the upside.
Even meditation in excess can lead to negative outcomes. Willoughby Britton has done some eye-opening work on a topic that is not “in the zeitgeist” and slightly taboo because of our growing positive orientation toward the concept of meditation in society. There are so many people who start a meditation habit each year, along with a sizable group who engages in long meditation retreats each year. In her research, she has found that people can actually experience significant losses in quality of life, through decreases in sleep quality and increases in anxiety and depression for example, by engaging in too much meditation. She also notes that there is significant overlap between the potential negative consequences of meditation and use of psychedelics. Her work is a reminder that even things that seem flawless in public discourse will have a downside if they are not properly managed and implemented. You can learn more about her work in her appearance on the Tim Ferriss show, where they discussed the topic extensively.
We owe our friends honesty. With proper etiquette, of course, but the etiquette is secondary. Etiquette lacks value if it is not in the service of something truly meaningful, like honesty. If we want to live truly meaningful lives and experience meaningful personal growth, we must embrace the truth, even when it hurts. This is a role great friends can play in our lives. Through spending quality time together and building relationships, they get to observe us and see who we really are, both in words and actions. These observations mean they can tell us the truth in a much more substantiated way than others around us. By telling us the truth, our friends help us face ourselves and become better. For this reason, we must find friends who are willing to tell us the truth and we must then reward them when they share it with us, no matter the effects their points of view have on our egos. And how can we find friends like this? A great way to start is to be that friend to others. Honesty often begets more honesty, and if it’s taken well, brings us closer together. Seeing the world as it truly is with others who seek the same is an incredibly unifying experience.
The sharing of core values is fundamental to a great partnership. In my marriage, in my best friendships, in my family, and in my work, shared values make a big difference when it comes to stability. When there are bumps in the road, coming back to shared values is an amazing tool. Being able to ask questions like, “is the way we’re acting and talking to each other in line with [shared value]?” can make a world of difference. If you have no shared values, then you have no ground rules and you can end up acting in ways that hurt the other without being able to agree on whether that behavior fits the code of your relationship. Identifying those shared values and the language and behaviors associated with them provides that code. It’s an objective list that you agree to prioritize and by which you agree each party will be held accountable. Most of the time, this list is quite implicit, meaning it’s never said but well understood by all involved. Nevertheless, making them explicit, especially when conflicts arise, is immensely helpful, both in resolving the present conflict and making it easier to resolve future ones.
There are good secular reasons for avoiding alcohol and casual sex. Alcohol and casual sex are quite distinct topics, but I think they can be woven together here. You don’t need a religious book to tell you that alcohol is involved in a lot of bad outcomes for human beings. The research is quite robust. It exacerbates psychological disorders, it devastates sleep quality, it is involved in a very high proportion of sexual abuse cases, and it is present in about half of all violent crimes. It’s also a disinhibiting drug, meaning that it stops the brain from exercising self-control and even has permanent debilitating effects on the areas of the brain which execute self-control. And by permanent, I mean permanent — impossible to return to how things were before. Many people grow dependencies on alcohol to operate in the world through their consumption of it. I’m sure you know someone who can’t function very well or become overwhelmed in social situations unless they have had a drink or two. Drinking more only makes this outcome more likely. Drinking in this manner usually starts in high school or college for most Americans, which is also when casual sex comes into the picture. Engaging in casual sex is generally related to poor mental health outcomes in women, such as greater levels of distress and drug use. In addition, given alcohol is so present around casual sex, it increases the likelihood for those experiences of casual sex to involve abuse and violence. I then ask myself the question of what people engaging in casual sex are really hoping to get on the other side. Particularly for women, it certainly doesn’t yield positive mental health outcomes and increases their likelihood of being victims of abuse, as I mentioned before. In my experience, going to places where casual sex and alcohol consumption are encouraged doesn’t expose them to better potential partners either. In the short-term, I suppose it’s trying to fit in socially, meet new people, relieve stress and anxiety, and cope with negative psychological experiences from the past or present. Mixing casual sex and alcohol consumption also creates scenarios in which people become personas and are not truly themselves, and thus any positive affirmations or responses they think they’re getting aren’t actually for them, but for the persona. In order to receive love and true appreciation of who we are from others, we must first be ourselves with them. Another driver of casual sex is a fear of commitment or a simple lack of desire to commit. I struggled with commitment for many years of my life. Much of my struggle with commitment was actually a fear of being alone if I committed to someone and they then decided to end the relationship. That fear of being alone stemmed from a lack of self-confidence, meaning I didn’t believe I would be able to go out into the world and find someone else who would love me and appreciate who I was. When engaging in casual sex, I always found myself feeling bad afterwards, questioning myself and why I did it in the first place. It never added anything substantial or meaningfully good to my life. This bad feeling didn’t go away until I met my wife, the first woman I would say I was ready to commit to. This series of observations led me to seeing that, no matter the angle you look at casual sex and alcohol use, the downsides are abundant and the upsides are severely limited.
My ride along the Dunning-Kreuger curve. When I was finishing high school and then going through college, I had a lot of confidence in my intellectual abilities. I learned how to communicate my worldview and way of being quite well, especially in settings where I was seen as a teacher or guide. I felt like I knew a lot and wanted to share it with the world, hence me starting my podcast in 2017 and sharing content on social media. As I aged and started working, I was humbled by the world and some of the feedback I received, both in the workplace and in Brazil while I lived with my wife’s family for several months. I started to doubt how much I really knew and how confident I should be in the beliefs I had established. I questioned myself and what I thought I learned through those years of personal development. I cast doubt upon the value of my perspective, deferring to the opinions of others much more than I had done in previous parts of my life. It was hard to endure and to see myself like that. While the exercise of my humility allowed me to grow my understanding of others and the world, which did in fact deepen my knowledge and perspective, it also came with the price of losing my firm footing in what I truly valued and believed. It took me years to notice and rebuild that firmness, which I continue to work on today. I had to reinvigorate that conviction and strength which I had lost. Even though I know it’s inevitable to be wrong sometimes, we must act to find out. That action often requires us to show up with more confidence and security. I learned that we simply can’t wait for others to have it for us, and if they do, they’re unlikely to take our perspective into account unless we speak up and are strong in the face of uncertainty. Finding that strength and confidence again after having it and losing it has made me value and understand how to use it so much more. They say “you don’t know what you got til it’s gone.” I find that to be incredibly fitting here.
We did not evolve to pursue truth. We evolved to survive and reproduce, which is to avoid an early death that would prevent us from passing our genes along to a new generation. That outcome is a very different one from finding the truth. Unfortunately, the truth isn’t always what increases our likelihood to survive in the here and now and our attractiveness as a partner. Pursuing the truth can lead us to treacherous, risky territory. Our brains are wired to be functional, and what works is often not in line with the truth. We can experience adverse events and develop plenty of irrational fears, leaving us with false beliefs that help us to survive and function through life. Story after story in religious texts and accounts of history involve people believing and doing things that do not align with the truth of how we know the world works. But for some reason, they did them. We are not so different in the present. For those of us who are familiar with the work of Pavlov and Skinner, we are extremely prone to conditioning with repeated exposure to connected inputs and outputs. It is on top of this programming that nearly all of us do superstitious things and believe things about the world that make us feel more comfortable, even if they’re not true. Societies spent millennia making sacrifices of animals and humans to please the gods in order to obtain a good harvest or to prevent the death of a leader. If it seems like it works to us and it provides us with a stimulus that tells us it’s working, then we often have no reason to stop, even if we never pause to test it empirically.
There is value in allowing the mind to wander. In other words, boredom has value. Learning to just let the mind go as you do the basic, monotonous things in life is a fantastic tool. It is so easy now to turn on some music, a podcast, a YouTube video, a reel, or a tiktok video as we do things like eating, washing the dishes, showering, cleaning, exercising, or transporting ourselves from one place to another. We spend very little time observing ourselves and the way our minds work when there’s nothing else to attend to. What do we think about? What are our thought patterns? What bothers us? How do we feel when certain topics cross our minds? Even beyond self-observation, a benefit of just letting the mind wander is that it allows us to make connections that we usually wouldn’t make. Oftentimes, to make sense of a problem or to better understand a situation, we just need to give our subconscious some uninterrupted space to work it out. Lowering the amount of external stimuli we take in creates that space.