Self-Conflict

Address and resolve self-conflict at all costs.

We are hurt when a person spews a mean comment at us. But we are destroyed when we believe and repeat that comment thousands of times to ourselves.

The Limits Of Advice

Don’t ask others what they eat for breakfast or what they do for exercise or what their evening routine is. Figure out what you eat for breakfast, what you do for exercise, and what your evening routine is.

I love listening to advice interviews and enjoy asking people for advice on their routines and systems and life.

But all this advice is only helpful to the extent they help us form our own answers to these questions.

Asking and receiving advice gives us a small dopamine hit. “Wow, maybe I could try that. That’s a great idea.” And we feel good. And that feeling satiates the part of us that wanted to change. We end up staying the same, ignoring the advice.

What I think helps is understanding that we can never become anyone else. The best we can do is to respect the spirit of another. You couldn’t recreate your own life path exactly if you tried, let alone follow exactly in another’s footsteps. In this way, it’s impossible to follow anyone’s advice fully. This tension leads us to ignore advice completely.

We have to make the advice our own. Remix the recipe or exercise regimen, even slightly. It’ll stick more and create personal investment. And in this way we pay respect to those that gave the advice. We all know we can’t be anyone else but ourselves. We will always be more invested in something we create than something someone else created.

We can pay homage to what others do. We can’t copy paste.

Awareness

Becoming fearless requires becoming aware of your own fear.

Becoming calm requires being aware of your anger.

What you resist persists.

You can’t manage what you deny.

Creativity

Learn frameworks, then abandon them.

Embody a structure, then forget it.

Memorize the recipe, then throw it away.

Collect and Store

Information is plentiful. It’s water. But even rain is meaningless if we don’t store it.

Cultivate your storage containers. Memorialize what you learn.

The Endowment Effect

The endowment effect is a powerful cognitive bias that we live with. In short, we overvalue the things we have because we own them.

I can’t give away this sweater because my relative gave it to me. I can’t donate this printer because I bought it on sale. I can’t throw away this mug because I’ve taken it everywhere I’ve moved.

To fight this bias, look at your things through another person’s eyes.

I think about this while at clothing stores. When I enter, I look in the mirror and ask myself: how much would I pay for the clothes I’m wearing right now? If my clothes were taken and hung up in the store, how much would I pay for them?

Depersonalize, step back, and ask yourself how much you really value things.

Yelling

Yelling at a cat has no effect. It really illuminates how absurd it looks to be the yeller.