Idea Generator
Click here to generate insight
- "Raise your trough standards, not your peak standards. The human body experiences pride and comfort at the top of growth. The body experiences anger when it falls below standard and drives you to achieve. This applies to every category in life. Health: you do not allow yourself to go a day without walking or working out. You try to fix behavior - budgeting, cardio… but the reason you got to that bottom red step is your mind’s standards",
- "Let's say that the person you love the most has just been shot. He or she is lying in the street, bleeding and screaming. A guy rushes up and says, 'Step aside.' He looks over your loved one's bullet wound and pulls out a pocket knife -- he's going to operate right there in the street. You ask, 'Are you a doctor?' The guy says, 'No.' You say, 'But you know what you're doing, right? You're an old Army medic, or ...' At this point the guy becomes annoyed. He tells you that he is a nice guy, he is honest, he is always on time. He tells you that he is a great son to his mother and has a rich life full of fulfilling hobbies, and he boasts that he never uses foul language. Confused, you say, 'How does any of that f-ing matter when my beloved is lying here bleeding! I need somebody who knows how to operate on bullet wounds! Can you do that or not?!?' Now the man becomes agitated -- why are you being shallow and selfish? Do you not care about any of his other good qualities? Didn't you just hear him say that he always remembers his girlfriend's birthday? In light of all of the good things he does, does it really matter if he knows how to perform surgery? In that panicked moment, you will take your bloody hands and shake him by the shoulders, screaming, 'Yes, I'm saying that none of that other shit matters, because in this specific situation, I just need somebody who can stop the bleeding, you crazy f-ing asshole.' So here is my terrible truth about the adult world: You are in that very situation every single day. Only you are the confused guy with the pocket knife. All of society is the bleeding gunshot victim. If you want to know why society seems to shun you, or why you seem to get no respect, it's because society is full of people who need things. They need houses built, they need food to eat, they need entertainment, they need fulfilling sexual relationships. You arrived at the scene of that emergency, holding your pocket knife, by virtue of your birth -- the moment you came into the world, you became part of a system designed purely to see to people's needs. For instance, being a good mother is a job that requires a skill. Your 'job' -- the useful thing you do for other people -- is all you are. Remember when Chick-fil-A came out against gay marriage? And how despite the protests, the company continues to sell millions of sandwiches every day? It's not because the country agrees with them; it's because they do their job of making delicious sandwiches well. And that's all that matters. You don't have to like it. People have needs and thus assign value to the people who meet them. What You Produce Does Not Have to Make Money, But It Does Have to Benefit People. The patient is bleeding in the street. Do you know how to operate or not? If all you can do is list a bunch of faults you don't have, then back away from the patient. Children die every day because millions of us tell ourselves that caring is just as good as doing. It's an internal mechanism controlled by the lazy part of your brain to keep you from actually doing work.",
- "Language was only invented in the absence of a thing. When you have water you don’t need the word water. You need the word water to tell people where ‘water’ is when neither of you have it around. This is why language barriers dissolve at the point of having the same thing - you can point left and right and point to water and learnt he words across languages, because you don’t need language when you have the things - language is an absence thing. If you are thinking in words about things, you are definitely missing the thing. Try thinking in images more.",
- “'Spend attention on the story' - Much of life can be described simply: 'the spirit tumbles through chaos. Is this true of some lives, or all? Is this a modern problem, or an eternal human problem? Good questions, but irrelevant to the one who is tumbling. He once grasped at words and descriptions as he plummeted by the sheer cliff face, clawing at rock to arrest his descent. But the rock did not slow him down; it simply set him spinning, and bloodied his hands. So he falls. He turns his tumble into a dive. He counts his blessings. He's not dead yet; perhaps there's time to think and plan. The way ahead is shrouded in mist; perhaps something there will be of use. This scenario is admittedly rather odd and concocted, so he wages war on the narrator. Perhaps he's falling up, not down. Perhaps he's not falling at all.",
- "Modern narcissism - phrase everything with the word ‘You’. Don’t use the words ‘I’ or ‘me’.",
- "Your brain focuses on the novel and important-seeming things, and mostly ignore everything else. Your brain will start clumping entire phases of your life into individual thoughts: 'my childhood,' 'high school,' 'the college years,' 'those years I worked in Des Moines as a fertilizer salesman,' 'my 25 year career as a Middle Manager in Megacorp,' 'my golf-and-TV retirement to a Florida condo.' This explains why we think that time speeds up when we grow older, why childhood summers seem to go on forever, while old age slips by while we’re dozing. The more familiar the world becomes, the less information your brain writes down, and the more quickly time seems to pass. Make life periods feel longer instantly: a) Shop at a different grocery store and get ingredients that you don’t usually get, in order to eat different meals than usual. b) Try breaking your usual morning routine by going out for a short walk before you have your breakfast and sit down for work. c) Find a way to meet a new person every week, or at least every month. People are the most powerful gateway to new memories and a longer, richer life.",
- "Go to a cafe in a busy part of a city and take a seat that gives you a view of people walking past - perhaps a table on the pavement outside. Now observe. What you'll see is hundreds, and, if time permits, thousands, of people, busily walking to their destinations. Rich, poor, old, young, men, women, boys and girls, not where they want to be, trying to get to some place that they do want to be. When they get there they’ll soon want to be somewhere else. You'll see a struggle on most people's faces. And that's life. We're all trying to get somewhere we're not. It’s a struggle, which only ends on the day we die.",
- "The reason you have identity is to get what you want. If you still have that identity, you haven’t gotten what you wanted. Each identity has a finite goal(s). The obvious example here is something like teens engaged in a social status game on (X) where they perform and evaluated an identity. But the aim of the performed identity is just to find a boyfriend/girlfriend. Once that happens, they might suddenly stop caring about the status game, the 'find a boyfriend' identity is now spent and might even be actively harmful. Also, in many cases, the identity is not needed to begin with, it just acts as a confidence booster.",
- "Education teaches you how to go through your comfortable and prosperous adult life without succumbing to the natural default setting that this situation is uniquely about me / of being uniquely alone day in and day out. Learning how to think means learning how to exercise control over what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough of what you choose to pay attention to and choose how you construct meaning from experience. ",
- "The human mind cannot conceive of heaven, only hell. The mind can only imagine pleasure as the absence of pain. Not even religions try to clearly explain heaven without a vague falling-back on words like 'ecstasy' and 'bliss'. But hell has many clear descriptions. Perhaps the most vital bit of writing on this subject is the famous passage in which Tertullian explains that one of the chief joys of Heaven is watching the tortures of the damned.",
- "The serum for full energy: 1) bring yourself back to the locus of control. Be at the cause. You can’t choose what happens but how you respond. 2) I just asked myself as a part of my daily ritual - is there a feeling here that wants to be felt? Suppressing feelings is like holding down a beach ball - 1 for sadness, 1 for rage, etc. - it requires a lot of energy to suppress feelings. 3) Be more authentic. Say what you want. Ask: how revealed are you? 4) Be impeccable with your agreements. If you say you will be there at the top of the hour be there.",
- "We're all middle class. That sucks. We should be wealthy. But to be wealthy, we need to NOT BE JOKERS. What's a joker? A joker is someone who says they're going to do something, and then doesn't. A joker always has excuses. 'Oh well, I tried...' -> No, I don't give a fuck that you tried. Did you do it or not? DID YOU DO WHAT YOU SAID YOU'D DO OR NOT? If not, you're a fucking joker and we've got problems. 'We will find a way. Or make one."'-Hannibal Barca, 247 BC - 182 BC. Look. When shit doesn't get done, there's always a good reason. Yeah, you've got your job. Or you've got to go some class. Or the server crashed. Or whatever the fuck. I don't care. I mean, I do care. But it's irrelevant. You need to get your part done. FIND A WAY. OR MAKE ONE. If you don't have adequate resources, you come to me. I supply you with resources. That's my job. I picked you guys carefully and gave you only things that fit your skills, but if you're missing a skill, talk to me and I can find it. I can find god damn near anything for you, do anything for you, AS LONG AS YOU'RE NOT A JOKER. And that means you need to FIND A WAY OR MAKE ONE. You guys are pros. I trust you. You can ask me for feedback or help if you're not sure, and I'll respond very fast. But stop asking me to make stupid nitpicky decisions for you. Pick whatever email/newsletter program, buy it. Don't even ask me, just tell me what you did. Don't try to do something weird or crazy or perfect or different from what we need until what we need is done. Examples -"I then BEGGED him to stay late, and told him that I'D BE A JOKER IF I DIDN'T GET WHAT I PROMISED TO MY STAFF ON MONDAY." You and I both live in a world where most people we interact with are fucking jokers. Thus, it seems socially acceptable to be a joker. But it's not. With me, FIND A WAY OR MAKE ONE. And if you can't, TELL ME IMMEDIATELY AND WE'LL DO IT TOGETHER.",
- "Chardin (at the Louvre) wasn’t concerned with plump aristocrats hobnobbing in palaces or impressionistic water lilies. He painted ordinary things and ordinary lives: bowls of fruits, empty jugs, gutted fish, bread loaves, and knives lying about. Even when he painted people, the subjects were never doing anything heroic: one boy was making a house of cards, a maid was scrubbing dishes in a barrel, and a schoolmistress was underlining bits of homework for a young student. This is what Proust tried to show the young man, so that when he returned to his parents’ house, he would no longer feel left out of the glitzy world of bankers and aristocrats. He wanted the young man to realize for himself that what he called mediocrity could also be depicted with opulence and that his taste should not be so single-mindedly defined by silver candelabras with crystal droplets. When you walk around a kitchen, you will say to yourself, this is interesting, this is grand, this is beautiful like a Chardin. Are you missing out or are you just generally unhappy with yourself? You will fix your attention on the littered streets of Paris instead of its charming bakeries, the biting wind of Hafnarfjörður instead of its mossy flora, and the cacophony of Chennai instead of the colors of its spice market. You are never missing out if you fully appreciate where you are now. Gratitude is easier said than done, because, in practice, being grateful requires you to control your appetite for more. But, once you find gratitude, whatever you have will turn into enough. If you slow down and open your eyes to the extraordinariness right in front of you, you will rejoice in where you are right now. You’ll find the seeds in a raspberry, the smell of a new shampoo, and the foam on top of a cappuccino to be that much more delightful. You can always live inside a Chardin, it only costs attention.",
- "Addiction comes from pain. It’s a temporary way to escape from pain. This is why people have eating disorders go back - the pain is still there. The greatest pain is the disconnection from ourselves. When the environment doesn’t accept you, you have to disconnect and create a a persona that’s acceptable. Stress means a lack of awareness of your own needs. Recognize your needs - carrying too much burden for others and start to take care of yourself. Healing means becoming whole. Be. Recover the connection to yourself. Find yourself. Heal your agency.",
- "He returns to the scene of the crime because the memory of it is traumatic; it is unresolved. At some level, it is an attempt to 'resolve' it — to time-travel back to that moment of helplessness and understand it. It becomes a behavioral loop because, once he 'gets there' so to speak, he is once again, completely obliterated from having had 20 beers. He has created a destructive behavioral coping mechanism for his traumatic incident, by focusing on the experience of helplessness. If instead, he had focused on his experience of overcoming helplessness, of the experience of washing his hands, and ritually recreated that moment, by, say, for example, the experience of lifting weights to-and-through failure, he would have created a constructive coping mechanism.",
- "If you've been through heavy depression, trauma, or struggle and made it out to the other side still alive then you are the most attractive you can be to others because their minds are their greatest enemy. An ability to relax hyperactive minds is prized. These people are some of the only ones who can teach others how to cope/live with the darkness of the mind.",
- "Me Me Me Me Me. No. You have to be ok, then choose to give. You have to choose to make life about others and giving. It’s not about you. You’re 10. You’re 1:1. You have to be comfortable setting boundaries and both giving and receiving freely.",
- "The better you are at speculating, the more money you'll make. That money was hard-earned by each of the people with whom you traded. You begin to wonder if you should feel guilty taking all this money from the poor Congolese — who are now (you must conclude) even poorer as a result. Suppose a genie offers to tweak the world in one of two ways. Either he will (A) double everyone's bank account, or (B) double the amount of food in existence. Which is better for society? Clearly the answer is B, doubling the food. Option A (doubling the money) merely creates more placeholders, more tokens — while option B creates more objects of intrinsic value. The pile of francs sitting in your living room don't represent value you've extracted from the Congolese economy. Just the opposite: they represent value you've delivered to it, through your window. We respect the wealthy in spite of the money they've earned. The money itself still feels dirty to us, like some kind of toxic byproduct of the value-creating process. Maybe that's because it is toxic. Imagine if, after years of speculating in the Congolese grain market and accumulating millions of francs, you decide to cash out with one final act of buying a yacht through your window (then nailing it shut). It is an incredibly selfish act that almost perfectly cancels out all the good you did through speculation. The yacht is made of wood, metal, and plastic. Building it requires many thousands of hours of effort. Workers have to find the trees, cut them down, haul the lumber across vast distances, cut it, sand it, polish it, paint it, etc., etc., etc. If you weren't commissioning the yacht, all of those materials and man-hours could be put to other, better uses. For all the good it does the Congolese people, you may as well pay them to build the yacht, then burn it before their eyes. Taking it through the window, into your own possession and for your own consumption, has the same effect. The point is, money spent on consumption is toxic — value-destroying. This is true even in our daily lives when we spend money on a yacht or an iPhone or a nice jacket or even food, we're taking something of value from society and using it for our own purposes.",
- "The public sphere is a complex operation, based on recognition of Death, and danger. An Adult lives in a dangerous world where death reigns and must, in turn, become dangerous. Most people avoid the public sphere because objectifying yourself to yourself is always inherently humiliating and painful. No matter how heartfelt your 'expression,' it always becomes reduced to an 'act' once you are on-stage. You cannot be fully human on stage, not in the way you want to, at least. Regardless of the content of your expression, expressing it publicly is inherently humiliating, because it is objectifying yourself. Humiliating is judgement. Objectifying yourself in the public sphere is becoming less about me 'feeling like I expressed myself' and more about 'making people laugh/learn/get something out of it.' You can’t be taken seriously in the public sphere, just do something for the audience. All genuine social connection, genuine interaction, requires 'offense' on a mechanical level. As described earlier, self-objectification is inherently humiliating. It just is, and them's the breaks. If you want connection with other people, the price of admission, is literally getting over yourself. All human connection, all language, all contact between selves/minds/souls, all satedness to the prime human lacking, of loneliness, at the atomic level, is based on the irrational choice to lower your guard towards something you recognize as a danger: another mind, another soul. To something that could be a negative yet may be a net positive. I show you my open hand, allowing you to hurt me. You do the same, allowing me the chance to hurt you. By mutually engaging in this mirrored madness together, we establish a mutual understanding of each other, and the beginning of trust. And in so doing, we perform a miracle: something that breaks the laws of nature.",
- "It’s a maddening little game that’s being played by virtually every bit of media you consume. It’s all about manipulating perception of social status to get you to do (or buy, or believe) something, and it’s a big reason why the modern world is making you miserable… The goal of Instagram was to inspire envy in others. 'Look at what I have, and how much better it is than what you have. I get to eat this, you don’t.' You’re doing it because something about the activity makes you feel better about yourself, but the actual feel-better mechanism is you boosting your social status (fancy meals are the oldest status signifier) and the easiest way to measure status is in envy, as in, the amount of envy it creates in others. It can hollow you out, until you wind up in a twisted place where what you value in life is based entirely on what strangers envy. Are you upset that your partner/friend/family member took a low-status job, or voiced an unpopular opinion online or (gasp!) gained weight? If so, are you really just worried about how being with them makes you look to the crowd? There’s one sure-fire way to make everyone feel good, but uniting them under the umbrella of national pride: You simply need a new Cold War.",
- "How about, you don’t believe in death. How about, “death” doesn’t make sense to you, so the concept of being alive doesn’t make sense to you",
- 'There are two types of friends. You have many people in your life who will ask 'oh what’s going on” and “what’s new' — you will have to get them up to speed on your life first. You have another type of person who is already connected. You can have many friends but not have people in your life who are totally connected. Stay connected to your family and close friends. You want the feeling 'I was in the middle of my sentence with them' you can call and pick up with whatever topic, you’re on the same page.",
- "See that your kid is sitting on a bench. It might be the bench of disappointment. Our instinct is to a) deny that the bench exists 'don’t be so disappointed, it’s not a big deal,' or b) call them over to another bench like 'look you were the only one to make the varsity team.' Kids learn how to process emotions through their relationship with us and will learn that this emotion is not good. The better approach: 'I am so glad you’re talking to me about this' We’re here. What can we do next? - you say the part of you that’s feeling me this way is connectable to me. I will to attach to this part of you.",
- "Remove yourself from management - I used to do this when I was training my team to operate without me. When they would come in to ask a question about how to do something that they should know how to do.... I would stare at them for a second...then slowly slide out of my chair and gently fall to the ground. We are going for something they will remember. Once on the ground...pause for 30 seconds. Then say 'I'm dead. What would you do if you had to solve this yourself. Think about that and come back in 30 minutes when you have the answer.' You'll only have to do it once or twice before all of your leaders get the idea. Then you'll find out who can really solve problems.",
- "As long as it’s something that puts you above them, you have to question it.",
- "Will my decisions today take me where I want to go in 6 years? (Apple habit vs Hershey habit for midnight snack). Even if it doesn’t ruin you today, or you can take a hit today - you must look down the road. Errors in judgment accumulate to disaster - doesn’t matter if it’s your health or your bank account. Pay attention. Do not commit errors because disaster doesn’t fall on you today - you must be brighter than that. A few errors in judgment repeated every day for 6 years will lead you to ruin. A few simple disciplines practiced every day will lead you to heaven. Eat an apple, walk around the block, read a book, invest your money, take a class to improve or learn new skills. Opportunity mixed with difficulty is never going to change. Every year. Where you can, leave a profit. Turn off the lights when you leave the hotel. Become profitable. Touch something and leave it better than you found it. Have the right attitude. Love to pay your bills - 'with great delight I send you this $100!' Reduce your liabilities and increase your services received. Everyone has to pay, be happy when you do.",
- "The power to be a master seducer comes from his ability to BE seduced. Seduced by great food, art, beauty and romance. Be sensitive to pleasure.",
- "The best way to get to the root of all this spending is to realize what we are all really trying to buy. In fact, it is the reason for every single action we take in our lives. It’s happiness. When we buy anything beyond the most basic ingredients for life, we are just buying feelings. If this sounds like a stretch, consider the counterpoint: Let’s say that the mansion on the golf course did indeed have more room for family and friends, and it even impressed others. But it made you feel like a horribly wasteful idiot every time you looked around at all the empty rooms, and the worries kept you up at night. Imagine that its very presence in your life was a constant drain on your happiness. Would you still make the purchase? Of course not! And indeed, this is exactly the feeling I happen to have about giant luxury houses, which is why we’re moving to a place that is 1000 square feet smaller next month now, despite an increasing level of wealth. Better feelings. Two different people can have opposite feelings about exactly the same situation. And in fact, one person can completely reverse his or her own feelings about exactly the same situation in a surprisingly short time. If we are really just buying feelings, who has the best ones on sale at the lowest price? Different people approach this problem with different levels of sophistication.",
Respect is something you want to give not seek. If you’re missing it it’s time to give more. Whatever you feel like you lack in the moment, that’s a signal it’s time to give that back to someone else.
Foreboding boredom (not talking about pleasant idleness here) is the quiet horror of knowing you have burnt the part of yourself that desires. The problem isn't that there's "nothing to do", the problem is typically that you don't want to do anything, and additionally you don't want to admit this to yourself. It's self-resentment. Boredom is the face-saving cover story to avoid admitting anger, sadness, disappointment, etc - all of which can imply weakness, failure. You're unlikely to solve these problems by anxiously ruminating on your problems. You have to continually return to what you love, what you think is beautiful and good.
The unwanted feelings don't make sense coming from someone like you, so you conclude they must be coming from the other person. A guy feels lazy impulses and can't "handle it" but he doesn't get rid of them by putting them onto someone else, he confuses them as coming from someone else. He smells laziness, "Where is it coming from? Me? Impossible! Jesus washed my feet. Must be that guy." Projection is the most primitive of defenses, circa age 2: one's perception of the world is inextricably, concretely the result of one's inner states.
Stress is always a feeling that means “I’m going to die”. If this doesn’t go well, I have to fire someone, and then I’m going to die…. Say it, see it
There’s a reason all relationships have huge problems at the 25 year mark. At this point you both have two different world views, fed through the pipeline of act -> success/failure -> categorize into a worldview. You must be hungry to find that area where you say “I can’t argue from the area of I’m right you’re wrong. We both must argue from a place of “I believe I’m right. I feel right. Getting my solution my way will yield what I want. And the same is true for you””. This is how you could see the other as crazy “how could you live life like that!?”. You must be willing to say that you are looking through a distorted mirror (and they are too) and it will make you think eachother is crazy. You must be willing to compromise. There will be consequences to that compromise. You have to value the marriage above those consequences.
Reverse somaticization. If you or someone you know is experiencing apparently causeless mental distress, you should consider that there might be a simple physical cause. Do the dance! I’lI feel lonely. If I eat fatty red meat, take vitamin B, or get a massage, then I typically feel better almost immediately.
Relationships are hard, and to work they need a sort of functional "economy" (gratitude, laughter, kindness) and waste elimination system (pain, resentment). Relationships typically fail either because the economy died (no happiness) or the trash pileup in the street made it inhabitable (too miserable to function). Both have symptoms & warning signs you can look out for. (My wife notices these YEARS before I do; it's insane
Honey I’m home energy - walk in the door, arms open - “honey, IM HOME” a big ball of energy from the first 45 seconds. Do this before every door
If I say to you, “Shane, I think you have an orange Mohawk on your head." That’s not really going to impact you, because you don’t have a matching belief. If I say “you could be a more effective father and I think you should do….” you might have a matching belief and hurt yourself with that. Feeling response and beliefs are within our internal locus of control.
Huberman’s experiment showed that the most pleasurable feeling is confronting a challenge without a threat.
Stories are about intention and obstacle. I want to be with my family. Some obstacles. I want something, something in my way, escalate, escalate. Stakes. You have to make it seem important to you, like the most important thing in the world.
“My life is limited by my imagination” - not money, etc.
Hm: it's like a playground with a bunch of kids kicking a ball around, but it's next to a road and so they can't really play that freely but then you put up a chain link fence and now you can really boot the ball as hard as you want, you can run as fast you want because there's a boundary there that you know that you're safe. So it's really all comes down to safety.
Arnold: I wasn’t there to compete. I was there to win.
Desire is a contract we make with ourself to be unhappy until we get what we want. Be very careful about having a desire. If you do, don’t have more than one at a time.
All suffering is showing you where your mind is still clinging. When you want to be high, then everything that brings you down becomes a nuisance. If you want to be free, everything that drags you down is an opportunity to be free. That is where you are bringable downable and a step to free.
You don’t know what you want because you have it already
"Resistance as an emotion. Resistance is the emotion you experience when you want the experience to be different from what’s in front of you. I've found the best approach is to let go and relax into it",
You never step in the same room twice. You’re a different man and it’s a different room. Thinking about my bedroom. Every day. Different. Change is the way of the world.
The key to pushing past 38 miles to 100+ - Don’t give your pain a voice. Don’t say “I’m tired”. Only “I’m outstanding” “I don’t ever get tired”
"The problem here is self-esteem debt. Someone is borrowing against their future accomplishments to feel good about themselves today, hoping they'll be able to pay it back. John's 26, at that age some self-esteem debt is reasonable as long as you use it to hustle. But what happens if you overspend now and can't pay it back by the time you're 40? Time to buy a product to make you feel better rather than real accomplishments.",
Ask abyss questions regularly: If you had to leave your job today, what would you do instead? If you have a partner, what's the best argument in favor of breaking up with them? What are you avoiding because it conflicts with some part of your identity / self-image? What do you avoid learning to do well so you won’t be asked to do it?
The new narcissism is an inability to appreciate that other people exist, and have thoughts, feelings, and actions unrelated to the narcissist. All thoughts are linked to the narcissist: “I'm going to get some gas-- because that jerk never fills the car." The narcissist believes he is the main character in his own movie and everyone else is an accessory. A narcissist looks the same every day; he has a "look" with a defining characteristic: a certain haircut or bracelet. How can a man who thinks "my wife is way smarter than me!" or the woman who thinks, "I know I'm not a model, but I'm an attractive, intelligent, independent woman" -- how can they all be narcissists? I. I. I. Me. I. Me. I. I. I. I. Me. Me. Me. Enough, we get it, we all know who you are. It's why happiness always seems out of reach, why love seems elusive or complicated. And sometimes why other people get hurt. The essence, the defining characteristic of narcissism is the isolated worldview, the one in which everyone else is not fully real, only part a person, and only the part the impacts you. This is an indictment of all of you who want it to be true that something is destroying your lives but that something cannot possibly be yourself.
"When I lived in Los Angeles, I noticed they have a strange speaking pattern. Everyone speaks in future tense! 'This guy from EMI is interested and going to be presenting it to the VP.' 'We're going to do a pilot for the fall.' 'I'm getting ready to work on some new material with a hit writer.' These are the things some people have to tell themselves to be hopeful when facing another day of challenges. But of course these future things rarely end up happening. I felt like wearing a shirt that says, 'TELL ME WHEN IT HAPPENS.' So now when I hear a future-tense sentence, my ears shut down. I'll wish them well, but I don't believe a word. Try noticing this in yourself and others for a week. Are you speaking more in future tense or present tense? Are they? Are you using the word 'should'? Announcing your plans makes them less likely to happen.",
If you have a “that’s not what this is really about argument” (ex. Arguing over a cup of tea, dishes, etc.) - you need to speak in insecurity statements immediately. Tom said “I’m afraid that I will never make good in my promise to make you rich. If I take a day off is terrifying. The only way I can justify if is to be at the check-in counter immediately instead of sitting for tea” Lisa said “I’m afraid I’m losing you to work. We never spend quality time together and this tea means the world to me”
There are three types of people in the world: 1) people who are, for whatever reason, down bad for you. 2) People who kind of like you and if you do all the work are along for the ride. 3) The rest of the world, i.e. people who don’t like you. Given that you’ve gone on a few dates and have gotten know each other (most people aren’t down bad for anyone in the very beginning), DO NOT spend time trying to change a Type 2 into a Type 1. It doesn’t work and it’s a very bad use of your time.
"'What's good man, appreciate the message. Our programs range from $2k - $10k, depending on your current situation. Cool if I ask you 2 questions to give you a better answer?'",
The minute you think you’re somebody it gets really stifling. You know how hard it is to keep your 'somebody' going all the time? Don’t you get bored with yourself? Do you have to be you forever? No, you just thought you did.
Dogs rewarded outside of 1 minute did not learn. And, the longer the space between the reward, the longer it took the dogs to learn. Gym reception smiles and says hi as soon as you walk in - less space between action and reward creates better conditioning. To fixed reinforcement, Skinner added variable reinforcement: the same but with a random factor built in. Instead of giving a reward once an hour, the pigeon may get a reward in a randomly chosen time between 30 and 90 minutes. Or instead of giving a reward every hundred presses, it might take somewhere between 50 and 150. Put a pigeon in a box with a variable ratio schedule (per presses) and you get "pure evil". The pigeon will become obsessed with pecking as much as possible, and really you can stop giving rewards at all after a while and the pigeon will never wise up. All reinforcement is positive reinforcement. Think about “where is the value for the dog right now”. If you have an unwanted behavior (say, pulling on a leash), be really clear about what you want and what you’ve got. What’s between there is a reinforcement using what they want. Steak for a site hound - as soon as they stop baring on the leash and making noose you open the hand. They will jump and strain. Close hand. Repeat until they have the appropriate behavior to open the hand. And then they sit there and wait. Then you let them eat. Turn your back if you need negative reinforcement.
We spend most of our waking lives dreaming. We think we are awake, but we are walking around talking to ourselves - talking in your head all the time is a state of dreaming. All that I hope is that 5-10-15% of the time I will catch myself dreaming, realize that it was some form of fear, then I will say to myself “wake up”. I wake up and observe the present surroundings, and everything is fine.
I never realized the degree to which not being able to afford certain things was what was making me want them. That childhood excitement of saving up your money to buy some coveted thing is completely gone. And without it you find you covet the thing far less. When you realize you can bring it home from the store whenever you want, you're often surprised to find yourself thinking "let them keep it there for now." Curiously, this affects people in different ways. When the excitement of e.g. buying a fancy car is diminished by 10x, some people respond by buying 10 fancy cars, and others just lose interest. I turned out to be in the latter group. When you're a poor student, you undoubtedly covet the nice gear - if you're into computer games, you want the newest rig. If you're into cooking, you want some Le Creuset cast iron or some copper pots. But interestingly, once you start making even semi-decent money (say, $75,000) you could easily afford these things. And yet, most people no longer covet them when they reach that level. They may make a few initial purchases, but they soon realize that, because they can buy a $2,000 lens or a $500 french oven without much thought or planning, the shine is gone. Instead, they shift their sights to the $200,000 Porsche or the $2,000,000 home.
When I was young, I used to see pristine homes and outfits as a sign of success. Now I see it as a sign of deep anxiety, a sign that someone is trapped feeding The Void That Eats All Energy. It's amazing what happens when you change your mindset from: "I need to repair everything that's decaying" to "I need to create value faster than things decay". The great trap for conscientious people (like me), is that we think we can start creating new value once we catch up with maintenance on all the things decaying. The problem is, this is impossible. Repairing decay can absorb every ounce of your time until you die, and you still will not win. Your house will ultimately collapse eventually. But, creating value faster than things decay is super easy.
What boring but better looks like: Split testing landing pages, not once, but weekly. Split testing emails, not once, but weekly. Making new ads/creative, not when you have to, out before you need them. Role playing with the sales team, not once, but daily. Role playing customer success. Taking ten more interviews for the same role. Taking more time to make your lead magnet better. Make your offer better and better.
Idea of Micromorts to think about risks related to decisions related to your body: A micromort is a unit of risk defined as a one-in-a-million chance of death. Benchmark all cause mortality living in the US puts you at 22 micromorts per day, 8,000 per year. Mountaineering is not the move. Trying to climb the Matterhorn adds 2840 per attempt. A season’s worth of risk in a few days…Traveling 17 miles (27 km) by walking (collision) adds 1 micromort.
'how to spice up your relationship' - people think it's about lingerie but it's really about exposing vulnerable bits of your psychology to one another. You can love someone for decades and marry them and still have blind spots. Intimacy is the answer.
"If we hate doing something, we think of it as hard. We picture it having many annoying steps. If we love doing something, it seems simple. We think of it as one fun step. If you ask someone who hates running how to do it, they'll say, 'Ugh... First you put on running clothes. Then you have to stretch. Then you put on your shoes. Then you go outside. Then you get all sweaty. Then you have to cool down. Then you have to shower. Then you have to change. Who has the time?' If you ask someone who loves running how to do it, they'll say, 'Easy! You just put on your shoes and go!' Once you realize this difference, it's helpful to notice how you think of a project. Even if you say you want to do something, if you catch yourself thinking of it in many tedious steps, maybe you don't really want to do it. Why would you? It sounds awful. Also, I wasn't exercising enough. My coach suggested I change 'and' to 'or'. When it's a nice day, or I've finished my work, or I haven't just eaten, or I'm feeling energetic. Now I exercise quite often. Do you have a list of conditions you need to have met before you do something? Try changing 'and' to 'or.'",
If you are arguing whether or not certain women should be in beauty ads, the important part is that whatever your answer, it is founded on the assumption that ads have the authority to set standards. Which is why, in your broken brain, the reflex is to complain about the contents of the ad, not assert the insignificance of ads. The long con worked. The important point is not that you believe this [the media has the power to decide what’s desirable] to be true, the point is that you want this to be true. You want it to be true that advertising sets the standard of beauty because in the insane calculus of your psychology you have a better chance of changing Dove than you have of changing yourself, turns out that's true as well. Ads let you complain that they are telling you what to want, as long as you let them tell you how to want.
A simple trick to look more youthful is to fully open your eyes, let the light/pupils dilate! This act also seems to push your facial muscles upwards.
The top streamer left Twitch (microsoft took him overnight). I thought, “that’s probably the A+ problem right now. I dropped everything I was doing and started working on that. Nobody even told me what to work on, but I wrote a memo, i said it looks like he left, did some data analysis on how big of a problem that is, how little of a problem that is, here’s my strategy recommendation of what we should do. And I sent it to the CEO. I was added to the strike team working on that
Make a list of skills and knowledge you want to accumulate in the next two years. Ask your boss which ones she can help with. Then ask which projects or teams can help you acquire the skills that your boss can't help with. Even office politics isn't about jockeying for power, it's about hobnobbing for projects--getting the best opportunities to learn and grow--the best projects, training, and assignments to build skills and market value.
In marriage, you’re both going to think that you’re doing 70% of the work and you’re both wrong. Just be aware of how much the other person is doing and you’re taking for granted.
Mirror metrics - don’t just ask for a lower fraud rate or your risk team will decimate your customer satisfactions score (making everyone submit supplemental info, call in, etc.). Measure false positive rate at the same time as fraud rate to force the team to innovate (how many people did we get who were not committing fraud). Create a measure and the opposite measure and track both (recruiters not just hiring, but low # of bad first performance review hires, etc.)
Never attack your market universally. Segment it! You can never get "Most People's attention at random. But you can get a very specific person's attention if you have a very specific solution to his very specific problem.
The real players speak in contracts. Ownerships. Always have your lawyers write up the contract. It’s like having the serve in tennis. It’s a big edge!
Real PMF from founder: there was an FBI investigation into the company and the growth rate increased. There was a news story that someone was selling nazi gear on the site and the growth rate increased.
Not finishing / being “working on a startup” means anything can still happen, your identity remains intact: "I'm a writer." More concretely, they are a form of self doubt not about the success of executing the act which is in your control-- the writing of the book, the asking the girl out-- but of being able to manage the consequences which are not in your control-- the publishing of the novel, sustaining a relationship.
"Fish don't know they're in water. If you tried to explain it, they'd say, 'Water? What's water?' They're so surrounded by it that it's impossible to see. They can't see it until they jump outside of it. This is how I feel about culture. We're so surrounded by it that it's impossible to see. Many things we think are true are really just our local culture. We can't see it until we get outside of it. All of my Singaporean friends live with their parents. Even pretty successful ones, even married ones, even up to age thirty-five, live in their parents homes. When I told a friend that I left home at seventeen, she was horrified. She said, 'Isn't that insulting to your parents? Weren't they devastated?' My culture isn't in the center. It's off on the edge, like one petal in a flower, like they all are. Not right or wrong - just one of many options. So I'm just a fish who didn't know he was in water. And in some aspect of your life, you probably are, too.",
“If you only wished to be happy, this could be easily accomplished; but we wish to be happier than other people, and this is always difficult, for we believe others to be happier than they are.” - Montesquieu
- “Frightened of change? But what can exist without it? What’s closer to nature’s heart? Can you take a hot bath and leave the firewood as it was? Eat food without transforming it? Can any vital process take place without something being changed? Can’t you see? It’s just the same with you – and just as vital to nature.”
- Human beings only do something sincerely when there is no other choice. Be present -> fully in pain -> do.
- Wasted OS / stuck in your head: How to control, how to get approval, want to be safe
- I’m you. Realize it’s all one thing - you start to have compassion. You’ll see it’s the universe being this or that… We’re all going to take our masks off and go backstage.
- A little shock in the right places in the brain can convince anybody of nearly anything. We use the feeling of “knowing” to guide us because we have little else to – but it’s easy to forget that at no point do we actually hold any truth, nor can we ever. Getting caught up in the idea that we could ever know what’s going on in any sense is what gives Crazybrain such power.
- Pleasure is tension reduction.
- Let it land
- "Independent mindedness is mostly by nature - thinking original thoughts / against the grain. It's enough to have one or two independent-minded people you can talk to regularly. Once you find them, they're usually as eager to talk as you are; they need you too. Characteristics: imagination, not taking things as true just because others are saying them, critical thinking not just about belief (true/false) but degree of belief (very likely to be true / partially true), curiosity.",
Stimulus-response. You can’t control the stimulus, you can control the response. Nobody yells at a rock - Epictetus. People will leave you alone.
"Quitting smoking. Losing weight. Starting a business. Getting a date. For anything you want to do, finding out how is easy. Do the research and make it happen or so any book would have you believe. Yet every day, you smoke, gain weight, and stay at your old job. Every day, you do the exact opposite of what you plan to do. Why? This is the Information Age. The steps to achieving any goal are easy to search for, come up with, write down on a napkin, and follow. But you're still not doing it. Part of the movie is missing. It's behind every unhappy marriage, every hidden vice, and every unfulfilled life. Behind the flinch is pain avoidance, and dealing with pain demands strength you may not think you have.",
A turning point in every relationship is the context switch. If you go to a run club each week—but the only time you see the people there is during your run—you will not become friends. Until you change the context, the relationship is stuck. As children it was natural - hang at their house, at soccer, at school, get lunch. Recreating this is the skeleton key.
Take it in, mindfulness when you eat. I am eating a chicken, I am taking it in. Take it in, I am eating a carrot. From there, compassion and aspiration to serve, as human beings on earth. Otherwise we exploit, we destroy, we only think about ourselves as human beings trying to survive. The snake has to eat the frog, or there is no life.
Out of love not fear. I fear my kid will not be successful vs. I would love to give them opportunities
Take a breath, and think “I am home :)” - Home in my beautiful body. Notice the brilliant wonder of your body. And if you have any emotions that pop up, recognize them, you might have to deal with them. If your mind is restless, what have you been thinking about? If you body feels weak, what have you been eating? Diagnose by drawing connections between your end state (currently) and various inputs.
If someone offers you love, and later, decides that they will no longer offer it to you, be grateful rather than bitter. If someone offers you the most delicious glass of lemonade, are you going to become bitter and angry once the glass is gone, and there's no lemonade left in the pitcher?
We will lose everything we love along the way - Buddhist certainty. Don’t be surprised or horrified by it, and don’t avoid thinking about it. See that you have a choice not to suffer, turn towards equanimity and loving kindness. Don’t fear. If someone calls and says they have bad news, they are wrong. It’s not news at all, illness is a fact of life and nature. Don’t identify with the body, it’s the nature of the body to get ill.
“how can I enjoy this 10% more”. Every time I ask this, my whole body relaxes instantly – which feels amazing. I started applying this to other areas of my life.
Everything is empty. In every box, there is emptiness. Every door leads nowhere. The biggest unlock after you’ve seen 100 boxes come up empty is to let go of the belief that “well, it could be #101 that has it”.
People who are truly abundant have no problem losing things.
I don’t need anything, this is just a victory lap. I’ve already won.
A life unexamined life is not worth living. Anxiety comes from unexamined life. Its your unexamined life that’s causing all your problems - running loops, why are you having these thoughts, crazy roommate inside of your mind, quality of your thoughts determine the world you live in. Sit by yourself doing nothing, then you will know what the quality of your life is. Proper examination should ruin the life that you live in - it should cause you to leave relationships, it should cause you to reestablish boundaries with colleagues/family members, quit your job, change your eating patterns, cause you to spend more time with yourself
Intimacy is all about acceptance. If you cannot accept yourself for who you are then you can not accept your partner, it's a paradox of life.
You know what it’s like to want to be seen by others. You can be the person to others that Crazybrain says doesn’t exist to you. And so, when Crazybrain opens its eyes and starts whispering powerful sanities in that little room, turn it against itself. Yes – you are insecure, and longing – but so is everyone else. “Nobody likes you,” says Crazybrain. “You whisper this in the ear of humanity.”, you say. “You drive everyone to their knees – and I know you’re wrong for them, because I know I can love them. And I will love them.”
Life or death want is diametrically opposite to steps. Seriousness gets you there. Those who ask how are not serious
- "Crazy big idea - If you have to like something to do it well, then the most successful people will all like what they do. That's where the upper-middle class tradition comes from. Just as houses all over America are full of chairs that are, without the owners even knowing it, nth-degree imitations of chairs designed 250 years ago for French kings, conventional attitudes about work are, without the owners even knowing it, nth-degree imitations of the attitudes of people who've done great things.",
Eat seasonal
Most people are deflectors. They focus on their friends problems and their own future problems. This lets the human feel good about solving a problem, while avoiding their own problems. Fascinating.
Understand social hierarchy, raise everyone's value. Those with the highest value in the hierarchy are cooperative and gain value by making other people feel better about themselves and more valuable. They try to make people feel good, appreciate them and say good things about them and focus on bringing up positive aspects of others.
If you’re angry, do not let it out. Anger is a signal that you do not understand, you do not love. The emotion comes from within, we if we let it out we are not dealing with it within. If a boy calls you words, do not hit him out of anger. Understand that he is having a bad day, react with loving tenderness and a smile, love him because he needs it most.
Civilization advances to the rate at which it doesn’t have to think about operations (e.g., travel prevalence today vs. 1800s thanks to expedia. Even in the future, the oahu spreadsheet could autogenerate and more people would travel…)
There are no strangers just friends we haven’t met
How news makes something more interesting: 1) Make it more odd or unusual or bizarre. 2) Make something more local to people. 3) Make something more recent
The most important words in the Old Testament- “as you Think, so shall you Be”
Getting a sponsor - you go back to your mentors after they give you advice. “here’s what you said, here’s what I did, and here’s what happened” - it’s a great way to take that relationship to the next level and say they you deserve their time and influence.
Love is a verb. Unbeknown to each other, on the day before Christmas, she cut off her hair and sells it to a wig maker to get the money to buy the chain fob, while he goes and sells his watch to buy her the combs for her long, beautiful hair. "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country." JFK was talking about love. Loving your country.
Often what gets in the way of feeling emotions clearly is a rapid-fire series of thoughts about the emotion. One way to address this is to use the thoughts themselves to hone in on the emotion. Literally say to the anxiety: you are welcome here. Or say to it: thank you for trying to keep me safe. And direct attention back to the feeling itself.
Brand matters a lot in the marketplace. And the way that you build brand is, you make promises, then you keep them (and you deliver above those promises).
Why have mood at all? Sometimes there are good days to do things and sometimes there are bad days to do things. Interesting evolution lens.
In 20 years when you’re getting 9 hours of sleep, the house is quiet, everything in its place, you’re going to refer to this messiness as “the good old days”. This brings you back to the present and you enjoy it.
The best way to explain things is the then-but-therefore. Use conflict. “You’d think the best way to do X is by ….. But this happens. Therefore, you do….”
Building a diagnostic tool can increase sales dramatically. Helping users find out they have a problem (that you have a solution to) is immensely powerful for lead generation. A website grader gave people a 23/100, pointed them to hubspot or blog posts/“watch these videos”. An assessment can help people understand where they are and what the next steps are, especially if you are the next steps. Pro tip: relative scores are helpful. 87% of the 100,000 websites grades makes a huge difference for people (bottom 10% vx. 1/10….). Pro tip 2: collecting emails for more value or for the test are valuable.
I wanted more machine capacity. Every time I had to tell some scientist in some other area, "No I can't; I haven't the machine capacity," he complained. I started saying: "Go tell your Vice President that Hamming needs more computing capacity." After a while I could see what was happening up there at the top; many people said to my Vice President, "Your man needs more computing capacity." I got it!
The husband 'obviously' must work. For many jobs this includes working a large number of hours, enduring a long commute, and traveling one week per month. The fact that this is all "necessary" might give cover to a man who really prefers to spend a great deal of time away from home, but can tell his family that he would certainly want to spend far more time with them if only he had financial independence. Most people will gradually increase their standard of living as their income rises and this hedonic treadmill will always keep financial independence on the horizon. But a sudden step-change in wealth does force a reckoning because, at least for the moment, one’s lifestyle has not had a chance to consume all of that incremental wealth. Wealth puts a spotlight on allocation of time.
Love everything that happens (Amor fati).
You seem like you’re always home. Home = familiar. You’re never out of place or uncomfortable.
"Chefs improve rapidly through a loop of feedback and small changes, while cooks improve at a snail's pace because their strategy is just following a recipe which barely changes.",
Everyone-nothing creates a shock on your life. Chemical and drastic, if you don’t know about this you will be in trouble. Comedians kill themselves because of this. Everyone loves you, the crowd, the overstimulation, then you are alone after. So alone. 100 to zero. Jay and Trevor relate about this and had severe coping mechanisms like chocolate etc.. Your body will want to numb itself from the feeling however possible. Very interesting to be aware of.
"Use difficulty as a guide not just in selecting the overall aim of your company, but also at decision points along the way. At Viaweb one of our rules of thumb was run upstairs. Suppose you are a little, nimble guy being chased by a big, fat, bully. You open a door and find yourself in a staircase. Do you go up or down? I say up. The bully can probably run downstairs as fast as you can. Going upstairs his bulk will be more of a disadvantage. Running upstairs is hard for you but even harder for him. If there were two features we could add to our software, both equally valuable in proportion to their difficulty, we'd always take the harder one. Not just because it was more valuable, but because it was harder. We delighted in forcing bigger, slower competitors to follow us over difficult ground. Like guerillas, startups prefer the difficult terrain of the mountains, where the troops of the central government can't follow. I can remember times when we were just exhausted after wrestling all day with some horrible technical problem. And I'd be delighted, because something that was hard for us would be impossible for our competitors.",
"Very interesting: cities have a vibe (based on the type of ambition they are centered around), and SV’s vibe is “you should be more powerful”. Fascinating. And interesting point that Florence had all the famous painters even though Milan was just as big of a city at the time. SF is 'live a better life' according to Paul, which is an interesting lens, hiking, health, etc…. 'Some people know at 16 exactly the type of work they want to do, but in most ambitious kids, ambition seems to precede anything specific to be ambitious about.",
Telling a child they have a particular ethnic or religious identity is one of the stickiest things you can tell them. Almost anything else you tell a kid, they can change their mind about later when they start to think for themselves. But if you tell a kid they're a member of a certain group, that seems nearly impossible to shake. When parents are of different religions, they'll often agree between themselves that their children will be 'raised as Xes.' And it works. The kids obligingly grow up considering themselves as Xes, despite the fact that if their parents had chosen the other way, they'd have grown up considering themselves as Ys.",
Don't try to rescue a damsel in distress. You'll only end up with a distressed damsel.
- Peace of mind is the precursor to happiness. Optimize for equanimity.
- Most of our desires are copied from other people. So end up in competition with each other, fighting over a small set of things. Remember that desires are socially copied.
- “Not wanting something is the same as having it”
"Buddha asks his followers if it’s bad to get hit with an arrow when you’re walking down the street, which they quicky agree it is. Then he asks if it’s worse to get hit with a second arrow. All the followers agree that yup, getting hit with two arrows would suck more. Buddha goes on to explain that the first arrow is our of our control—that’s all the bad stuff that happens to us in life. But the second arrow is our reaction to those bad events—whether we get angry or upset and make things worse. That second arrow is always up to us. 'The biggest insight that’s had a positive effect on my own life is NOT to hit myself with that second arrow.' - Dr Laurie Santos",
- Career strategy should optimize for A) being responsible for your outputs not your inputs and B) highly leveraged.
- Automatic and compulsory regard for the emotional needs of others while ignoring your own is a major risk factor for illness. This is because the repression of anger disarms the immune system. When you repress anger, you undercut the activity of certain immune cells. 1) Do not feel responsible for how other people feel. 2) Do not be afraid of disappointing anyone.
- When there is a real problem with a customer’s order, I have a team go find real root causes and come up with real root fixes. That way we don’t just fix that customer’s problem, we fix all similar problems into the future - Jeff Bezos
- Charisma is the ability to project love and confidence at the same time.
- First person experiences are critical for enterprise sales. Being able to say “oh I was just down at Amex and they are struggling with the he same thing”, gets them to open up and then become a customer.
- The best way to create urgency is to tie your product to a project that does have a budget and a timeline. If you can add value to that project, you are golden. Ask and find out.
- Instead of asking if you want something, have a conversation and describe the problem you are facing, then they will offer if they will help.