Every present moment holds a handful of choices, and each one leads to a completely different life. I know this literally. In 2018 I was at a low point in Europe and did a 30-day meditation. A passing line in it pointed me to a company. I looked it up, applied, and ended up in…
Two things matter to me right now, and they’re pulling in opposite directions. One is keeping up with the fastest world we’ve ever lived in. AI, technology, all of it moving in the next two or three years. I’m in it for work, and it feels urgent. The other is having time to sit quietly…
You kept waiting for the satisfaction to arrive. It didn’t. There is a thread online where 376 men kept asking the same question. How do I keep going? 376 answers. Not one of them worked. Many of those men thought there is something wrong with them. There isn’t. Others thought they were on the wrong…
Researchers at Université de Montréal found something quiet and uncomfortable. The best predictor of whether someone buys a self-improvement book this year is whether they bought one last year. If the books worked, that wouldn’t be true. But it is. And most of us blame ourselves for it. “I haven’t found the right one yet.”…
Only 18% of adults reach post-conventional ego development. That’s Susan Cook-Greuter’s data. Nine stages of adult ego development. In the West, we train for stage 4 – the Achiever. That’s the END of the conventional stages. And less than one-third of all adults reach it. Most never get past Expert. The Achiever runs on output….
There’s a signal I’ve been catching in the gym for years. The harder I try to stretch, the more my body resists. Pull harder on the shoulder stretch, the shoulder locks down. Relax, and it opens. It’s not a metaphor. It’s a real mechanism. In physical science it’s called the Central Governor Model. You never…
“Change your beliefs.” This rarely works. Your brain isn’t stupid. It knows when you’re trying to install a belief you don’t actually hold. Here’s what’s actually happening… Your brain doesn’t see reality. It predicts reality based on priors. It runs a constant mental simulation of what it expects to happen next, and it uses your…
Your body keeps score on your authenticity. That’s not a metaphor. There are two kinds of effort. Task-effort builds things – careers, families, purpose projects. It’s focused and productive. Nobody gets anywhere without it. Then there’s identity-effort. The effort of performing a version of yourself. Presenting a curated, more likeable front just to be accepted….
The retirement script you inherited – work until 65, enjoy 20-30 years of freedom – was never designed for you to actually live it. Retirement was invented in 1889 by Otto von Bismarck as a political move. The retirement age was 70. Average life expectancy was 46. Almost nobody collected. Then factory owners in the…