The worse someone feels, the more honesty we should wield

In a sad, grieving, anxious or depressed person’s mind, their fears are completely normal.

You can spend all the time in the world promising them that they are not sick, but they’re often unwilling to believe loved ones or even doctors who try to reassure them.

In which case, the only effective way to deal with their irrational thinking is to just play along for their peace of mind. And yours too. Because virtually any other response will only enrage them further.

Hackneyed cliches about everything working out and this too shall pass and making lemons out of lemonade are unhelpful.

Sometimes the best you can do is to hear them out and reply with, I’m sorry, that sucks.

Four magical words.

I’m sorry, that sucks.

Short, sweet and simple.

And it’s actually harder than you think to offer this response. Our mind chatter is loud and wants to fill the space and fix people. The value adding mechanism inside our mind insists on saying more.

When the reality is, the person only needs these those four words, or some variation thereof, bookended by loving pockets of companionable silence.

In fact, there’s a new category of greeting cards centered around these four words. Esty and other artisanal craft supplies stores offer many variations that are both beautifully designed and sympathetically written. Here are a few of my favorites.

The first card reads in bold capital letters, this fucking sucks.

In the product description it says, sometimes life simply, for lack of a better term, fucking sucks. For all your loved ones who need extra support, send them this greeting card to let them know you’ve got their backs.

Another visual theme that shows up quite a bit is the vacuum. What better way to epitomize the sheer suckiness of life.

I found one card with dozens of comments from satisfied customers. One person wrote, sometimes, shit sucks.

This is the perfect card to show your support to a friend or loved one going through a tough time. You can use this card to lighten the mood and put a smile on their face, if only for a moment.

Now, there’s also the cruder and more vulgar expressions of sympathy, which I personally appreciate. One card shows three maudlin sentences that are crossed out.

Doesn’t sending a card like this sound better than spending a lot of time and energy promising someone that they are not sick, depressed, lonely or scared?

I understand denial endures as a coping strategy because it’s so soothing, but I have a feeling that the worse someone feels, the more honesty we should wield.

Now there’s nursery rhyme for a children’s show. Imagine if we taught the next generation the healing value of genuine sympathy. After all, the success of our species can’t be conducted on anything less than regard for the humanity of all people.

Maybe there would be fewer wars if we were willing to look each other in the eye and say some version of, I’m sorry, that sucks.

Now, some may say the phrase is callous, flippant and dismissive. It’s faux active listening, you’re just mirroring and murmuring back platitudes. And too much sympathy feels like pity, which only makes people’s grief more depressing.

Fair enough.

Look, if we want to transition from sympathy to empathy, we can always say something like, tell more so I can understand where you’re coming from.

Then we can feel what they’re feeling.

But in my experience, people usually just need to be validated in their irrational coping of feelings in an effort to return to wisdom. We can create a positive interpersonal atmosphere that’s more conducive to healing, without being coercive.

The hard part is the repetition. If someone you love seems to be constantly going through a rough time, it can make you feel like a broken record. You keep saying those four words and it’s like, well good god, how many times can one person say, I’m sorry, that sucks?

You get sympathy fatigue.

I’m reminded of the advice from my favorite psychologist. He authored a phenomenal book about dealing with difficult family members, and wrote this:

When you say things indirectly or at great length, that means you feel that you don’t have a leg to stand on, that you are ambivalent about your message, or that you hope people won’t discover your hidden agenda. It is better to be clear before you speak, know what you want to say, trust that you have the right to communicate, and then deliver your message simply and directly.

His words remind me that it’s not only effective, but it’s enough, to tell someone, I’m sorry, that sucks. We trust the silence before and after those words to do some of the heavy interpersonal lifting.

It’s better than compulsively talking just to fill the space. You’d be surprised just how hard it is to restrain yourself and respond so simply.

Ultimately, we can all agree on one thing, which is that is being human is hard. Always has been, always will be. Nodding our heads in sympathy works. Shaking our heads in sorry amazement at the depth into which people are sinking works. Genuine acknowledgement of distress and gentleness towards people’s needs works.

Who knows? Maybe if we practice this enough with each other, we might even find the time and energy send the same love to the one person who needs it most.

Ourselves.

I’m sorry, that sucks.

LET ME ASK AY THIS
How often are you promising people you love that they are not sick, depressed, lonely or scared?

And poof, one day the goddess of talent abandons us

Who are we when all of our gifts are stripped away? Is that person still worthy?

It’s tough to imagine when we’ve invested so much time working on ourselves.

Think about the sheer amount of time and energy spent.

We treat ourselves as the possessors of unique gifts. We carry the blueprint of them and notice their unfolding. We slowly emerge into the full flower of our gifts through practice and reflection. We apply our life energy toward the expression of them. And we deploy our gifts into the service of others to benefit the world.

But what if, one day, the goddess of talent abandons us? What if we can no longer do what we do?. What if the world evolves and certain gifts we possess are no longer required because computers have automated or eliminated them?

Encanto, the animated film about an extraordinary family who live hidden in the mountains, has a wonderful song that goes like this:

The stars don’t shine, they burn. The constellations shift, and I think it’s time you learn, you’re more than just your gift.

The characters are asking a difficult question that most of us never think to ask.

Copywriting is a good example. Agency creatives would spend thousands of hours a year crafting advertising slogans and headlines and campaigns.

Now you can pay about thirty bucks a month for an artificial intelligence platform to do the work for you in a thousandth of the time. Simply enter your product’s name and a short description of how it works. Then press the generate button to get a dozen high converting copy variants personalized to you, based on an algorithm that’s integrated millions of proven advertising formulas.

Hell, for all you know, this very essay you’re could have been generated by a computer, rather than a creative human being who loves to write while taking his morning dump.

Point being, yes, our gifts rise from pools we cannot fathom. Yes, we need to accept the talents the world gives us without shame. And yes, we should find ways to use them to make a difference in every area of our lives.

But let us not cling to our gifts too tightly. In a world where they could be taken away from us at any time, we also owe it to ourselves to locate the worthiness that has nothing do with our talents.

Bezos famously gave a graduation speech that’s been reprinted countless times. He told a story about how it’s harder to be kind than clever. Here’s my favorite passage:

There’s a difference between gifts and choices. Cleverness is a gift, kindness is a choice. Gifts are easy, they’re given after all. Choices can be hard. You can seduce yourself with your gifts if you’re not careful, and if you do, it’ll probably be to the detriment of your choices. The question is, will you take pride in your gifts, or pride in your choices?

Now, I would argue it’s not an either/or, but a both/and. We can and should take pride in our gifts, and we can and should take pride in our choices. Here’s an example.

I’m proud of the choice I made at age thirty to relocate across the country with a woman I’d only known for six months. We didn’t know if our love was going to last. We didn’t know if we would like living in a big city. I was scared and vulnerable and uncertain about the whole thing.

But at that time in my life, everything was urging me to make a change. In my career, in my community, in my relationships, in everything. And so, when my girlfriend laid this idea in my lap, my answer was yes. My choice was change.

Not an easy choice to make, but one that changed the vector of my life for better and for always.

What’s interesting is, that moment had nothing to do with my gifts. Uprooting my life wasn’t about talent, it was about courage and risk. And that makes me proud. If the day comes when artificial intelligence completely obviates the need for my creative services as a writer, I can still rest easy knowing that no robot can automate my bravery.

You can’t take that away from me, because it’s who I am as a human being.

Which of your gifts might be seducing you? Are you holding on too tightly to any one of your talents?

And look, this is coming from someone who’s written books, songs, speeches and movies about taking your talents on the ride they deserve. Clearly the subject of human potential and personal giftedness is a passion of mine.

But remember, the world gets a different version of you when they peel away the talent. There are layers of courage and resilience and generosity underneath.

That alone is worthy. Your experience, your character, the way you make sense of and use it, that’s valuable too.

LET ME ASK YA THIS…
What if you didn’t have to work so hard for people to love you?

That’s the great thing about data, it doesn’t judge you

What should we care about?

When humanity is dealing with numerous overlapping traumas, how are we supposed to know which problems to prioritize?

There are no easy and simple answers for these questions, because there’s a mob mentality on what is important. Social pressure often decides what issues deserve our time, money and energy. The squeaky wheels gets the attentional oil.

In fact, people might even call you out for not being interested in the social causes they care about. They claim your silence makes you part of the problem. And if you’re someone who primarily focuses on your own concerns, then that’s highly political, morally corrupt and social irresponsible.

The challenge with where to care seems to be complexity. Infinite competing perspectives on every topic is paralyzing.

Let’s get real. Do we realistically have the bandwidth to campaign for civil rights, education reform, climate change, police brutality, public health, income inequality, opioid epidemics, government subsidization, moral decline, gun control, all at the same time?

How many picket signs can one citizen realistically carry?

Southpark did a funny and poignant episode about this social confusion. Mayhem in the town was erupting, and one guy asked what’s going on. His neighbor says, something’s happening at the town square, everyone’s gathering!

To which the first man replies, well, are we protesting or are we rioting?

And the other man says, I don’t know, but it has to do with the pandemic. Something big is going on.

What a perfect microcosm for modern society. Everyone is outraged about everything, but doing nothing about anything.

Now, that may just be hyperbole. Or maybe it’s my cynical voice getting louder. Or my inner songwriter that’s more interested in how words look and sound than what they actually mean.

But when it comes to improving mankind, I wonder if an ideal place to start is with a process of elimination. Perhaps we could give our society its best chance of success if we were radically honest with ourselves and each other about what we truly don’t care about.

Google could launch a free, public service, apathy based app to help people narrow down their concerns and uncover what they should care about. Because the truth is, so many of our problems can be solved by deciding which options don’t belong and what’s not possible, given our value system.

This act of deleting things is a logical, systematic and less stressful approach to caring. And it might remove much of the shame and outrage from the process.

What if each individual took twenty minutes, once a month, to answer a few basic questions about where they choose to invest their time, money, attention and intention?

I imagine that this software could integrate with bank statements, browsing history, email inbox, daily calendar, social media activity and other digital breadcrumbs to paint a picture of what is and isn’t important to you, based on where your energy goes.

Scott, says the app, it looks like you spent four hundred dollars in the last thirty days on food delivery. That alone adds up to about a hundred pounds of waste each year. Is it fair to say that you don’t care about our society’s single use plastic pollution problem?

If so, that’s ok. No judgments here. You keep enjoying your burritos, and we’ll keep searching and find something else that matters to you more.

For example, I noticed in your inbox that you have two thousand unread messages from several nonprofit organizations asking for donations. Would it be reasonable to suggest that you’re never, ever going to click on a single one of them?

Totally understandable. Caring is hard, and we don’t want you to have a guilt induced stress reaction because of this inbox backlog.

Our data shows your time is better spent engaging with your daughter’s school board than trying to plant trees in a foreign country whose name you can’t even pronounce.

Click yes if you want us to deleted all those messages for you.

See, that’s the great thing about data, it doesn’t judge you. It simply serves up the truth and trusts you to take action on it.

This apathy app is going to revolutionize how people prioritize their concerns. We could even gamify the process. Similar to how the dating apps let users earn badges for getting sexually transmitted disease tests and posting their results, we could do the same with apathy.

Each person could add icons to their own social profiles with a list of the top three issues they couldn’t care less about.

Lauren is thirty years old, single, works as a designer at a tech startup, and has zero interest in human trafficking, decentralized finance or interplanetary space travel.

Imagine how much time this would save. Imagine how simpler our interactions would be. Imagine the end of conversations about topics that make us want to jump off a cliff.

If people would just be honest and upfront about what realistically matters to them, everyone could all relax more, shame less and redirect our energies into more fulfilling directions.

It’s funny, all digital advertising is based on interesting targeting, but this is the opposite. It’s apathy signaling. Tell me that’s not the worst idea in the world.

In a time when it’s hard to decide what to care about, why not let the data help us discover the opposite?

The process of elimination is a wonderful strategy for uncovering solutions.

The hard part is going to be overcoming our guilt and being radically honest. Because the heart has limits. We cannot care about everything. And the sooner we tell the truth to ourselves, to each other, and to the universe at large, then the sooner we can prioritize the problems on which we can have a material impact.

Look, it may be true that mankind is the most ruthless and dangerous and unforgiving species on earth. But it’s also true that mankind’s evolutionary obligation to use all the powers at our disposal to improve the hand that nature has dealt us.

Maybe a good place to start is letting go of what we honestly don’t and can’t care about, and redirecting our attention and intention elsewhere.

LET ME ASK YA THIS…
How do you prioritize your energy when dealing with numerous overlapping traumas?

Until blood spurts and bits of flesh fly

Discipline takes care of you in ways that motivation can’t.

Because your action isn’t conditional on feelings or mood, it hinges on commitment.

Your fuel is not desire but will.

Whereas if you work from a place of motivation, there is a particular mental and emotional state necessary to complete your task. Which you may or may not be able to access at any given moment.

And that gives you deniability around your own procrastination. The conversation inside your head goes, I would have meditated and worked out, but I just wasn’t motivated. Sorry, there’s no other possible thing I could have done to complete those tasks.

Compare that approach to coming from a place of discipline.

Where the feelings become inconsequential.

They’re still real and acceptable, it’s just that the choice was made long before you started feeling that way.

Bottom line is, you are doing this thing whether you feel like it or not. The overwhelming obstacle of trying to elicit enthusiasm for a task that clearly doesn’t deserve it, forget about it. Discipline cuts the link between feeling and action, and you move forward anyway.

Think about it mechanically. Motivation is this complex engine that needs the perfect amount of combustion, the right fuel and air mixture, a sizable spark to ignite it, and a lead foot pressing down on the piston to generate power.

Who has time for all of that? And even if they did, who can sustain that kind of production schedule?

Discipline, on the other hand, is this simple, inner engine that only requires one thing to start.

Commitment.

Once you make a choice to kickstart the machine, energy generates into the system. Nobody wakes up early to exercise, meditate or journal before work because they want to. They only do it because they’ve set an intention to go through present pain to achieve future gains.

Now, that’s the hard part of the discipline approach. It requires trust.

You trust that by merely showing up and starting, the system will ramp up to operating temperature.

You trust that by setting your feelings aside and executing regardless of motivation, the universe will respond in kind with positive outcomes.

You trust that no matter how little you feel like doing this task right now, you will feel satisfied when it’s over.

It’s interesting, because the word discipline has a few meanings. One way to think about it is, the practice of training someone to obey rules or a code of behavior, using punishment to correct disobedience.

Another way to think about it is, to train oneself to do something in a controlled and habitual way.

Different as those definitions sound, both revolve around a commitment to an established mode of conduct. And so, when we think about disciplining ourselves to do things we don’t feel like doing, it’s not like we’re whipping our own ass cheeks with a bamboo cane until blood spurts and bits of flesh fly.

It’s less violent and more loving than that.

What you say to yourself is:

Look, I know this sucks. I know you’re tired. And course you don’t want to get out of bed. Of course you shouldn’t have to do any of this. Nobody should. It’s total bullshit. But you know in your heart this is good for you. You know you’re going feel better within five minutes of starting. And you know that when it’s over, you’ll be really glad you did it. All of your feelings are totally valid, so let’s set them aside and get moving. They’ll be waiting for you when you get back.

What brings you into contact with your own capacity for discipline? What if you could unlock fulfillment by committing to an established mode of conduct?

What’s most curious to me is watching people badmouth themselves about their lack of discipline. They constantly rebuke their inability to show up every day or every week for some kind of routine.

Part of me wants to put my arm around their shoulders and say, well, you’re certainly disciplined at beating yourself up. You do that every day without fail. Maybe you could try redirecting that energy into a more life giving activity.

Naturally, nobody wants to hear that. Certainly not from me. There’s nothing less motivating to an undisciplined person than hearing how simple and easy discipline is. In fact, if you really want to piss someone off who can’t get motivated, give them a scripture like:

Discipline produces a harvest of peace for those who have been trained by it.

Nothing will anger them more than hearing what the holy book has to say about establish modes of conduct.

Ultimately, I’m not sure there is easy answer when it comes to the highly complicated and deeply personal principle of discipline. Each of us has to create our own standards of it.

In my own experience, learning to rely less on motivation and more on commitment has been tremendously helpful in virtually every area of my life.

Discipline takes care of me in ways that motivation never could. And I find that the discipline of doing something when I see no point in doing it, is precisely what gives it its value.

Because within that framework of discipline, enthusiasm grows on its own and builds on itself.

I do believe building discipline is like building any other skill, in that it all starts with commitment. And if you start small, it will slowly translate to more substantial elements of your life.

Either that, or you’ll never get out of bed, slip into a horrible depression and starve yourself until you’re wafer thin and your kidneys collapse from renal failure.

What excuses are you using to justify your procrastination?

Bring talent to the table that’s transferable everywhere you go

In concentration camps, certain prisoners were selected by their captors to hold more advantaged positions within the population of the camp.

Since these people possessed creative, linguistic or industrial skills, the guards viewed them as valuable assets. They gave them access to material benefits beyond those available to others, like warmer clothes, better shelter and more food.

My friend wrote and directed a documentary about this very phenomenon. The story was about a man and a woman, both of whom became privileged prisoners. They used their artistic talents like singing and sewing to keep away from death’s door and bring inspiration and freedom to fellow prisoners.

Naturally, it’s hard not to experience feelings of guilt, sadness and for the prisoners who weren’t so fortunate as they were. And you have to wonder just how much contempt the other captives felt towards them. Meanwhile, there’s also a lesson about the liberation of usefulness.

I notice this trope prison stories of all kinds, both truth and fiction. People free themselves, both literally and psychologically, from the horrors that countless others suffered.

But it’s not the kind of privilege they were born or lucked into. People advocated for their own worth. They vocalized their talents and gifts to the guards. They made their value paramount in the face of overwhelming trauma and managed to survive.

That’s power. And you don’t have to do five years in the crowbar hotel to understand.

I’ve never been to jail myself, except that one night in high school when my friends and I got caught stealing holiday lawn ornaments, and got thrown into the holding cell at the police station until our parents came and picked us up.

That doesn’t really count. It was more fun that it was traumatic.

Point being, the liberation of usefulness is available to us all. There is not a single person on this earth who doesn’t bring talent to the table that’s transferable everywhere they go. What’s missing from the equation is permission, classification, communication and evolution.

Let’s unpack each of those variable.

First comes permission.

If you want to liberate yourself through usefulness, it starts with belief. You have to accept that you contain multitudes. You have to trust that your gifts are worthy of being used.

Now, many people lack such a mindset, through no fault of their own. Hostile, unsupportive or traumatic upbringing can make people allergic to taking ownership of their own value. If there are no positive role models like parents, relatives, teachers, coaches and clergy to remind people just how amazing they are, then it’s going to be an uphill battle as an adult.

Regardless, there must be a baseline belief that usefulness is possible.

Second comes classification.

With personal experience, feedback from trusted voices, and possibly a little research, people have to understand the linguistic context with which to frame their gifts.

As an example, I spent my first dozen or so years of my career as an entrepreneur, writing books and giving speeches. But when I transitioned to the corporate world, it took me a good month to figure out the transferability of my skills.

I had to read hundreds of job descriptions and interview dozens of people who knew me well to realize, oh wow, so that’s what organizations might call the skills I bring to the table. Got it.

That’s when the third step begins, communication.

Once you’ve given yourself permission to be useful and learned the right language for naming your talent, now you have operationalize that narrative. This step took me another job or two.

Honing in on how to communicate usefulness from an organizational perspective is hard. You have to pay close attention to the way people respond to the value you create. When they complement your work, you have note down how it fits into their reality so you can replicate and scale it going forward.

I remember my first performance review at the agency I worked for years ago. My boss told me that my organizational skills brought order to chaos, and my creative skills brought clarity to the team’s collective execution.

Well I’m be dammed. So that’s how my talent stack fits into the broader team.

Finally, after you check the boxes of permission, classification and communication, there’s one final step. Evolution.

Expanding your skills. Finding new iterations of your value as you grow.

This is my favorite part of the liberation of usefulness. Because it’s all about possibility and maturity. For example, say you execute a project that stretches your creative rubber band quite a bit, but doesn’t break it.

And once you earn positive outcomes, you look back and think, huh. Maybe there’s an adjacent skill here that I didn’t realize I had. Maybe there’s a new facet of my asset that’s showing up these days.

Like a rare stone that, if inspected closely under a new microscope, reveals a new inclusion nobody noticed before. That’s evolution. You look within and think, where there’s one, there’s a ton. The fact that this happened means it’s possible.

In summary, the liberation of usefulness involves the permission, classification, communication and evolution of value.

It’s available to us all, and we don’t have to go to prison to access it. We merely have to advocate for our own worth. To vocalize our talents and gifts. To do whatever it takes to make our value paramount.

Remember, privilege doesn’t have to be a dirty word. If you use it to thrive and help others do the same, then we’re all free.

LET ME ASK YA THIS…
What are the characteristics of the most supportive possible environment that you can think of?

Create a positive trajectory of entrepreneurial functioning

Did you know that resilience was somebody’s job?

I stumbled upon a fascinating study in the international journal of management about the construct of organizational resilience.

In the last few decades, this phenomenon has gained new momentum in academic literature, mainstream media and business publications. Numerous researchers revealed that companies, institutions and other entitles can survive and thrive amidst adversity or turbulence.

As long as there are dedicated team members to help them deliver products and services at acceptable levels following any disruptive incident, the organization can remain resilient.

Check out the most common job titles:

Resilience officer, continuity planner, resilience analyst, crisis manager, recovery specialist, disaster responder and risk consultant, to name a few.

Turns out, the process of creating systems of prevention and recovery to deal with potential threats to a company is a huge part of corporate health.

Now, most of the organizations who staff such roles are quite large. These are billion or trillion dollar entities with tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of employees.

But just because a team only employees a few hundred people, doesn’t mean they can’t increase their resilience. The same principles can be followed to deal with adversity.

For example, knowledge. Among all of the assets an organization owns, few are more scalable than information. Resilience comes from the ability to transfer knowledge to deal with the situation at hand.

Organizations that have deep absorptive capacity, which is the ability to appreciate, transform and exploit new knowledge for strategic purposes, will win.

I remember during the first year of the pandemic, I was working at a franchise marketing technology startup. Since we had a twenty year history in the space, we saw the public health crisis as an opportunity to leverage our intellectual assets for the betterment of the industry.

Our president held a meeting with the team and had a very frank conversation. She posed the questions:

Why is the pandemic going to be a huge advantage for us? What proprietary data do we own about franchising that nobody else does?

This is pure resiliency thinking. Anytime an organization enhances their ability to quickly process feedback and flexibly rearrange information into tangible forms, they grow their equity.

Our team knew that the data we collected on millions of potential franchise owners and their career aspirations was a powerful weapon, but one we hadn’t exploited to its full potential. During the first few months of lockdown, our engineers used our database to create a trend report showing an uptick in interest in home based franchise businesses, considering how many people had just lost their jobs in the pandemic.

We used that data in our sales presentations, marketing materials and public relations campaigns. And it paid off. This new configuration of old data better fit our new environmental conditions and made our tech products and services more attractive to prospects and customers.

That’s the power of knowledge as a resilience builder. With the right information, any company can create a positive trajectory of entrepreneurial functioning after a crisis, disturbance, or challenge.

It’s simply a matter of leverage.

LET ME ASK YA THIS…
What proprietary data do we own about franchising that nobody else does?

The mental equivalent of a taffy pulling machine

People can spend an inordinate amount time worrying about, analyzing, and trying to understand or clarify particular thoughts and themes.

They’ll engage in this exhausting a repetitive negative thought process that loops continuously in their mind without end or completion.

As if replaying a certain scenario enough times could somehow change its outcome.

Like the single woman who keeps reading the same text message over and over again, searching for some romantic nuance where none exists.

Hey does a peach emoji mean this guy isn’t into me? What’s the meaning of the time stamp on his last text before he left the party? And what about punctuation? This dude never uses commas, so does that mean he’ll be a generous lover, but an awful father? Maybe I should wait another two days before texting him back.

Ruminative loops like this give me hives. Especially when multiple people pile onto the anxiety mound.

When I see one person turning over some fragment of bullshit in their minds, and then the rest of the group chimes in to fuel the fire, I can’t help but protest. There’s a deep part of my soul that values sanity, surrender and simplicity, rather than clarity and correctness and certainty. And it always asks the same annoying but important question.

How are we still talking about this?

Because to me, it’s the mental equivalent of a taffy pulling machine. Have you ever watched those contraptions cranking away on a touristy boardwalk? Candy is stretched and folded over and over to incorporate air and develop its trademark light and chewy texture. As the taffy is pulled and aerated, that original rectangle of candy gets stretched more and more, its length growing exponentially by the same ratio each time.

This is what people do inside their heads. Except instead of producing a tasty confection that rots their teeth, they create a toxic rumination that rots their minds. This kind of brain candy is fun, but there’s zero nourishment. It’s pure white sugar. People’s continuous, exhausting cognitive effort never produces actual solutions. It just spins.

Do you spend too much time replaying your experiences? Do you fixate on problems and your feelings about them without taking any action?

Psychologists call this process mental rehearsal. It’s when someone selectively retrieves and repeats recent negative events that match the sense of loss and hopelessness, and notes similarities across them.

Which will naturally feel like shit, but the thing is, it also feels familiar. It’s a security blanket. Spending way too much time reviewing past events and memories is more attractive than dealing with our real feelings in the present.

That’s the answer to the question, how are we still talking about this?

It’s easier than moving on.

And it’s funny, anytime I try to derail people’s rumination by asking this question, people stare at me like I have two heads. It never works like I want it to. Rarely if ever does someone suddenly pop themselves out of the rabbit hole and say, you know what, I’m sorry, there is zero upside to pulling this chunk of taffy any longer. Let’s talk about something else.

Sadly, people typically ignore my plea for rationality and continue ruminating until they feel vindicated or pass out from a lack of oxygen to the brain. At which point I have to disengage from the conversation. I choose not to participate in other people’s indecision, rumination and anxiety.

To me, this is not only a profound failure of emotional regulation and frustration tolerance. There’s a larger societal issue that has reached its apex.

Our collective inability to move on. That’s the real problem people should fixate on. Our culture’s complete and total lack of willingness to let go and walk away. From anything. Small things like unproductive conversations with idiots and pointless quests to solve problems we can’t control. And larger things like professional grievances like job losses and personal relationship issues like weakening friendships. Moving on is a skill. It can and should be taught in schools from a very young age.

Not too young, as tweens don’t quite have the emotional maturity to put events in their proper perspective. But once we get into college level courses, it’s healthy to learn how to recognize we’ve reached the point of diminishing returns, let go, and redirect our attention in a more meaningful direction.

This is a complex and difficult skill in the resilience arsenal to master, but the sooner we start practicing it, the better.

Now, for some people, it comes easier. Depending on how high you index on personality traits like narcissism, you will be more likely to experience such feelings like anxiety, worry, envy and guilt. Rumination may not be a habit you get sucked into.

But that doesn’t mean it’s not possible. All human beings have fear, and all human beings have the capacity to overcome many of those fears.

Wherever you exist on that psychological continuum, here’s my recommendation. Treat it no differently than learning a new skill like wake boarding, computer programming or sword fighting.

Get good at identifying when you’ve reached the point of diminishing return.

Practice letting go and redirecting your attention in a more meaningful direction.

And trust that the taffy has been pulled enough.

LET ME ASK YA THIS…
What issue is most likely to make you ruminate yourself into a tizzy?

Questioning everything all of the time is exhausting and dumb

Innovation hinges on the ability to ask one crucial question.

What if?

It’s the fundamental thought experiment that challenges assumptions, explores possibilities and drives human imagination.

Take a glance at your surroundings right now, and you’ll seen hundreds of objects that only exist because somebody somewhere asked the question, what if.

As an example, on desk at this very moment is a bottle of sparkling water. But it’s not a store bought bottle. It’s from my delicious and refreshing consumer home carbonation machine. All because an inventor wondered to himself:

What if people could drink fizzy water without consuming bottles or cans? What if soda addicts could give up sugary drinks and find a healthier alternative?

This simple but powerful line of inquiry proposes a new type of solution. What if the basic structure on which all manner of complex scientific questioning and testing is built.

And yet, despite all its praiseworthy qualities, the question what if can also launch us on a mental trajectory from which we never return. In fact, most of our unproductive obsessions begin with those two dangerous words. Whether it’s an overwhelming job, a new variant of coronavirus, our depressed child, or our aging parent, we begin assuming the worst and dwelling on it. And our anxiety ratchets up a little bit more with each inquiry we make.

What if this and what if that? No good comes from marching into mental combat.

Hey that rhymes. Maybe we should turn this into a musical.

Point being, it’s crazy how fast we tumble down the ruminative rabbit hole. And not for a good outcome, either. We’re trying to control events with our thoughts.

When the reality is, there is no amount of thinking through a problem that is likely to result in the illusion of certainty. Our ego might be trying to con us into this idea that it’s found the one exception to the rule. We assume worrying about someone or something is going to make us feel like we’re doing something to protect people.

But all we’re doing is training our brain to reinforce the cycle of anxiety. Asking what if can seem like a coping method for dealing with stress, but it often backfires and keeps our suffering going.

Given that certainty is a myth, it’s reasonable to believe if we wonder about something, then the likelihood of it also being a true about reality is greater than zero percent.

Look, I’m a proponent and practitioner of imaginative thinking, and fully agree that we should consider the complete possibility of what might be. At the same time, I also find questioning everything all of the time isn’t the healthiest way of relating to ourselves and the world. Sometimes we have to cool off the system that generates these alarm reactions. Sometimes it’s better for everyone to disagree and commit, so we can move forward with less than perfection information.

I’m reminded of an old coworker. Amy valued getting things right as a virtue, no matter how long it took. And as admirable as it was that she had such high standards, the bottom line is, she was anxious all the time. She never stopped asking what if. She bought into her own creative worrying about what bad things could happen. And she tried to solve too much thinking by applying more thinking.

I think she should have clearer distinctions in his attentional and intentional investments. The better question should could have asked was, are you in investing in something unattainable, or investing in the present moment and in your values?

Because most people do the former. They what if themselves into a corner. They turn scenario planning into a mental illness. They’re so obsessed with the likelihood of things happening, that they don’t realize they have the ability to deal with the world.

What if this happens? You will be fine.

What if that happens? You will be fine too.

But what if that other things happens?

Trust me, you’ll be able to cope with it.

Ultimately, our obsession around asking what if only reminds us that there is no certainty in this life, there is only confidence and assumptions.

If you’re someone who has a deficit in uncertainty tolerance, at some point you’re going to have to say, screw it, that’s good enough, I’m calling it, the sky is blue. It’s time to abandon the mandate to determine what the odds are.

Questioning everything all of the time is exhausting and dumb.

Accept that the possibility of something happening simply exists at a level greater than absolute zero.

And try to enjoy your life.

LET ME ASK YA THIS…
What question is blocking your ability to be present?

The variable is the rest of the world

A social experiment is a type of research.

In fields like psychology and sociology, scientists are seeing how people behave in certain situations and respond to particular policies or programs.

They divide individuals into two groups. Active participants, those who take action in an event, and respondents, those who react to the action, often who are unaware they’re part of the experiment.

The goal, of course, is to monitor how human beings act in groups. And to observe how behavior is affected by social burdens and pressures.

Now, from a more colloquial standpoint, social experiment has also become the de facto phrase for any informal effort to see how people react to something. The internet popularized and democratized this phenomenon into a widespread cultural practice, starting in the nineties. Which likely resulted from the advent of gonzo journalism in the sixties and seventies.

These social experiments are simpler, unscientific and less rigorous. People essentially choose a situation, immerse themselves in the events and people involved, and then publish media about their internal experience of external events.

When I started wearing a nametag every day back in college, just to see what happened, that was a social experiment. Still is to this day, even twenty years later. Naturally, it’s not controlled with tests requiring a complex apparatus overseen by scientists that hope to discover new data about subatomic particles.

More simply, my sticky social experiment is a personal and informal natural comparison. My hypothesis is that when I change one rule in the universe, a single person wearing a sticker on his chest all the time, it will have material impact on both the interpersonal and intrapersonal dynamic. The nametag shifts the relationship I have with other people, and also with myself.

Like anytime I purchase a cup of coffee. The barista rings up my order, but instead of having to ask me for a first name to scribble on the side of the cup, she simply looks my nametag and chuckles to herself, well, that sure makes my job easier. Scott, enjoy your quadruple espresso.

As a result of this exchange, I feel seen, special, serviced, and connected.

That’s the social experiment. It happens to me every single day, usually multiples times a day.

But what’s fascinating about my little laboratory is, it’s the opposite of many of the other social experiments you might read about.

Like the guy who ate nothing but fast food for a month and made a documentary about it. Or the journalist who attempted to follow all of the rules in the bible every day for a year.

Those are both fascinating stories. The difference is, in those kinds of social experiments, the participant was the variable. They were the ones who did the changing. Their body or mind was the factor being manipulated for or measured.

My nametag is the opposite, since the sticker makes me the constant. It never changes. The nametag is the same color, same name, same design, same location on my shirt, all day, every day, for over two decades. Which means the variable is the rest of the world. The real data comes from other people. My observations are based around doing the exact same informal thing all the time, and observing how people react to it, and how it makes me feel.

Here’s another example.

Manhattan isn’t what you would call the friendliest city. People here aren’t mean or antisocial, necessarily, they’re merely goal oriented. They have somewhere important to be, they’re likely running late, so you better get the hell out of their way.

As such, the likelihood of a random stranger on a city street noticing my nametag and going out of their way to greet me is statistically low. It simply doesn’t happen that much in this city, solely because of the speed, size and decibel level of my surroundings.

The only exception is when I’m traveling through midtown, which has the highest density of tourists. In that part of town, people will engage with my nametag quite often. Funny how a few city blocks can shift the interpersonal dynamic.

That’s what continues to intrigue me about the experiment. My nametag becomes this barometer for the world around me. Based on how the people interact with it tells me exactly where I am. It’s ironic, but the nametag actually tells me more about others than it does about me.

Kind of like an analog geopositioning device. It alerts me with these feelings and sensations and conversations that essentially say, please note, you have just entered a certain type of neighborhood. You are now traveling in this kind of city with this type of culture.

I remember years ago, while working at an advertising agency, my coworkers and I took a cab across river to make a pitch to one of our clients. As we stood outside our office waiting for the car, dozens of commuters walked past us.

As expected, none of them engaged with my tag. They probably didn’t even notice it, considering my sticker was like, the eleventh weird thing they’d seen that day.

But the astonishing thing was, the moment we got out of the cab and started walked towards our destination, people were saying hello left and right. And my coworkers were bewildered. They kept looking at me like, dude, did you used to live here or something? Why does everybody in this part of town know you?

And that’s the punchline. I’d. never been to that city before in my life. Hoboken was less than four miles away from our office, and yet, that minor geographic displacement was the variable in the experiment. I changed nothing about my behavior, my appearance or my attitude.

Same person as before, same nametag as before. I was the constant, the active participant observing the respondents who were unaware they were part of the social experiment.

Wow, is it windy in here, or did I just blow your mind?

Let me reiterate for the record, I am not a scientist. I scored terribly on science in highschool in college. And I don’t claim to have accurate data for anything I’ve ever done in my life.

But when you run a single social experiment for over twenty years, day in and day out, you can’t help but notice patterns. You can’t help but learn how the world works. It’s not a superpower, it’s just a lens.

What’s your nametag? Are you keeping records of how people react to something?

If not, it’s worth trying out from time to time. Making personal and informal natural comparisons is a wonderful way to learn about yourself and others.

I highly recommend you choose some situation and immerse yourself in the events and people involved. Make yourself the constant and the world the variable. And better yet, document your internal experience of those external events.

You don’t eve don’t share that content with anyone. Doing so will exponentially increase your experiential learning, giving you access to untapped wellsprings of joy.

And sure, you may get a few strange looks on the subway or occasionally attract the attention of intoxicated vagrants.

But in the words of the great physicist, nature does not depend on us, we are not the only experiment.

If that’s the case, we may as well volunteer ourselves as subjects.

LET ME ASK YA THIS…
What happens if you change just one rule in the universe?

I don’t have to know jack squat about astrophysics

A filter is a way of viewing our experience of reality.

It’s a tool that frames our observations about the world and ultimately gives us better results than we would have without it.

And there are as many filters as there are people to see through them. We can create and deploy as many of them as we want, once we discover how the filter creation process works.

Below I will share two examples of my favorite filters to use. Then we can deconstruct how they were made, so you can replicate the process in your own life.

First and foremost. Einstein’s theory of relativity.

This revolutionized mankind’s understanding of gravitation and its intricate connection to the cosmic forces that govern the natural world.

But it’s extremely complex, highly counterintuitive, conceptually jarring, and lacks any direct observational evidence. Reading about relativity is intimidatingly difficult and can leave you feeling baffled and foolish.

It truly is like chewing cement.

Now, I’ve personally never been much of a science student, so this theory of relativity always eluded me. That is, until I started treating it as a filter to deploy, rather than an idea to master.

Years ago someone explained to me as follows.

The rate at which time passes depends on your frame of reference. That’s the basics, and it’s all you need to know. Relativity simply means that time shrinks or expands according to intention and attention. Apply that filter to your experience, and you’ll get better outcomes.

My colleague was right. Particularly around scheduling and productivity and deadness.

Once I made the decision that I myself was the source of time, and I always had plenty of time for everything that I wanted, suddenly, I felt less rushed. More relaxed. Because I trusted that no matter what happened to me, I was still going to get done the things that needed to get done.

That’s my relativity filter. It sounds almost too simple to be true, but it makes my life better.

And what’s validating about it is, I don’t have to know jack squat about astrophysics. It’s not like gravitational time dilation is a subject I could explain to a five year old.

That’s okay. Because I only need to understand the basics to make the filter useful. I only need a rudimentary understanding of this scientific phenomenon to gradually free me from the optical illusions that restrict my view of reality.

Relativity is a filter I put on the world to help me understand it better and improve my life. What’s yours?

Here’s a completely different filter to consider. Optimization.

This word changed my life. I never used to say it, until I became friends with an economist.

He uses this filter for everything, and now I do the same. The explanation of the term is, optimization is the action of making the best or most effective use of a situation or resource. It’s about making informed, thoughtful decisions that align with your values and aspirations.

But it’s not about economics, it’s about blazing a path forward to a more fulfilling life.

Now, there are economic models we can study to better understand optimization. But let’s not shit ourselves, that’s way too much work. And in fact, it’s unnecessary to gain benefit from the filter.

For example, I try to optimize my life for joy. Wherever possible, I take advantage of, rearrange my life for, and modify my experience around, feeling more alive.

I choose to engage in activities that are uniquely appealing to me. Without guilt, shame or justification.

Doing this has made my life physically and spiritually lighter. And while I’m certainly not happy every hour of the day, or even every day of the week, by applying the optimization filter, I have a better choice mechanism than I did before.

Case in point. I got laid off three times in three years during the pandemic. I felt rejected, useless, sad and angry.

But while on the job hunt for the next opportunity, I tightened up my optimization filter. While applying for new positions, I evaluated my opportunities around my values of freedom and creativity.

Would I work on projects that were professionally fulfilling? Would I be able to start work at the time that worked for my needs? How many people I would be accountable to?

These core questions guided my interviewing process. If a company didn’t check enough of those boxes, they were out.

One firm in particular made me a compelling offer financially, but since it didn’t meet the requirements of my optimization filter, I respectfully declined. Working there would have made me slightly richer, but much less happier.

How are you making decisions that lighten your cognitive load?

Above, you’ve learned about two filters I use virtually every day of my life. Relativity and optimization. The final piece in this exploration is to reverse engineer those examples so it’s easy to replicate the process more systematically in the future.

It’s meta filtering, to coin a new term. My tool for turning ideas into filters that change your point of view, and in turn, positively influence your behavior.

Step one, identify the concept.

Choose an idea, theory or principle that resonates with you and has the potential to enhance your understanding of the world or improve your life. Allow yourself to pull from science, math, philosophy, art, or whatever strikes your fancy.

Second, simply and understand the basics.

Break down your idea into the fundamental elements. Aim for a minimum viable understanding that is enough to motivate you.

Third, extract the applicable insights.

How does this concept work as a filter for your life? How will it guide your decision making tool?

Next, define the filter.

Clearly articulate the filter in a simple, actionable manner. Give it a cheeky or memorable handle if that helps the principle inform your choices and actions.

Fifth, apply the filter.

Use it as a perspective shift that helps you navigate challenges.

Remember, it doesn’t have to be accurate or even true, it only has to be aligned with your values and improve your overall wellbeing.

Finally, evaluate and iterate.

Regularly assess the effectiveness of the filter in your life. Reflect on how it has influenced your mindset and therefore, your actions and experiences.

And there you have it. You now have a step by step guide for creating new ways to view your experience of reality.

The more filters you have, the more creatively you can frame your observations about the world, and the more fulfilled you can become.

Of course, it’s all relative, but if you optimize right, there’s no stopping you.

Does your point of view need to influence the universe, or simply your behavior?

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