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The more that our internal narratives are governed by words like should and deserve and entitle and demand, the more that dissatisfaction courses through our veins.  Language is just that powerful of a lever. It’s the primary mechanism that pegs our sense of happiness to expectation, to the anticipation of what we think the world owes us because of who we are and how hard we worked and how…

Value comes from volume.  The best way to a good idea is to have a lot of ideas.  And so, the question is not whether we finish what we start, but whether or not we start enough things to eventually find something worth finishing.  Even if our boss complains that he can’t have every deadbeat on the payroll pestering him with their idiotic brain waves, we still can’t allow…

Although loneliness has come to be the new poverty in modern society and the most common ailment of the modern world, it wasn’t always like this.  As a species, our isolation has grown ever more pronounced with each passing decade. The shared pursuit of the public good has been replaced by the solitary quest for private goods. And the social connectedness which most powerfully determines our wellbeing has been…

Generosity that comes from a place of love actually enriches us, not just the people to whom we are generous.  It’s a potent vaccine that inoculates us against unworthiness and disconnection. Even when our gifts are not reciprocated the way we hope them to be, or at all. Nobody can hinder us from the joy and meaning we experience during the process.  Spezzano’s psychology research on the unconscious patterns…

The desire to consume is a form of lust.  It’s that psychological force producing intense wanting for some object to fulfill our emotional and existential needs.  And the problem is, the charlatanic industries that take advantage of our addiction to stuff use consumer goods to bait that lust, even though they never actually satisfy it.  Because all consumption comes with a limited ceiling of satisfaction. Otherwise it would not…

Each of us has a handful of things that are a deep part of our nature, things that are not some silly stage, things that are not going to be outgrown in a few years.  And we should honor those things. Once we discover the full offering we were born to give, our lives ought to be lived every day as a true expression of those values, with clear…

Hyde’s formative research on creativity reminds us that the gift must stay in motion.  As artists, he says, giving the first creation away makes the second one possible. Our bestowal creates that energy place into which new energy may flow. And as long as the gift is not withheld, our creative spirit will remain a stranger to the economics of scarcity.  Music is perfect example. Because a song is not completed…

All this exaggerating our weaknesses to feel less inferior, all these emotional closures to protect us against hurt, all these guarded moments of public heart cloaking, all this speaking negatively about our own value, these expressions of inadequacy are longer useful for us.  Not anymore. Because now we are proven. The world has acknowledged our value on multiple occasions. And unlike before, now we actually trust our resources. Now…

Abramović, the legendary performance artist, explains how anything that is revolutionary is in front of our noses and it is never complicated, but we don’t see it until we have a safe mind.  It’s how we think. If a strategy is not complicated, then it can’t be serious enough to use or even acknowledge.  People have literally said to this to my face: It seemed too simple, so we didn’t do…

Most of us don’t actually have an inferiority complex, we just cultivate it as part of our charm.  It’s a role. We play the part of someone who is insecure and meek and awshucksy. Someone who lucked out and doesn’t know what they did to deserve to end up here, but hey, reluctantly accepts their position anyway.  This performance of inferiority is quite endearing. Especially when we’re young the…