Failure

Becoming the Third Bricklayer: Lessons in Cognitive Appraisal

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Becoming the Third Bricklayer: Lessons in Cognitive Appraisal   Three bricklayers are asked: “What are you doing?” The first says, “I am laying bricks.” The second says, “I am building a church.” The third says, “I am building the house of God.” The first bricklayer has a job. The second has a career. The third has a calling   What about the three bricklayers is so different? How can each of them have such varying perspectives on what is happening? Why can’t we all be the third bricklayer? It’s all […]

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Book Summary: The Book by Alan Watts

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The Book On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are by Alan Watts Print The Essence Alan Watts is one of the pioneers for interpreting and popularizing Eastern philosophy towards a Western audience. In The Book Watts addresses one of the core assumption in Eastern thought; that the self or ego that we create and identify as a separate being does not really exist. A mind-altering experience on every page, the illusion of separateness we attach to is identified as the problem, and a solution to our ego trip is […]

Failure

Fail Better: Mental Models for Overcoming Failure

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Fail Better: Mental Models for Overcoming Failure “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better” -Samuel Beckett As humans, we are not particularly interested losing, in any context. Scientists who study human decision making have identified several our predisposition to value losses over gains—failing can be biologically hard to embrace. It’s in our evolutionary recipe to take loses harshly, and therefore, getting excited about failure has been a bittersweet lesson for me. My accomplishments take a central role in creating the narrative that I embrace. Failure, […]

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Book Summary: Silence by Thich Nhat Hanh

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Silence: The Power of Quiet in a World Full of Noise by Thich Nhat Hanh Print The Essence Prolific Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh addresses the vital procedures to monitoring and modifying our reality—it’s all about silence. Silence is undervalued. Our minds our nonstop, bouncing from thought to thought with no sign of stopping. All of this noise is constantly shaping us, drawing us into patterns of suffering. But with silence, we can being to see the space between the noises, and discover who we really are and what we […]

Failure

How Habits Fail: Common Mistakes in Habit Formation

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How Habits Fail: Common Mistakes in Habit Formation I fail a lot. I fast intermittently between 8 pm and noon; I’ve but I ate an entire tub of ice cream at midnight. Forces of Habit was a supposed to launch at the beginning of 2017 I was fired from my first ‘real’ job When it comes to habit formation. I have a laundry list of failures. But I’m grateful. Because without those failures, I would never have been able to build a method for living the best day every day. […]

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Book Summary: Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl | Forces of Habit

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Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl Print The Essence  An autobiographical account of the horrors of life within a concentration camp during the Holocaust. Enduring seemingly indescribable hardships, Psychologist Viktor Frankl was inhumanely beaten, degraded, and placed under insurmountable distress. But he managed to not only survive; he discovered a theory to explain the meaning of life. Lifes focus is not on seeking out pleasures or avoiding the misery. It is a meaning that makes life that matters. But this isn’t a claim to have developed a universal recipe […]

Reading

Speed Read: Improving Your Reading Comprehension | Forces of Habit

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Speed Read: Reading for Comprehension He can speed read a page a single second, a page with each eye, or perhaps he even just slams the book against his head and comprehends every notch in the message. Speed reading is classically depicted as a reader vigorously turning pages faster than his hands keep up. But if his hands are having a hard time, what makes people think his brain is reading for comprehension? With anatomical and neurological limits in mind, the question isn’t how to read faster, it’s how to […]

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Book Summary: Antifragile by Nassim Nicholas Taleb | Forces of Habit

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Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder by Nassim Nicholas Taleb Print The Essence Building on concepts from his previous books Fooled by Randomness and The Black Swan, Nassim Nicholas Taleb provides us with a solution to the problems of uncertainty and volatility—embrace the antifragile. Antifragility is what gains from volatility and uncertainty—systems that thrive under shock. We need more antifragility and less complacency in our own lives. The intellectual powerhouse warns against the naive rationalist—Fragilista’s—and their attempts to fragilize the world with no skin in how their decisions change the […]

Reading

Close that Book: Knowing When to Stop Reading a Book

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Close that Book: Knowing When to Stop Reading a Book Almost 1/4 of the participants in a Goodreads poll believe that it is our duty to read bad books. “You don’t stop. You never stop. Once you start you must finish.” We need to stop reading bad books. When it comes to reading mindsets, ‘finish what you started’ is a common one. Every book we start seems to earn a 200+ page contract no questions asked. And I admit, I was the guy who would sluggishly cringe my way through […]

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Book Summary: Moral Man and Immoral Society by Reinhold Niebuhr | Forces of Habit

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Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics by Reinhold Niebuhr Print The Essence Theologian and public figure Reinhold Niebuhr refutes social idealism as he refutes the collective’s ability to be governed by ethics. Groups cannot be held to the same standards of moral and social uprightness as individuals. We as individuals can overcome our predispositions towards sin. Yet the tools we use to liberate ourselves are insufficient when dealing with the collective ego of a given group. The collective’s vices cannot be eliminated, they may only be […]