I saw how people would treat me when I'm by myself versus when my parents were there. And I also knew that our house wasn't one that talked about race or talked about issues or problems more broadly. And again, instinctively, as a black boy, I didn't think they would believe me.
Most of us are familiar with the pull of a fresh start. But researcher Kristina Olson has found something surprising: people who make dramatic life changes — who blow up their lives — often report higher levels of well-being than those who stay the course, even when the change involves significant loss and hardship.
Taking action, even though you don't have a real grounded expectation of being successful, I think there's still value in the action to watch and witness and be able to say that you saw what was there.
Every fiber in my being was screaming at me to get out of this building. Every second that we wasted was one second closer to us not getting out of the building. But that's not what firemen do. We were there to save people's lives. And that culture, that firefighter culture, overtook whatever personal need I felt to get out of the building.
Most people, when they feel the itch to blow up their lives, assume the discomfort is a signal that something is deeply wrong — that they need radical change. But sometimes the urge to flee is not a sign that your life needs to change; it's a sign that you need to change how you're living your life.
People who blow up their lives often don't realize that the discomfort they feel isn't a sign that something is wrong with their life — it's a sign that something is wrong with them. And if you blow up your life without addressing that underlying problem, you're going to find yourself in the same situation a few years later.
I remember one day, standing in front of a judge and asking that judge, "Is there any help for me?" And the judge sentenced me to prison one more time. No one cared. No one was listening.
I write in this book, sometimes you have to ruin your reputation to save your life. So, you know, I like people. I don't like putting on this front of, oh, I'm, you know, too busy to answer the phone. And so I didn't really listen to any of them because I was trying to listen to whatever this little heart of mine was trying to say.
The interesting thing about the United States is that it has this capacity for self-renewal that keeps surprising people. Every generation, people think America is finished, and every generation, America comes back stronger than before.
I keep on getting laid off and losing jobs. What up with that? But you know, every time I do, it turns into something better. You know what I mean? So I wonder what this one gonna turn into.
The universe has been falling apart billions of years longer than life, you know, started and began its its ultimately doomed but elegant rebellion against that. The the universe is allergic really to things being in formation.
I watched so many things, great ideas die on the vine and I didn't really want that to keep happening. So this was after like, you know, five or six years of just trying to get something off the ground.
Almost everybody that comes here has has a past, and they're always running to something, some are running from something, but mostly they're running to a future.
The climate impacts scale with the the the temperature rise we experience, which kind of means there's no point at which we should just give up, right? Because the hazards at 1.7 are better than they are at two. And if we go past two, then it's worth trying to stay below 2.3 rather than 2.5.
As much as we want to avoid those messy middle moments, I would argue not only are they inevitable, they're a good thing. Why? Because messiness is a sign of bold ambition. Transformation without a messy middle means you probably won't get the big results you were hoping for.
We we self-deprecate and we sort of downplay ourselves and our dreams throughout our life. Especially for people who grow up in marginalized communities and people who are not necessarily, you know, born and raised here or people who come from immigrant or refugee families and it's time to sort of reclaim ourselves and our dreams and our narratives.
On some of these trips, actually, when you get into the kayak, you don't even know. You stretch the spray skirt on over the cockpit and you don't know if that's the last time you'll ever be doing that and you sort of pray that it's not.
I keep hearing, 'Well, they signed up for this.' They didn't sign up to be on a ship in the middle of the ocean with no port calls, no feet on the ground. That wasn't in the brochure when they signed up.
And so it was really fun. You know, Bangley is a tough nut to crack. He doesn't give away much. And his whole deal is about survival. It is about dotting your I's and crossing every T and about redundancy and about never slipping up and never making a mistake and never letting some situation get out of hand or letting the other guy win. And treating every other human being you may encounter as a threat.
I'd stopped trying to find Matilda, because I realized she'd been inside me the whole time. She was the girl I'd been dreaming about since I was three. I didn't become her. I just finally let her out.
I think we all to some degree feel this way as we go through life like unprepared, unqualified, and reluctant. Yet, important things are relying on me. So, I I have to come through.
And it felt like a lot of people were moving on without me. It was easy at that time to feel completely alone. That was around the time that I was working at that group home for at-risk teenagers.
How do you not let it change you or make you despair or make you bitter or make you not radicalize you? You know, like how do you how do you sort of stay on the the path? That's what it's kind of all about.
And that his philosophy would ultimately be about freedom and the triumph of the human spirit is a testament to not just his character, but the truth of the ideas he was writing about.
His original goal is he wants to go to a physical place. He wants to go home because that's where he feels he belongs. But along the way, I think he learns that what's more important is he needs a pack and that everyone needs a pack.
The best companies that we've invested in, the founders had an almost messianic belief that they were going to change the world, and they were irrationally persistent in the face of all evidence to the contrary. The ones that failed often had founders who were more rational — they saw the evidence, they updated, and they quit.
We lost men. We lost dogs. We slept when and where we could. And some nights when it was safe and silent, we watched the men build their own fires on top of the earth that had already been burned by fires. And we all slept beside those new fires and woke and got up and started again.
Most people, when they make a mistake, either beat themselves up or quickly move on and try to forget about it. But neither of these responses is optimal. The most effective approach is to sit with the discomfort of a mistake long enough to extract its lessons, but not so long that you become mired in self-criticism.
People who have high standards for themselves can be especially hard on themselves when they make mistakes. And they spiral into self-criticism, which doesn't help them improve. What helps people improve is thinking of themselves compassionately — the way you might think of a good friend who has made a mistake.
Most people, when they make a mistake, either beat themselves up or rationalize why the mistake wasn't really their fault. Both responses are understandable, but neither helps you do better in the future.
Most people, when they make a mistake, either beat themselves up or try to forget about it as quickly as possible. But research suggests there's a third option that's far more effective: approaching your errors with curiosity rather than judgment.
I guess I kind of just feel like if you only engage in an action that you're certain is going to be successful, that's pretty cowardly, really. You know, I mean, we want to be strategic and effective as activists, but there's no guarantee in any of this stuff. And that doesn't mean it's not still a worthwhile way to spend your life.
Most of us think of mistakes as something to be ashamed of, to be hidden or forgotten as quickly as possible. But researchers who study learning and performance have found that this instinct can be deeply counterproductive. The errors we most want to forget are often the ones with the most to teach us.
Most people, when they make a mistake, either beat themselves up or they get defensive and try to pretend it didn't happen. But there's a third option: to get curious about what went wrong and why — to treat mistakes as information rather than as indictments of your character.
You can regret something and hold yourself accountable for it, but that doesn't mean you have to punish yourself for the rest of your life. You could learn from your regrets. You could try to transform them or try to do something good with them.
Odysius in his odyssey is a reflection of the human undergoing any kind of ordeal, battling their sort of higher self and lower self, you know, the perils of hubris, the impossibility of ever returning home.
Most people, when they make a mistake, do one of two things: They beat themselves up, or they rationalize away the mistake and blame other people. Neither approach actually helps you learn and do better in the future.
Most people, when they make a mistake, either beat themselves up excessively or they dismiss it entirely. Neither of these responses is actually useful. The sweet spot is to be like a good mentor to yourself — to acknowledge that you made a mistake, to understand why, and then to move forward.
Most people, when they make a mistake, either beat themselves up or they get defensive and they deny that they made a mistake at all. Both of those responses are understandable — but both make it harder to actually learn from what went wrong.
I think it really molded me into a person who had a lot of fear about whether or not the world was even safe. The world never felt safe to me from kindergarten on because I got bullied so much, and I responded by getting a sense of humor.
1mo ago
Underscored — save the words that stop you in your tracks.
