Foundations

Here’s a powerful idea I learned from Tal Ben-Shahar’s positive psychology course: “You are the co-creator of your reality.”1 This means that you don’t just experience the world – you also help shape it. You’re not merely an observer. You’re a participant. Some people take the view that you have no free will. You’re an animal, acting on instincts. Or you’re a cog in a machine, serving the powers that… Read More »You Co-Create Your Reality

Over at Optimize.me, Brian Johnson likes to draw a distinction between two states: “energized tranquility” and “enervated anxiety.” Energized tranquility is calm determination. It’s motivation mixed with confidence and hope. Enervated anxiety is the opposite: a state of weakness, exhaustion, and worry. It’s burnout mixed with helplessness. And sadly, it’s what a lot of us feel on a regular basis. Luckily, we can change that by knowing what state we… Read More »Fire and Grace

A couple of years ago, my friend Joel began to lose his eyesight. It was really minor at first, and the vision-loss was gradual. For the first couple of months, his eyesight was not much worse than yours or mine, so it was perfectly safe for him to keep driving. But as his eyesight continued to diminish, it became clear that someday soon he’d have to give up driving for… Read More »The Principle of Two Errors