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What is your biggest fear? What would it mean if you could overcome that fear, once and for all? In this article, I'm going to help you do exactly that by teaching you five tactics to conquer anything you might be afraid of. Heights, spiders, small spaces, strangely-shaped clouds—whatever makes your knees turn to water and keeps you up at night. These five tactics are universal and proven. In fact, last year I used them to help two readers who were afraid of driving overcome their fear over a single weekend, then shared the results on my YouTube channel. https://youtu.be/pZXzLN2miq8?si=AZgbNR_VVyvcnCY5 Ready for those five tactics? Let's hear them. Exposure therapy. (2024). In Wikipedia. Exposure therapy is exactly what it says. You take something you're afraid of and gradually expose yourself to it, first in small doses, then in larger doses, until finally you become desensitized to the experience. If you're afraid of heights, you don't want to start at the top of the Eiffel Tower. You want to start on a second-floor balcony and work your way up until …
Today is my 40th birthday. When I turned 30 a decade ago, I wrote an article sharing life lessons to survive your 20s and crowd-sourced advice on how to excel in your 30s. And apparently you guys loved it. So, here's more of the good stuff: 40 life lessons I now know at 40 that I wish I knew at 20. Dig in. If you treat yourself with dignity and respect, then you will only tolerate others who treat you with dignity and respect. Get right with yourself, get right with the world. Success and failure are fuzzy concepts that only exist in your mind before you do something. Not after. After the fact, everything will be a mixture of both. The only real …
I've read over 1,000 nonfiction books in my life, and these 33 are the most powerful of them all. I can honestly say they changed my life, who's to say they won't change yours too? Don't just take my word for it though. Read on for my summary of all 33 books and see for yourself how your next read might just change your life. https://youtu.be/7kwqWgXzHvc This might be the most practical book ever written on simple behavioral change. Atomic Habits has three big takeaways. The first is that small lifestyle changes compound over a long period of time. So you don't want to try to be a completely different person tomorrow, you want to be 1% better 100 days in a row. The second big takeaway can be summarized with the line, "We don't rise to the level of our goals, but we fall to the level of our systems." The idea here is that it's not about ambition or effort, it's about creating an environment that makes behavioral change inevitable. And finally, the third takeaway is that habits don't stick unless we alter our identities. That means it's …
Every day, hundreds of millions of people suffer from giving too many fucks. They spend their lives imprisoned by meaningless anxiety and unnecessary concerns. But it doesn't have to be that way. In this article, I'm going to walk you through the five levels of non-fuck-giving, each level demonstrating more non-fuckery than the last. You will learn step by step how to face your fears, how to stop worrying what other people think, and how to achieve the eternal bliss of a fuckless life. Strap in, it's time to stop giving fucks and start living. https://youtu.be/zhjuqTGMaAs?si=BBYLnwI07pU6C_HF Think back to the last time you got a terrible haircut. Chances are you walked around all day assuming that everybody was staring at that tragedy of a mop on your head. But the reality was most people didn't notice. And if they noticed, they sure didn't care. One of my favorite quotes ever comes from the author David Foster Wallace. He said: You will stop worrying so …
Welcome to the realm of uncomfortable truths, where I, Mark Manson, will make you question everything you've ever believed in. Buckle up, buttercup. Let's dive into the rabbit hole of reality. Remember the past you? The one with embarrassing beliefs and naïve ideas? Well, guess what, future you will look back at present you with the same cringe-worthy disgust. The Lesson: Next time you're absolutely sure about something, take a step back and ask yourself if it's something you'll be embarrassed about in a decade. If yes, maybe shut the fuck up. Enter Hanlon's Razor: is some degree of stupidity. The Lesson: Combine these two principles, and you'll see that we should reserve our moral judgments for only the …
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In the end, judgment comes first. And that means hiring is a gut decision. As much science as people want to try to pour into the hiring process, art always floats to the top. This is especially true when hiring at the executive level. The people who make the final calls — the ones who are judged on outcome, not effort — are ultimately hired based on experience and judgement. Two traits that are qualities, not quantities. They are tasked with setting direction, evaluating situations, and making decisions with limited information. All day long they are making judgment calls. That's what you hire them to do, and that's how you decide who to hire. Presented with a few finalists, you decide who you *think* will do a better job when they have to *think* about what to do in uncertain situations. This is where their experience and judgment come in. It's the only thing they have that separates them from someone else. Embrace the situation. You don't know, they don't know, everyone's guessing, some guess better than others. You can't measure how well someone's going to guess next time, you can only make assumptions based on other assumptions. Certainty is a mirage. In the art of people, everything is subjective. In the end, it's not about qualifications — it's about who you trust to make the right call when it matters most. Ultimately, the only thing that was objective was your decision. The reasons were not. -Jason
Or why we need less math in music theory
On Milei, Musk, and Trump
