Stop Running Headfirst into Problems

mel is spot-on. a critical part of reaching this stage of self-development and joyful discipline is truly, truly understanding what you actually like and what you actually value. there is often a chasm between our authentic self and our lived self ✨ let’s talk a little about how to close that gap ✨ knowing yourself is the first step, imo, to act... See more

Whatever else happens, stay busy. (I always lean on this wise advice, from the seventeenth-century English scholar Robert Burton, on how to survive melancholy: “Be not solitary, be not idle.”) Find something to do—anything, even a different sort of creative work altogether—just to take your mind off your anxiety and pressure. Once, when I was strug

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One useful mental model for thinking about this is the principle of inversion, popularized by German mathematician Carl Jacobi. He told his students to “invert, always invert,” encouraging them to approach difficult problems by inverting the equation to gain a new perspective.⁠1 We can also apply this principle to our lives. For example, instead of

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