Psychology
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The paradox of loneliness
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1 min read
To dine alone or bowl alone are events that blend strangeness and familiarity. Yet, they, too, are entirely social. The export of one human mind to another happens in an instant. Apes are always burning toward an ambition of experience. Psychology aside, we can ill afford to do nothing in spite of our paradoxical intention.…
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Expecting the least expected
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1 min read
Taking a stand, gradually and then suddenly. The forever longs and forever hopes of doing something urge an itch. It’s the experience that radically transforms your life. The bold are there to tell the unmotivated and scared what it’s like to trade away comfort for a bundle of qualities centered around risk. It’s the pause…
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Rightsizing life
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1 min read
The reduction of ambition rightsizes one’s life. Suddenly, those magnetic forces, trophies, hefty pocketbooks, and rich attractions lose their lure. All the stylization and mimetic desire mean little. The sheep collective drowns in the waterfall of white fountains. What matters is cultivating a satisfaction with fomo that becomes intrinsic. The reward for sitting out or…
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Inseparable opposites
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2 min read
We’re always in the middle of fictional thinking — vacillating between what we’d like to do versus what we’re scared to do. Utopia and dystopia keep us on our toes before we filter for the truth. We’re also paradoxical role-players — toggling between obedience and standing out depending on our internal weather. Authenticity often remains…
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Putting a dent in persistent novelty
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2 min read
Novelty is the sugar of our existence. It’s what keeps us coming back for more. And technology is at the center of its stickiness. Information is a click away; Twitter and Instagram offer more curated entertainment than we could ever access. The internet never ends with each refresh, like pulling the lever at a casino…
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Stress test
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1 min read
Stress is the great equalizer and our biggest distractor. It is worse than a sting from the ludic loop, mere fodder for over-thinking. But we can dampen its attentive nature. We can do things to get unstuck from the chaos of the monkey mind. The quickest mood modulator could be a psychedelic to reset the…
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Enjoy the silence
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1 min read
Silence is the loudest sound — unprovoked, it can screech worse than nails on a chalkboard. But the pursuit of distraction is man’s attempt to escape the cacophony of a deaf monkey mind. To break from mental prison, we conjure up an oasis of sound: social media and/or TV, dual screens, infinitely scrolling through feeds…
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Busy living with doubt
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1 min read
The painful past, the anxious future, the joyful present — to be alive in any mood requires that we hop over the indifference threshold. The more we feel negative emotions, the more we care. The caring fever remains scarce even when others don’t. The fool ignores their own peril and remains stuck in a state…
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Effort: The great harvester of attention
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1 min read
Attraction retains a gravitational pull. What maintains attention determines the going. The extra push acts as both a need and a vocation. What’s complete ages rapidly — it’s better to follow a direction than reach a destination. Motivation runs fickle, cycling through ebb and flow. Grit, on the other hand, is the true game-changer. When…
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The reeducation of emotion
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1 min read
At peace with the thinking, not always with the thought. The lizard brain generates emotions that are not immediately subject to reason. Emotion-action often leads to undesirable behavior, independently of our control and without our understanding. Therefore, it’s of the highest importance to recognize the issue at hand. Intelligence restrains the worst of our emotions…
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Brain on fire
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1 min read
Like putty, we can reshape the brain. The mind is elastic, not stagnant. We can birth new neurons until the day we die. Yet, we live on with the assumption of slow decay, where aging is a self-fulfilling prophecy. While most of what happens in the world is a consequence of natural, universal laws, there’s no stopping…
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No preferences
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1 min read
Presets are active, combatant, and not easily contained. The true believer builds their own alleyways that offer no escape. Who are they to play God? Thus we must loosen our grip on preferences and explore neutrality, never clinging to any belief with absolute conviction. Parochialism is a blind spot. Shrouded by significance, we deplete the…