How to Help Your Child Choose the Work They Are Meant to Do
We live in a world in which we are bombarded by notifications and interruptions. It used to be that when something was important, it was a “priority.” But this singular result was deemed insufficient, so the English language was literally changed to accommodate our result-obsessed culture, inventing the plural “priorities.” As everyone was so busy […]
The Parent Who Loved Her Child but Didn’t Know How to Express Her Love
Isabel was a naturally gifted writer. From childhood, she filled notebooks with stories and poems, dreaming of becoming a novelist. She excelled in every writing class, won short-story competitions, and dreamed of applying to colleges with strong English or literature programs. Her mother, Rebecca, had a different vision. Raised in hardship, she had spent her […]
The Dark Side of Grit
Writer and venture capitalist Paul Graham tells the story about his friend, a successful doctor who constantly complained about her job. When she was in high school, she impulsively decided to be a doctor. She let her high school self choose her adult life and, driven solely by ambition, persisted despite it being a dull […]
The Hidden Path to Extraordinary Success
Winning a Nobel Prize is great. Fame has its benefits. But the true masters escaped the adapted self and were driven by something deeper than trophies or money. They wrote because they had to write. They composed because they had to compose. They were compelled by a feeling they neither understood nor could explain but […]
How to Receive a Nobel Prize
Richard Feynman was a physicist who, at one point in his career, was in a bit of a slump. He lamented how he used to enjoy physics because he “used to play with it.” Specifically, he recalls how “it didn’t have to do with whether it was important for the development of nuclear physics, but […]
You Are Not Your Profession. You Are Not Your Mind. So Who Are You Really?
Many years ago, I woke up at 4 a.m. and a realization hit me all at once. I got out of bed and wrote this down — I’m a writer but I’m not really that. I’m a director of a business but I’m not really that. I’m a runner but I’m not really that. I’m […]
How to Overcome Established Thought Patterns and Think Independently
About 3,000 years ago in China, the board game Go was created, and today it’s one of the most complex games in existence. Two players take turns placing black and white stones on a grid, aiming to capture the most territory by surrounding their opponent’s stones. Early Go computer programs aimed to make the best […]
How to Channel Your Emotions to Build Something Remarkable
When John Wilson was twelve years old, his chemistry class participated in a routine experiment involving boiling water. Unfortunately, a lab assistant had mislabeled a bottle, so instead of boiling water, John boiled a much more reactive substance. The substance caused the container to explode, shattering many glass bottles. Tragically, John Wilson left that science […]
A Proven Process That Converts Challenging Past Experiences into Sources of Growth
Here is a process you can use to change a challenging experience from the past from a source of pain into a source of growth. Take a moment to revisit the experience and concentrate on a specific feeling it evokes. It could be anxiety — the tension or unease from a perceived threat. Maybe it’s […]
What to Do When You Get the Feeling, “I’m not good enough”
The most common reaction that people have when they think back to emotionally challenging experiences is, “Oh, I just wasn’t good enough.” That’s very different from writing an article and wondering, “Is this a high-quality article?” This is a great question to ask because it will help you identify the criteria for high-quality work. By […]