It’s tough to know if you want to purchase that cool thing because the thing, in and of itself, would bring you joy or because it would deliver you status (and perhaps joy through that gained status). A solution is to surround yourself with such wealth that nobody notices your new Ferrari. No heads turn, no glowing conversations commence. In that scenario, you’ll quickly learn what material goods cleanly deliver happiness (and should be purchased) and which ones were mostly about how others viewed you (and should be avoided).

look for personal bluffs. Call them. Try to understand why you would want to believe something that isn’t true.

When you are tempted to lie about a personal fact, you are likely carrying shame about that fact.

Said differently: if you are lying about your net worth, your sexual conquests, your bench press max, your etc., true self-confidence is lacking.

The less likely honesty is to be expressed in a situation, the more valuable it becomes.

Said differently: the more nervous you are about speaking honestly, the more you should.

You have already been what you want to be.

It’s easier to be angry than sad.

Compared to self-therapy. You can always check out one of the thousand therapy books, read it, and meticulously follow the exercises. But that’s hard. That requires real effort. You know what doesn’t? Showing up and talking to a stranger for an hour. Yet this is still “doing something,” so you can feel like you’re progressing. ¹Just be wary of “progress” that comes a little too easily for a sustained period of time.

Doing something new often yields easy gains at first (i.e., low-hanging fruit). If the gains don’t become harder over time you are either a prodigy or not actually progressing due to insufficient willingness to challenge oneself.

In the increasingly transactional dating world, there is a temptation to see and be seen as quickly as possible. This is especially true when you like yourself. I really want her to see how great I am! We are all always getting older and running out of time, but these pressures, I think, must be resisted a bit. For it is true that if you are true in who you are, it will necessarily be revealed in time. Same for her. There is real beauty in this revelation, a beauty that can transcend knee-jerk reactions we may have had when rushing to know and be known.

There’s this cute George Bernard Shaw quote:

“We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.”

If defeating age is really that easy, why would anyone stop playing? Injuries for one. Lack of time and general fatigue for another. Those two elements will be hard to hard to overcome, especially the first one.

A more malleable variable is the simple fact that we tend to turn less excitable in age. And it is excitement that undergirds playing – you play because you are excited to play.

The easiest path to excitement is novelty. In youth, experience is limited, which means there are many more firsts, which means there is a greater capacity for novelty, which all means you are less likely to fall into a jaded state of “been there, done that.” Still, the world is very large, so there’s always more to see. But BTDT tends to move beyond the literal – I’ve actually seen that movie and it’s bad – into a general dismissal of exploration – I’ve seen enough to know there’s nothing to see in that thing I’ve never actually seen.

Youth also equals innocence, an innocence defined by not having realized the downsides of risks. Once you have been burned enough times – an inevitable part of aging – BTBT is but one of many defensive moves used to remain safe. The status quo, however bad it may be, feels preferrable to change, since change can bring lower floors of negativity; the potential for higher positive floors is obscured by the possibility of loss.

It’s not that any of this is unreasonable. In fact, it’s the outright reasonableness that makes the logic so appealing to a mature person. But when rationality leads you to undesirable place, it’s worth considering alternatives, for rationality is often less a single thing than it is post hoc explanations proffered to make one’s decisions palatable. In this case, you now know that you are now biased to focus on downsides. This focus both makes the bad outcomes less likely and, if they do occur, more tolerable. You are indeed better prepared than you were in youth! So use this preparation to your advantage and let your mind wander toward enthusiasm and excitement. 

Unless you buy face value, don’t buy any ticket to anything until a minimum of 36 hours before the show.

when there isn’t anger tied to the thing. Aggrievement, perhaps more than any other emotion, keeps thoughts endlessly circling. Like, it’s believing you’ve been wronged that makes “heartbreak” so devastating. How could she do this to me? TO ME? Similarly with contentious ends to jobs, friendships, events, etc.

What about regret? Wishing to have done differently certainly serves as a driver of many sleepless nights. But the solution is self-forgiveness, which is a bit easier than forgiving others, especially when those others should be apologizing and aren’t. Yet like self-forgiveness, the choice to forgive others can be made without any outside participation: free yourself from the frustration not because the other person is right, but because you sensibly desire mental tranquility.