When learning something new

When learning something new, spend 5 minutes trying to teach it to someone. Make a note of where the other person gets confused. You'll get an immediate sense of your understanding of the topic and where you need to dig in more.

Everyone is on a spectrum

Everyone is on a spectrum. No one has absolute power, and no one is powerless. But our expectation and experience of power is always a choice. Choosing the attitude of powerlessness is self-defeating as well as self-negating. The fact that the attitude can be chosen is in itself a form of power. We can find control over our attitude and our actions, gaining priceless power as we do.

Just because it’s your instinct

Sometimes, in the absence of data or useful experience, we’re left to act on our instincts. It’s worth noting that other people have instincts as well. And in a given situation, their instincts might prove to be as right as ours. Just because it’s your instinct doesn’t mean it’s the best instinct. When in doubt, seek reality and useful experience instead.

Even the tiniest shift in the system

If you memorize the steps, you have a direct, simple, and fast path to obtain the result. Until the world changes. Even the tiniest shift in the system will render your memorization useless. On the other hand, if you understand the concept, you can produce the steps whenever you need them.

Make amends

If you’re holding onto resentment or guilt, reach out and try to make it right—even if the other person doesn’t respond as you hope. Apologizing or forgiving clears emotional clutter and lets you move forward.

Limit how people can reach you

Choose just a few ways to stay reachable—like calls, email, or text—and cut back on the rest. Turn off notifications from apps you barely use and stop checking a dozen inboxes daily.

Clean up your information diet.

Audit what you consume—news, social media, group chats—and cut out sources that leave you anxious, angry, or drained. Follow fewer accounts, and replace doomscrolling with books, meaningful podcasts, or curated news summaries that actually inform and uplift. “Garbage in, garbage out.”

Noise designed to keep us distracted

From plastic straw bans to bird deaths by wind turbines, from endless culture war headlines to sensational political stunts, we're bombarded by stories that feel urgent but steer us away from deeper issues like corporate accountability, climate change, and wealth inequality. This tactic—known as industrial distraction—isn’t just about misinformation; it’s about overwhelming our attention with technically true but strategically irrelevant narratives. The overload isn’t accidental; it’s the point. When we're too overwhelmed to think clearly, we’re easier to manipulate, divide, and control.

Courage is who you are when it's inconvenient

Courage is who you are when it's inconvenient. When no one is watching. When the rewards are uncertain. When the outcomes are unpredictable. It's easy to declare our values, principles, and virtues in times of peace—it's hard to live by them in times of war. Courage is defined at the testing point.

It's normal to be shaken by life

It's normal to be shaken by life. Chaos will rarely knock politely at your door to announce its arrival—more often, it barges in without forewarning. You will be shaken by it, and that's ok. When shaken, quickly return to your center. Your daily habits, principles, and values. The center is where you reassert your control. It's where you can hear the natural rhythm to navigate the storm.

When you’re quick to take things personally

One of the absolute best ways to guarantee your misery and lose the love and respect of others is to make everything about you. When you’re quick to take things personally and go off on a sulk, you become highly vulnerable to perceived rejection. When you’re unable to handle what looks like rejection or criticism, guess what? You immediately close off about 90% of the opportunities available to you. Because most opportunities require you to lean into the possibility you might be judged, criticised or rejected

Let go of Mr/Mrs Nice

Being nice will not necessarily earn you respect. People can feel it when you use ‘niceness’ as a manipulative tactic to avoid being disliked, to protect your ego. Let go of Mr/Mrs Nice, stop trying to please everyone, and experiment with being honest and friendly, rather than nice and dishonest.

Give trust freely in the moment

Give trust freely in the moment, but don’t build your future on the assumption it will last. People change, and not always in your favour. Assuming your friends will remain friends makes you vulnerable. Don’t tie yourself into anything you can’t easily walk away from.

Swings in mood often occur without a clear cause

One moment you're grooving, the next you're out of tune with your world. While emotions react to what's happening now, moods linger, shaping how you interpret everything around you. Swings in mood often occur without a clear cause and can be unsettling, especially if you're used to feeling steady. They may reflect personality traits, stress, or even deeper mental health issues. Instead of chasing a perfect mood, pay attention to your patterns, care for your body, and seek support when needed. These emotional shifts might just be offering you clues to deeper self-understanding.

You are the explorer and life is your voyage

The explorer doesn't set out on the voyage trusting that the seas will remain calm to stay perfectly on course. Rather, the explorer trusts in the preparation and the ability to adapt when the inevitable storms and chaos arrive. You are the explorer and life is your voyage. You don't need to trust in your plan or your intelligence. You need to trust in your preparation. You need to trust in your ability to adapt.

Uncertainty has always been the norm

If you were living through the Industrial Revolution, the future felt very uncertain. If you were living through the peak of the Cold War, the future felt very uncertain. If you were living through any of the major plagues, economic crashes, world wars, or famines, the future felt very uncertain. There's a tendency to say "this time is different" with every major event, but while the specifics are always different, as a student of history, you cannot ignore the general similarities.

Our brains are wired for exploration

Our brains are wired for exploration—an evolutionary trait that once helped us discover new lands, innovate, and adapt. The thrill of novelty, driven by dopamine, once led to real-world advantages, but modern technology hijacks this circuitry without offering the same benefits. We should embrace the unknown, take more detours, and allow ourselves to get lost—because the best discoveries and versions of ourselves emerge from the uncharted.

The cure for anxiety often lies in radical simplification

The cure for anxiety often lies in radical simplification—one that gently leads to a grounded, timeless calm. At its core is the freeing truth that most worries can't be solved, only released. From this space, we learn to worry briefly and consciously, using it as a tool for deeper attention, rather than letting it stretch into days of vague, unproductive anxiety.

Anxiety is the mask that truth wears

Anxiety is the mask that truth wears when one refuses to pause and uncover its face—the disembodied state a person experiences when they pretend to resolve issues by worrying about them rather than engaging with them. It becomes a constant excuse for not settling into the body, the breath, or a world where truth might be discovered. Anxiety is a temporary helper disguised as worry, who, when allowed to become a permanent live-in companion, transforms into a formidable jailor.

Start a cycle of generosity

Start a cycle of generosity by asking someone for small, sincere favors—like advice or a helping hand—and accepting it with genuine gratitude. Then, look for natural ways to give to others without keeping score. Let kindness flow both ways, not as a transaction but as a shared human connection.

Steal time from a noisy world

You don’t owe everyone your constant availability. Be more selfish with time spent on the things that matter. Put your damn phone in a drawer when you need to work. The world will wait. As it should, because you’re creating remarkable things.

Ignore your mood until it improves

People get too wrapped up trying to ‘fix’ how they feel. They think that, to work, they must feel motivated. You’re allowed to feel flat when you start. It’s the doing that fills up your motivation tank.

Let Them

No matter how hard you try, you will never be able to control or change another person. The only person you are in control of is you. Your thoughts, your actions, your feelings. Instead of trying to change, manage, or please others, just say Let Them. Let people be themselves and accept that. Then, based on that information, you get to decide what you want to do next.

If you're busy showing off your brains

If you're busy showing off your brains, you're probably not listening closely enough, thinking hard enough or reaching the smartest conclusions. The loudest signals come from the emptiest sources. Those who truly possess something rarely need to announce it.

Neither for you nor against you

You come to understand that most people are neither for you nor against you, they are thinking about themselves. You learn that no matter how hard you try to please, some people in this world are not going to love you, a lesson that is troubling at first and then really relaxing.

If you think you’re running 10 minutes late

If you think you’re running 10 minutes late, text to say you’ll be 15 minutes late. That way the other person gets one disappointment and one pleasant surprise. Most people do the opposite: they say they’re 5 minutes late when it’s 10 and end up annoying the other and looking like total fools.

Nobody cares

When you're winning, when everything is going well, when you're crushing it, nobody cares. When you're losing, when everything is falling flat, when you're down and out, nobody cares. It doesn't mean nobody loves you. It just means nobody cares about your life as much as you do. It just means that you are in control. It's on you. It's not depressing. It's liberating. It's empowering. It's energizing.

You aren't afraid of failure

You aren't afraid of failure. You're so scared of what other people will think of you if you fail. The fear is in the judgment. The fear is in the embarrassment. The fear is in the scrutiny. The fear is in the whispers. The fear is in what they might say, or what they might think. The fear is in the silence.

Rest is not idleness

Rest is not idleness, and lying sometimes on the grass under trees on a summer's day, listening to the murmur of the water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is no means a waste of time.

Obvious or perhaps?

"Obvious" closes the door to inquiry.

"Perhaps" opens it.