I was recently asked to explain the difference between "emotional presence" and "self-esteem." Emotional presence "Emotional presence" is an intense awareness of your values and their importance to you at the moment. You get it, not just from identifying your...
If you lack momentum on some project, that means your goal or the path to your goal is vague in some way. It is not enough to have a generalized idea of the outcome and the steps involved. You need clarity regarding how your steps will get you from here to there. If...
What are your long-range goals? That is, goals that will take a year or more to achieve? If you already have long-range goals, now is a good time to take stock. How will you make significant progress toward them in the weeks and months ahead? The longer-range the...
Ayn Rand said man is "a being of self-made soul." David Goggins is a man of self-designed soul. At a young age, he literally looked into a mirror and decided he didn't like what he saw. He embarked on a journey to turn himself into the kind of man he wanted to be. He...
I purchased Outlive by Peter Attia just a few weeks ago. As a result of reading it, I have already materially upgraded my diet and exercise regimes. The book gave me a new clarity about my health priorities, which created instant motivation. I recommend Outlive to...
In the previous article in this series, I said that confidence is the emotion that proceeds from the conclusion that you have sufficient skill that your current or proposed effort will result in success. But if the task is at all difficult, how can you reach such a...
Confidence is a crucial aspect of happiness. In this article, I will resume my series on the "Concept of Happiness” with a focus on confidence. As a reminder of the context, happiness comes from the achievement of your values. Not a value. Your values. You need to...
Over the years, I have written several articles on how to do a mental cleanup when you need to stop a task prematurely to get started on something else. And I've also written about warming up your mental circuits to get started from a cold start. I reviewed how to...
After my recent article on defensiveness, I coached a member of the Thinking Lab who was concerned that productiveness was a defense value for him. He realized that he had a compulsion to prioritize getting things done over every other value — relationships, health,...
If you've been reading my newsletter for a long time, you know I advocate motivating yourself by values, not threats. In the simplest cases, this just requires introspecting your obvious emotions to identify the values landscape, meaning the values around you and the...
I aim to teach people to think clearly and logically about value-laden issues. As a means to this end, I exhort my Thinking Labbers to identify "deep rational values" [Footnote 1] at stake in every confusing situation. This is critical to your short- and long-term...
The very first article I wrote for my newsletter was a book recommendation for David Allen's book Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity. That was 2004. Recently I realized that I had misunderstood the utility of a key tool from his system — the...
When you are committed to living by reason, contrary emotions can create all sorts of conundrums. For example, a Thinking Lab member recently reported some doubts about a decision he made to take a break and go for a walk. Based on our discussion, I would say that all...
Many people tend to use the terms "values" and "goals" almost interchangeably. But though your goals and your values are related, they are not the same thing at all. Understanding the difference between your goals and your values can help you avoid or solve many...
This series of articles on happiness would not be possible without the philosophic foundation I got from studying Ayn Rand, with much help from other Objectivist philosophers. Ayn Rand gave me an integrated understanding of the world, how you know it, and what matters...
This series of articles on happiness is based on a specific view of the relationship of the mind and the world, which Ayn Rand called "the primacy of existence." This is the idea that "the universe exists independent of consciousness (of any consciousness), that...
In a previous article, I argued that accepting reality gets you serenity. In this article, I will make a case that embracing causality gets you happiness. More exactly, my point is that consciously embracing the role of the causal agent of your own happiness is...
Peter Drucker once said, "If you can't measure it, you can't improve it." That applies to happiness just as much as to the quality of automobiles that Toyota is producing. If you want to be happier, a good place to start is to make objective just how happy you are...
Self-understanding is critical to achieving enduring happiness. This assertion may seem simple and obvious. Happiness requires that you consistently achieve your values. To have such consistent success, you need to factor your own capabilities into your plans. But to...
In the most recent article in this series on happiness, I mentioned that the next topic would be embracing causality. To be happy, you need to understand the causal factors that contribute to your present emotional state so that you can enact the causes that will...
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