When you exercise, your body endures several forms of stress — thermal, metabolic, hypoxic, oxidative, and mechanical. But it’s not all bad, of course. These stressors actually activate pathways in the body that help it adapt to withstand greater stress in the future. 

This process of being exposed to...

Every notion of meaningful contribution, community, progress, and success is predicated on being able to clearly and precisely answer three questions: 

Who am I aiming to serve?*  What’s the solvable problem?  How can I effectively help? 
Everything else is a distant — even misleading at times — proxy.

...

Anna Mary Robertson Moses — better known as Grandma Moses — lived quite an eclectic and illustrious life. 

By the age of 12, she went to work for a nearby farm. 

At 27, she relocated with her newly wedded husband, Thomas, to start a farm and raise children. ...

Players routinely build, fail, and learn; spectators watch.

Players have a stake in the outcome; spectators do not. 

Players create opportunities; spectators do not. 

Despite how it might sound, there’s nothing inherently good or bad about being a player. 

Whether it makes sense to be a player...

In a 2011 study led by Dr. Alia Crum, participants were given a milkshake that was around 380 calories on two separate occasions. 

On one occasion, participants were told that they would be consuming a 620-calorie ‘indulgent’ shake. 

On the other occasion, participants were told that they would...

In the 1989 film Dead Poet’s Society, there’s a scene where an English teacher, John Keating (played by Robin Williams), asks his student, Todd Anderson (played by Ethan Hawke), to read aloud a poem that he was supposed to have prepared before class. 

Todd, a somewhat nervous and self-conscious...

While beliefs don’t always immediately alter circumstances, they do profoundly influence how you experience and respond to a situation. 

It’s one thing to see a challenging project as dreadful, and another thing entirely to see it as an opportunity to learn and grow. 

It’s one thing to see...

I almost ran a red light yesterday. 

I had this inexplicable blip in attention that, had it happened just a moment later, easily could’ve resulted in a tragic outcome. 

All I could think to myself in the moments after emergency braking was, “wow, how fragile is life.” 

...

Russia’s military invasion of Ukraine has left over 100,000 in counting children, fathers, mothers, friends, coworkers — fellow humans — stranded and without essential resources. 

As of this writing, there are reports of over 130 civilian casualties since Thursday’s invasion. 

The degree of suffering and growing need for...

Charlie Munger has a famous quote, “mimicking the herd invites regression to the mean.”

Another way of translating his words is: “copying what most do will give you the results that most get — average results.”

Average, by the way, isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Average is actually a good...