The Podcast Bros Want to Optimize Your Life
Do you want to optimize your life? Start your morning with a kale-garlic-ginger smoothie, or better yet, meditate and fast until noon. Next, hit the gym for your mixed martial arts workout and take a cold shower to activate your immune system. Then plan this summer’s vision quest: Maybe you’ll head to the jungles of Peru, where a shaman will brew you some mescaline-laced psychedelic tea — don’t worry; the intense nausea means you’re grasping new dimensions of reality.
I found this opinion piece both humorous and alarming. We seem to be seeking out these self-appointed gurus for answers to living better in the absence, as the author speculates, of connection to religious organizations whose influence seems to be weakening in today's culture and our loss of authentic face-to-face connections.
How Emotional Intelligence Boosts Your Endurance
In tests of endurance, some people push harder than others. These aren’t necessarily the people who collapse at the finish, who may simply have sprinted harder in the final straightaway. (Or have a flair for the dramatic.) During the long, lonely middle miles of a race, you make a thousand micro-decisions about whether to press on or ease up. These decisions are mostly invisible to everyone else, but collectively they are the difference between a good race and a bad one.
Alex Hutchinson shares a recent study showing higher scores on a questionnaire called the Trait Emotional Intelligence Short Form a day prior to a race were better predictors of next day race times, better even than previous race times. It shouldn't come as a surprise that the better you are at understanding and managing your emotions the better you can perform in any aspect of life.
5 Tips To Stay Curious From People Who Do It For A Living
Employers tend to emphasize a lot of the same traits when considering potential employees. Experience is a big one, as are honesty, persistence, creativity and intelligence. But another, sometimes overlooked quality is curiosity — and research has shown it is absolutely critical to on-the-job success.
“People with higher CQ are more inquisitive and open to new experiences. They find novelty exciting and are quickly bored with routine. They tend to generate many original ideas and are counter-conformist.”
The article mentions that a person’s “curiosity quotient” is correlated with whether that have a "hungry mind". I like that.
Your Life Will be Incredibly Better if You Pursue Meaning Instead of Happiness
“You don’t become happy by pursuing happiness. You become happy by living a life that means something,” says Harold S. Kushner.
Please Stop Merchandising Mental Illness
I was seeing a guy from London, and he told me Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald were his favorite couple. He was charming, exciting and “got” me. His choice sounded so romantic, so like him.
