3 Minute Monday
Hi friend,
Happy 2023! I hope the holiday season has been good to you.
But for real, relaxation time is over and it’s time to get ready to absolutely rek 2023.
I’m going to push myself harder than I ever have, I hope you’ll join me in grabbing this year by the testicles and making it your bitch.
In other news, I think I might have recorded one of the most beautiful podcasts ever.
In December we built a full custom set inside a sound stage and flew a cinema production team out to Las Vegas to record this 2 hour conversation in 6K.
We worked up to this for 6 months and really tried to push the limit of what is visually possible without distracting from the content of the conversation.
Hollywood can suck it. This looks insane.
Here’s the first image from the Behind The Scenes:
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Guest announcement coming this Sunday!
Anyway, I’ve been reflecting a lot since being back in the UK on how much we worry about things.
Upcoming events, decisions that need to be made, missed opportunities, that awkward sentence you said in front of someone influential.
“We suffer more in our imagination more often than in reality.” — Seneca
I would put the ratio of self-imposed fear to legitimate real-world justification for that fear at something like 100:1.
This is an insane waste of mental capacity and wellbeing.
How can we redress this balance?
Well, what about reflecting on stuff you’ve been anxious about in the past?
Think back to a single concern which captured your fear and attention a lot over the last few months.
If you could have seen what actually ended up happening, would you have been worried?
Most likely no.
Most likely, all the concern and neurotic worry was fantastical and unwarranted.
This is the same for whatever you are worrying about now.
Allow yourself to let go of whatever is worrying you.
You’ve always dealt with whatever challenge is in front of you, you will continue to in future too.
MODERN WISDOM
I do a podcast which has had 100 million+ downloads. You should subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
This week’s upcoming episodes:
Monday.
Joyce Benenson – how to women compete for partners? Female cooperation, status and rivalry is straight up fascinating. Some amazing insights in this one.
Thursday.
Life Hacks 210 – Jonny & Yusef join me to teach you how to get served faster at every restaurant, fix tennis elbow, stop your caffeine dependency and much more.
Saturday.
Viktor Kumar – what we consider morally “good” is not independent from human evolution, morality co-evolved with us, our physiologies and cultures. Really interesting.
THINGS I’VE LEARNED
1.
The news affects you more than you realise.
A study was conducted around the 2013 Boston Marathon Bombing.
The researchers looked at two groups of people.
The first group watched 6 or more hours of news coverage about the bombings.
The second group were runners in the actual marathon.
Those who watched 6 or more hours of news coverage about the bombings were more likely to develop Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and experienced a higher level of chronic stress than people who were actually at the marathon and personally affected by it.
h/t — Chris Bailey
2.
Expectations are everything.
“In 2004 the New York Times interviewed Stephen Hawking, the late scientist whose motor-neurone disease left him paralysed and unable to talk since age 21.
Are you always this cheerful?” the Times asked.
“My expectations were reduced to zero when I was 21,” Hawking said.
“Everything since then has been a bonus,” he replied.
If an abjectly terrible situation can be offset with low expectations, the opposite is true.” — Morgan Housel
3.
Monothinkers are not worth your time.
“You can gauge someone’s ignorance by the number of phenomena they explain with the same answer.
Those who blame many different issues (e.g. war, poverty, pollution) on just 1 cause (e.g. capitalism) are recycling explanations because the demand for answers outstrips their supply.” — Gurwinder Bhogal
LIFE HACK
Reset the context if you lose your way in a speech.
We’ve all been there, you’re giving a presentation and your mind goes blank.
Piss.
What was I saying? Where was I? Everyone knows I’ve forgotten what I was on about. I look like an idiot.
To give yourself some breathing room and re-jog your memory, just take a breath and recap what’s been discussed so far.
“So where are we at? We’ve realised that point X is an issue because blah blah blah, one of the challenges we have here is that Y can’t work given the current market conditions of yadda yadda. So this leaves us in a dilemma. What can we do next? Well…”
Not only does this create much needed time and a trigger for you to remember your next point, but it’s actually a really useful recap for the audience which they will appreciate.
They probably drifted off for a while anyway, they’d like to be reminded of what you said.
TL:DR – do a TL:DR of your talk halfway through if you forget.
Big love,
Chris x
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PS
This flu/cough thing is impossible to get rid of. If anyone else is suffering with it, I feel for you.
