The Science of Regret - Dr Maya Shankar A Slight Change of Plans with Daniel Pink

The YouTube video, "The Science of Regret | A Slight Change of Plans | Maya Shankar," features author Daniel Pink discussing the emotion of regret and how it can be a valuable force for good in our lives.

Understanding Regret

• Regret is Adaptive and Functional: Contrary to popular belief that we should only focus on positive emotions, negative feelings like regret are "adaptive" and "functional" if we learn how to treat them effectively. They can be a "force for good in our lives".
• Definition and Visceral Feeling: Regret is described as "the stomach turning feeling that the present would be better and the future brighter if only you hadn't chosen so poorly decided so wrongly or acted so stupidly in the past." It's a deeply personal and often uncomfortable emotion.
• Regret Reveals Our Values: When people express their deepest regrets, they are implicitly revealing "what they value the most." This makes regret a powerful signal in our psyche, "an air horn screaming" to pay attention to what truly matters to us.

Changing Your Mind - Dr Maya Shankar A Slight Change of Plans with Adam Grant

The Spotify podcast, "Changing Your Mind with Adam Grant - A Slight Change of Plans," dated 12 January 2023, focuses on strategies for cultivating a more open mind. The episode, featuring psychologist and author Adam Grant, explores how people can become better versions of themselves by rethinking their beliefs and perspectives.

• Overcoming Stubbornness in Beliefs: A significant barrier to personal growth is the tendency to stubbornly cling to old beliefs and ways of thinking. The podcast suggests that overcoming this resistance is crucial for self-improvement.
• Strategies for an Open Mind: Adam Grant, author of "Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know," provides strategies for cultivating a more open mind. While the specific strategies are not detailed in the source, the focus is on practical approaches to encourage a receptive mindset.
• Revisiting Fundamental Beliefs: The discussion emphasises the importance of revisiting our fundamental beliefs about the world, not just our superficial opinions. This suggests an action point to deeply reflect on and challenge core assumptions.
• Debating Imposter Syndrome: The podcast includes a debate between Maya and Adam on the merits of imposter syndrome. This indicates a learning point around understanding different perspectives on self-perception and confidence.

7 Hacks To Master Your Productivity & Get More Done - Modern Wisdom with Peter Akkies

The YouTube videos, featuring Peter Akkies and Chris Williamson, offer a deep dive into the philosophy and practical application of productivity, highlighting that it's far more than just using the right apps.

Here are the key learning and action points:

1. The Fundamental Principle: Productivity is Emotional and Goal-Oriented, Not Just About Apps

• Productivity fundamentally boils down to understanding what you want to do in life, why it matters to you, and how you're going to achieve it.
• Many people initially seek advice on apps for to-do lists or note-taking, but the core issue often lies in unclear priorities. No app can fix a lack of clarity about what truly matters.
• A significant portion of time (up to 80%) is often spent on activities that don't align with one's deeper values or goals.
• Action Point: Start by getting "real deep" and identifying what you truly care about in life and what you're trying to achieve, even if it feels daunting.

Why Do The Left Not Care About Men’s Problems? - Modern Wisdom with George TheTinMen

and also on the same subject... Talking To A Feminist About Masculinity - Modern Wisdom with Christine Emba

The YouTube videos, featuring Christine Emba and George from The Tin Men, offer profound insights into the crisis of modern masculinity and highlight crucial learning and action points for fostering a more balanced and empathetic societal discourse around men's issues.

Here are the key learning and action points:

1. Acknowledging the Crisis of Modern Men:

• Shifting Societal Landscape: Society has dramatically changed over the past 30-40 years, benefiting women significantly but often leaving men, especially working-class men, feeling lost and experiencing a sense of malaise.
• Key Statistics & Disadvantages: Men face significant disadvantages in education (outnumbered in college degrees, 70% of COVID-19 dropouts were men), health (three out of four "deaths of despair" are men), and stagnant wages since the 1970s.
• Economic Shift: The economy has moved from "labor-intensive jobs towards jobs that reward soft skills and social skills and credentials," a shift that often disadvantages men, who traditionally filled more "brawn-based" roles.
• Cultural Loss: Traditional male archetypes (protector, provider) are no longer clearly defined, and the blurring of gender lines leaves many young men unsure of "what it means to be a man". They are looking for role models and coming up short.

How To Handle Difficult People & Take Back Your Peace and Power - Mel Robbins with Jefferson Fisher

The YouTube video "How To Handle Difficult People & Take Back Your Peace and Power" by Mel Robbins, featuring trial lawyer Jefferson Fisher, provides strategies for effective communication and maintaining personal power when dealing with challenging personalities and situations. The core message is that you always have power in any interaction, particularly in your response, and mastering this can lead to a sense of control and peace in your life.

1. Fundamental Mindset Shifts:

• Reframe "Difficult People": Instead of labelling someone as difficult, narcissistic, or negative, understand that they are often only difficult because they have an underlying fear, insecurity, or unmet need. They are often seeking to be heard, understood, or feel important. Shifting your viewpoint to see them as a human being with a poor way of seeking understanding immediately lowers the intensity of the interaction.
• Own Your Power: Recognize that you always have power in any situation, and it resides in your response, your breath, and what and when you choose to speak. Do not give this power away to others, especially those with bravado or emotionally immature behaviours.
• Choose Your Battles: You don't have to engage in every argument or conversation you're invited to. It's about knowing when it's worth your time and effort to engage.
• Confidence is Quiet, Insecurity is Loud: The person who talks the least in a meeting or argument is often the most confident and knowledgeable.

Be Confident: Use Body Language to Boost Your Influence & Income - Mel Robbins with Vanessa Van Edwards

The YouTube video "Be Confident: Use Body Language to Boost Your Influence & Income" featuring expert Vanessa Van Edwards, a behavioural investigator and founder of Science of People, focuses on charisma as a learned skill that significantly impacts influence, impact, and income. The core message is that people are constantly sending and receiving social signals, often unintentionally, and mastering these signals can transform interactions.

1. Understanding Charisma and Its Importance:

• Definition: Charisma is the "missing ingredient" that triggers success in relationships and professional life, making people take you seriously and feel more confident. It is not an innate trait but a learnable skill.
• Core Components: Highly charismatic people signal a balance of high warmth (trust, likability, friendliness) and high competence (capability, power, effectiveness) at all times.
• Impact: Charisma accounts for 82% of how people evaluate you in every interaction, not just first impressions – including LinkedIn profiles, Zoom calls, phone calls, chats, and emails. It helps you be more influential, successful, and enjoy social settings.
• The "Social Lubricant": Charisma acts as a "lubricant" that smooths conversations and relationships, counteracting "crunchy" awkwardness caused by fear of rejection, criticism, or saying something stupid.

How to Complain - The School of Life

1. Recognise the Ubiquity of Hurt:

• Almost daily, people in our lives – friends, colleagues, children, or most likely, partners – will hurt us through neglect, unkindness, thoughtlessness, offensiveness, or brusqueness.
• How we respond to this "maltreatment" is fundamental to our character and significantly impacts our quality of life.

How to Enhance Performance & Learning by Applying a Growth Mindset - Dr Andrew Huberman

Andrew Huberman details the powerful concepts of growth and "stress is enhancing" mindset, providing scientific backing and practical tools for improving performance and learning.

1. Understanding Growth Mindset:

• Definition: Growth mindset is the belief that our abilities are not fixed but are malleable and can be improved through effort. It involves embracing challenge and optimising one's response to it. This concept is deeply tied to neuroplasticity, the brain's ability to change in response to experience throughout one's entire lifespan, especially through deliberate, focused learning.
• Distancing Identity from Performance: A crucial, counter-intuitive aspect of growth mindset is separating your identity from your performance. Praising someone for being "smart," "talented," or "a great athlete" can actually undermine future performance, especially for those who already perform well, because their identity becomes integrated with their results.
• Shifting Focus to Effort: Instead of attaching identity to performance, attach it to effort, the enjoyment of learning, and the process of getting better. This means shifting internal and external narratives from "intelligence praise" (labels like "smart," "talented") to "effort praise" (verbs like "you tried really hard," "you persisted").

Naval Ravikant: The Angel Philosopher - The Knowledge Project

Naval Ravikant shares insights and actionable strategies for improving life, learning, and decision-making.

1. Cultivating Reading as a Foundational Habit:

• Embrace what you love to read, even if it's "junk food," as your taste will evolve naturally. Don't let others dictate what you should read.
• Invest in books, viewing them as valuable investments that can change your life, rather than expenses.
• Reread "great books" multiple times to allow their wisdom to deeply integrate into your understanding and "become part of the threads of the tapestry of your psyche."
• Don't feel obligated to finish every book. Treat books like blogs: skim, jump around, and consume only the parts that truly interest you without guilt.
• Make reading a daily habit. The consistency of reading for even an hour or two a day, regardless of the specific content, can dramatically improve your life and intelligence. Read what you're excited about.
• Read widely and contrarianly, including content you might disagree with or consider unconventional. This prevents "herd thinking" and fosters unique insights, leading to "non average outcomes."
• Be ruthless with books that don't capture your attention. If a book isn't interesting within the first chapter or makes fundamentally untrue statements, drop it or skip ahead. Your time is valuable.
• Once you've grasped the main point of a non-fiction book, you can often put it down as much of the remaining content might be repetitive examples.

16 Life-Changing Ideas You’ve Never Heard Of - Modern Wisdom with George Mack

Reclaiming Optimism

• "Optimism as a Scam" Thesis: The video suggests that optimism has been "oversold" as a product, particularly influenced by books like "The Secret," which promoted the idea of manifesting reality through affirmations. While acknowledging successful examples like Winston Churchill, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and John Rockefeller, the hosts point out that for every such success, there are "10,000 delusional assholes". Dave Chappelle's joke about starving children in Africa not manifesting food highlights the flaws in this oversold version of optimism.
• Redefining Optimism: Instead of magical manifestation, optimism should be seen as a "one percent improvement every single day". This approach, similar to the compounding effect (e.g., James Clear's 0.1% daily improvement leading to 36x in a year), makes optimism more appealing to skeptics.
• Placebo Effect & Reticular Activating System (RAS): The widespread scientific acknowledgment of the placebo effect (100,000 PubMed results) is used to argue that an optimistic frame, while not manifesting reality, makes you more likely to "spot those opportunities" because your RAS tunes into what appeals to it.
• Optimism as Realism: Given that "every quantifiable metric available says that things are getting better," what appears to be optimism is often realism, and what looks like realism can be pessimism.
• Optimism + High Agency: Optimism is most valuable when paired with high agency, which is the ability to act and enact change. Optimism with low agency is considered "not valuable at all".

The Story of the Mexican Fisherman

An American investment banker was at the pier of a small coastal Mexican village when a small boat with just one fisherman docked.  Inside the small boat were several large yellowfin tuna.  The American complimented the Mexican on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took to catch them.

The Mexican replied, “only a little while. The American then asked why didn’t he stay out longer and catch more fish? The Mexican said he had enough to support his family’s immediate needs. The American then asked, “but what do you do with the rest of your time?”

The Mexican fisherman said, “I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take siestas with my wife, Maria, stroll into the village each evening where I sip wine, and play guitar with my amigos.  I have a full and busy life.”

The American scoffed, “I am a Harvard MBA and could help you. You should spend more time fishing and with the proceeds, buy a bigger boat. With the proceeds from the bigger boat, you could buy several boats, eventually you would have a fleet of fishing boats. Instead of selling your catch to a middleman you would sell directly to the processor, eventually opening your own cannery. You would control the product, processing, and distribution. You would need to leave this small coastal fishing village and move to Mexico City, then LA and eventually New York City, where you will run your expanding enterprise.”

The Mexican fisherman asked, “But, how long will this all take?”

To which the American replied, “15 – 20 years.”

“But what then?” Asked the Mexican.

The American laughed and said, “That’s the best part.  When the time is right you would announce an IPO and sell your company stock to the public and become very rich, you would make millions!”

“Millions – then what?”

The American said, “Then you would retire. Move to a small coastal fishing village where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take siestas with your wife, stroll to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play your guitar with your amigos.”

Can Money Actually Buy You Happiness? - Modern Wisdom with Dr Mike Israetel

Learning Points:

• The Pessimistic Fallacy: This is a widespread cognitive bias where most people tend to believe things were better in the past, are worse now, and will get worse in the future, often contradicting empirical evidence. Attempts to correct this are often met with further pessimism, with realists labelled as "Pollyannas".
• Challenging the Myth of Wage Stagnation: The popular belief that wages haven't increased significantly (e.g., since the 1970s in the US) is a misconception. This notion often fails to account for:
  • The increased remuneration and seniority of real people over time, not just static job titles.
  • The vastly improved ease and safety of modern jobs compared to brutal past roles.
  • Total Compensation: This includes a much richer offering of health benefits, daycare, time off, and bonuses, which has skyrocketed since the 1970s, making simple wage comparisons misleading.
  • Median Income and Total Compensation: Looking at these metrics provides a more accurate picture, showing that they have consistently increased in modern Western countries for as long as data has been collected.

Why You Should Take a Cold Shower Every Morning for Good Health - Wim Hof with Dr Rangan Chatterjee

Action Points:

1. Embrace the Mission of Happiness, Strength, and Health: Wake up every day with the purpose of being a "missionary" for these values, as they are scientifically proven to be within our grasp.
2. Start Cold Showers Daily:
   • Gradual Approach: Begin with a hot shower, then turn the water cold for the last 30 seconds.
   • Increase Duration: Gradually increase the cold exposure by 10 seconds each day, aiming for two to three minutes within 10 days.
   • Focus on Breathing: While in the cold, do not cramp up. Focus on long, slow out-breaths to prevent panic and allow the body to adapt.
   • Progress to Cold Baths/Nature: Once comfortable with daily cold showers, you can progress to cold baths or natural bodies of water.
   • Benefits: Daily cold showers help regulate mood, reduce stress, improve sleep, boost energy, enhance blood flow, strengthen the vascular system, and increase resilience against all types of stress.