Podcaster with 1bn+ plays. I write about the most important lessons from the best thinkers on the planet. 300,000+ people read my free newsletter. Press subscribe to join.
3MM: Bad Things, Conspiracies & Relationships
3 MINUTE MONDAYHi friend, See me at my London Live Show on Thursday 28th November at the Eventim Apollo - General Tickets still available! https://chriswilliamson.live/london 3 weeks until Australia! Brisbane 6th, Melbourne 8th & Sydney 9th November - General Tickets still available! https://chriswilliamson.live/australia I recently learned about The Fading Affect Bias. The goodness and badness of memories fade over time, but the badness fades faster. Some bad memories even become good memories, while good memories rarely become bad memories. It makes sense that both joy and pain fade with time—stuff just feels less intense when it's farther away—but why does pain fade faster? It’s because when bad stuff happens to us, our psychological immune systems turn on. We start to rationalise (“Why would I want to be with someone who doesn’t want to be with me?”), downplay (“Breakups happen all the time in high school, it’s no big deal”), distance (“I never liked her that much anyway!”) and distract (“I’m gonna go play video games”). These mental processes function like emotional antibodies, taking the sting out of bad memories. We don’t use them on good memories, so good memories keep their lustre longer. Everything is temporary, bad stuff especially. “Tragedy + time = comedy" is the closest thing psychology has to a chemical equation. — Adam Mastroianni So even when things are going badly, know that in future you’ll probably be able to laugh about this. Discomfort in the present can be very painful, don’t make it worse by fearing how you’ll feel about it in the future, you’ll be fine. MODERN WISDOMI do a podcast where I pretend to have a British accent. You should subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. This week’s upcoming episodes: Monday. Thursday. Saturday. THINGS I'VE LEARNED1. “If male suicide in America had happened at the same rate as female suicide, half a million fewer men would have died since 1999.” — Richard Reeves 2. New research presents causal evidence that conspiracy beliefs can damage relationships. The study found that when one person expresses conspiracy beliefs, relationship satisfaction decreases, offering proof that the endorsement of conspiracy theories can impact the quality of interpersonal connections. Participants reported significantly lower relationship satisfaction with the person they perceived to hold conspiracy beliefs, compared to the non-believer. Additionally, participants felt less attitudinal and relational closeness with the conspiracy believer, suggesting that differences in attitudes, especially related to conspiracy theories, might strain relationships. An important finding was that the degree of this effect depended on the participants’ own conspiracy beliefs: the effect is mitigated if both individuals hold similar beliefs. — h/t Journal of Applied Social Psychology 3. “Painful lesson over the past ~20 years of relationships: in the medium run it’s exciting to feel hype about people who seem to relate strongly in specific ways, but in long run it’s really how you handle misunderstandings, conflict, confusion, disagreement that go the distance” — Visakan Veerasamy LIFE HACKChoose window seats on busy flights. I’ve war-gamed this a lot over the summer while sat on planes and have come up with a definitive answer. Having the window seat provides two clear advantages. Not being disturbed by other passengers getting up to go to the bathroom. Control over the window blind (sometimes blindS if you get lucky). Both are crucial for sleep and general peace. Now you do lose arm-width on the side closest to the window, but you also lose that in the middle seat, and the benefits outweigh the costs. Big love, Try my productivity drink Neutonic. PS |
3 Minute Monday
Podcaster with 1bn+ plays. I write about the most important lessons from the best thinkers on the planet. 300,000+ people read my free newsletter. Press subscribe to join.
3 MINUTE MONDAY Hi friend, We live with a quiet superstition: that beneath the noise of our habits, mistakes and contradictions lies a truer version of ourselves - a self that is fundamentally good. An alcoholic who gets sober is “becoming who he really is”, a sober man who starts drinking again has “lost his way.” In Scrooge, Dickens didn’t just write about a man who swapped stinginess for generosity; he wrote about a man who discovered his real nature. When Richard Nixon fell in disgrace,...
3 MINUTE MONDAY Hi friend, Humans have an asymmetry of errors. We over-index exceptions - we use things that break the pattern we’ve come to expect as a serious learning opportunity. But we tend to only learn much faster from errors of commission (things we do), not errors of omission (things we don’t do). You only learn the sting of misplaced trust when someone betrays you, but when you refuse to trust and miss out on love, partnership, or help, the loss leaves no scar to remind you. It’s...
3 MINUTE MONDAY Hi friend, My North America live tour is getting close to selling out - LA, Vancouver, Toronto and Nashville are all gone. New York City, Austin, Boston, Denver, Salt Lake City & Chicago - limited tickets left. Come and see me live. “You are a different character in the mind of each person who knows you, because their impression of you is made of the bare bones of what they’ve seen, fleshed out by their knowledge of themselves.” — Gurwinder Bhogal The Lonely Chapter has...