3 MINUTE MONDAY

Hi friend,

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Anyway, onto what I’ve been thinking about this week…

This describes a special category of problem that I think about quite often.

Person A has the talent to become successful but doesn’t have the resilience to handle the price of success.

A pop star has an amazing voice and generates incredible buzz with her debut album.

Immediately she’s thrust into the limelight and forced to handle an onslaught of scrutiny, criticism and compliments.

Her nervous disposition gets turbocharged until eventually she suffers with so much anxiety that she can’t even perform her own songs on stage because of how much pressure she feels.

Every failure on stage reinforces her fear of engaging with music.

The very art form she once felt liberated by has now become a tormenter.

Other examples: business owners who crack under pressure, sports stars who get the yips, lawyers and traders who need to medicate themselves to deal with the demands of their position.

Person B desperately wants to achieve success but doesn’t have the work ethic to be able to make it happen.

A young man wants to lift himself out of the life he was born into.

He likes to consume the content of good, effective, inspiring thinkers and advice-givers online.

He realises that if he applies himself he can build a life he’ll love and feel proud of.

But every time he tries to discipline himself into working hard, he fails.

He is unable to wake up on time, or focus on reading or studying or creating a plan, he constantly throws himself off-track by going out and partying with his friends when he should be locking in, he’s regularly distracted by random side quests.

Other examples: aspiring athletes who can’t stick to a bedtime or diet plan, amazing artists who are permanently distracted by other projects, students who fail resit class after resit class because they’re sleeping in and not studying.

All of these people have the desire and the capacity to achieve success, but not the constitution to make it happen.

And that’s a special kind of hell.

But you only have three options; do what needs to be done, rid yourself of the aspiration, or continue to be tortured in neutral.

You can go deeper into the pursuit to achieve your dream, or move on from it altogether.

Or there is a third option - stay in purgatory hell, but that’s horrendous and actually worse than abandoning everything.

Feel free to choose.

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MODERN WISDOM

I do a podcast where I pretend to have a British accent.
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This week’s upcoming episodes:

Monday.
Dr Daniel Amen - founder of the organisation with the largest number of brain scans in the world on how to improve your mind for optimal function. Supplements, habits, diet advice, everything. Really important episode. Listen now on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

Thursday.
Underoath - this was so much fun. 3 hours with Aaron & Tim from one of the biggest bands on the planet. What is the reality of life on the road for 20 years? How does touring impact your mental health? How much anxiety really exists in the music industry? Are most bands fake now?

Saturday.
Jerry Coyne - why does everyone hate evolutionary theories? Why is evolution true? Why are universities so against hearing controversial ideas? How many academics are censoring themselves?

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THINGS I'VE LEARNED

1.
​House husbands are bad for marital satisfaction.

“Married moms are less happy when their husbands are at home than when their husbands are employed full time.

When women lose their jobs, there’s no effect on the risk of divorce.

When men lose their jobs, their risk of divorce goes up 33%.” — Rob Henderson

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2.
​Not having children to save the environment won’t work. But feel free not to anyway.

“A new paper argues that reducing the size of the human population would have close to zero effect on climate change.

A baby born today will have a smaller carbon footprint than one born a decade or two ago, and their kids’ carbon footprints will be even smaller.

As a result of population momentum, population numbers won’t decline for several generations - and by the time they do, people’s carbon footprints may be negligible anyway.

The authors estimate that population reduction would lower global temperatures by only 0.05°C compared to population stabilisation.” — Steve Stewart-Williams

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3.
​Some questions to ask yourself if your mood is regularly low.

Am I depressed or is my life depressing?

Am I anxious or would any normal person find my life anxiety-inducing?

Am I a loner or are the people around me not supportive?

Your mental health problems might not need your brain fixing, they might need your life fixing.

*this is not the same as externalising your locus of control and outsourcing your sense of agency. YOU still need to fix things, it’s just that you should focus on your outer life situation before you to focus on your inner landscape.

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LIFE HACK

Gymshark has a summer sale this week.

There’s a huge flash sale happening on Thursday so don’t buy anything before then if you’re thinking about grabbing some new kit.
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Big love,
Chris x

Try my productivity drink Neutonic.
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PS
The Modern Wisdom Reading List Vol. 2 is final