3 MINUTE MONDAY

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See me live next Thursday 28th November at the Eventim Apollo with 3499 other people - https://chriswilliamson.live/london​

An ode to people who don’t believe in themselves.

What comes first, belief or action?

Do you need to believe you can do a thing before you do it?

“Fake it until you make it” is one option, but incredibly hard if you’re introspective or have low self-belief and high standards.

So what about make it until you fake it?

Here are some lessons I’ve learned:

• You can believe you’re not worthy of a thing and still attain it.
• You can be adamant that your efforts are going to go badly and still succeed.
• You can grip and grasp and fear and it ruin the enjoyment and be totally unwarranted, and things still go well.
• You can have no self-belief and show up anyway.
• And still win.
• You can want more for yourself without knowing exactly what that looks like.
• You can doubt the process, question your talent, be uncertain that you’re making progress, disparage your accomplishments, permanently feel like you’re not working hard enough no matter how hard you work, never give yourself a break, fail to fully feel gratitude, be terrified of never reaching your goals, and still end up in a place your 20 year old self could not imagine you’d ever get to.

So, some things to keep in mind…

Don’t grip life so tightly.

Being too serious creates a kind of brittle fragility which a playful attitude insulates you against.

Your goal is dynamic persistence over the long term.

Taking things seriously gives you a huge advantage in bursts, but chronic seriousness makes you rigid and at risk of blow-up.

What would this be like if it was 10% more enjoyable?

Don’t be so worried about winning that you forget what winning is supposed to feel like.

Is your presiding feeling when things go well one of happiness and satisfaction or one of relief?

Is it joy or simply the abatement of fear?

After a while of winning, you realise that HOW you win is more important than IF you win.

How you feel during the event is more important than the outcome of the event.

How the people who read your work are impacted is more important than how many are impacted.

Do not be so terrified of failing that even the act of winning is made miserable.

It’s all vibes man.

Ultimately you are doing things not to say you have done them, but for the experience of having done them.

When you look back, it’s the experience itself, not just the outcome that matters.

Outcomes are more important than inputs, but vibes are more important still.

One of the big determining factors in how you feel will be the outcome, but it’s not everything.

Oddly enough, optimising for how you feel detaches you from caring about outcomes, but is the very thing that drives outcomes the most.

And if it doesn’t, what do you care, you’re enjoying it.

Emotional pain is a hell of a teacher.

But it won’t kill you.

Would life be easier if you didn’t feel everything so very deeply?

Perhaps.

But the only reason you’re getting the outcomes that you want is because of your depth of thought.

As bad as it feels, this is the breadth of human existence.

You are ALIVE.

Your inner landscape is a fascinating world to explore.

Act with curiosity.

What you are doing right now is a hypothesis to be tested, not an ideology to be proved.

Is your goal to survive, or thrive, or flourish?

You have dealt with everything that life has thrown at you so far.

Do you think that’s due to the way you grasped and controlled?

The way you feared and ruminated?

Or could it be because you are capable, competent, gifted, and the world is fundamentally fair.

Over a long enough time horizon, most people get what they deserve.

You are doing this for you.

After a certain level of material comfort, the only person you need to do this for is you.

Your conscience knows when you’re being honest and not.

Optimise to make him happy.

Be the person your mum thinks you are.

Be the person your younger self wanted as a role model.

Brave, courageous, earnest, honest, virtuous, flaming.

​

MODERN WISDOM

I 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.
Jesse James West - antidepressants, overcoming the judgement of others, fitness challenges, confidence, bullying and more. Really awesome episode.

Thursday.
Vani Hari - why does American food have so many more ingredients than everywhere else? An unreal & terrifying exposé here.

Saturday.
Mads Larsen - how a professor set all of Norway’s media ablaze by talking about birthrate decline. How can we balance empowering women with encouraging family creation? Why is this topic so unpopular? Dialled.

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THINGS I'VE LEARNED

1.
​Some differences between male & female university professors in America.

“71% of men reported that protecting free speech is more important than promoting an inclusive society; 59% of women said promoting an inclusive society is more important than protecting free speech.

56% of men said that colleges should not protect students from offensive ideas; 64% of women said that they should.

51% of men said colleges should not disinvite speakers if students threaten violent protest; 67% of women said they should.

58% of men opposed a confidential reporting system at colleges which students could use to report offensive comments; 54% of women supported it.

63% of men thought controversial news stories in student papers should not need administrators’ approval before publication; 51% of women thought they should.

65% of men believed that supporting the right to make an argument is not the same as endorsing it; 51% of women disagreed.

66–76% of men support intellectually foundational texts above diversity quotas on reading lists; 44–66% of women support diversity quotas above foundational texts.

Female academics report a greater willingness than their male counterparts to support dismissal campaigns against a colleague who has conducted research that reached a controversial conclusion.

58% of men said it is never acceptable to shout down speakers or to try to prevent them from delivering their remarks; 58% of women said it was sometimes or always acceptable.

Put simply; men are relatively more interested in advancing what is empirically correct, and women are relatively more interested in advancing what is morally desirable.” — Cory Clark

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2.
​A sentence from a mother, and a sentence about a wife that every man aspires to.

“Boy I don’t care if you hit it big because you’re already number one.

Well the most outlaw thing that I've ever done, was give a good woman a ring.” — Sturgill Simpson

​

3.
​Was Trump’s victory a win for racism & white supremacy?

Trump gained support among every racial group, except white people, where he lost 1%.

​

LIFE HACK

Impericon.

I’ve been wearing tons of band t-shirts on the podcast recently.

Sleep Token, BMTH, Architects, Neck Deep, Fall Out Boy.

Impericon ships internationally and has basically every band on the planet’s merch available.

The t-shirts will fall apart after 5 wears but you’ll look sick while they’re still still in one piece.
​

Big love,
Chris x

Try my productivity drink Neutonic.
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