PsycHacks

The beginning of a new year is a time for people to set goals for the next twelve months. Unfortunately, many good-intentioned resolutions fail, often due to a lack of discipline. In this episode, I will discuss an easy and surefire way to ensure your own compliance with any new habit you're attempting to cultivate. The catch? No one likes doing it. However, it's precisely this aversion that functionally guarantees success. I'm almost certain it will work for you.

The baseball great Pete Rose has been permanently banned from the sport for betting on the outcome of his team's games while he was a manager. However, his defense is -- and has always been -- that he only bet on his team to win. Therefore, his incentives as an individual gambler and team manager were aligned. Controversy aside, I love the idea of betting on yourself. Not only does it exhibit the confidence that -- all things being equal -- you believe that you can win, but it also increases focus and motivation by getting "skin in the game."

Over the past two years, there have been wide-spread, systematic attempts to restrict, suppress, and censor misinformation and lies. Unfortunately, this approach is problematic, because the suppression of dialogue that reveals truth is actually much more dangerous than the dissemination of lies. While circulating lies can certainly cause harm, it's not really possible for them to gain a foothold in the collective consciousness if the truth is also circulating. And the best way to facilitate the emergence of truth is by preserving the free exchange of information and ideas.

In a scarcity mentality, we lose what we cling to in fear because we believe it to be preferable to the nothingness we assume would take its place. Developing an abundance mentality necessitates that we cultivate greater trust in the universe to provide opportunities to fulfill our needs and desires. In this episode, I discuss an example of scarcity mentality in my own history and how I learned to have faith in abundance.

The town liar lies. That what the town liar does. If you go to the town liar to hear the truth, it's your own fault if your feelings get hurt over being lied to. Much of the frustration and disappointment we're subject to experiencing with respect to the behavior of others boils down to our refusal to accept certain aspects of reality. In this episode, I'll discuss tactics for dismantling the cognitive distortions that can sometimes prevent us from seeing clearly.

One of my personal pet peeves is indirect communication. This is because, as a communication strategy, it often seeks to protect the indirect communicator at the expense of the other party. After all, if you never actually ask for something, you can never be rejected, can you? In this episode, I'll discuss a simple, practical tactic you can use to retrain your indirectly communicating partner: the honest clarifying question.

The general conceptualization of heaven is that it is a place of unremitting pleasure and comfort. However, it doesn't take much effort to understand that such an arrangement would likely prove unsatisfactory in the long run. In this episode, I discuss a personal conceptualization of heaven: as a series of challenges which we are pre-destined to overcome, but which present the plausible possibility of failure. We can't not win, but we must be made to believe we can lose for our own good.

Occasionally, I'm confronted with the reality of needing to have a conversation with someone that I don't particularly want to have. And this can contribute to feelings of anxiety and dread. A tactic that I've developed to get through these situations is to simply "say my line." I pretend that I'm an actor who simply needs to say his line on cue in order for the plot to progress forward. I don't need to be charming or witty or attractive. I just need to move my mouth in order to do my part.

All other things being equal, the older you get, the harder it becomes to make new friends. So how do you go about forming new friendships as an adult? I'll examine this question through the lens of "Persona 5," and excellent JRPG. In turns out this game has a fairly accurate blueprint on how to progress from casual acquaintance to intimate confidant. The keys are time, shared interests, and reciprocal self-disclosure.

Control isn't the basis of a loving, long-term relationship, because control is ultimately disrespectful and unsustainable. The key to a respectful and enduring relationship is to hold the other like sand: not too loose, but definitely not too tight. Like sand, the tighter you attempt to hold others, the more they will slip through your fingers. Gentle support keeps more sand in your hands for longer periods of time.