5, 3, 29—Random Numbers That'll Improve Your Life
Article Round-Up: 6.25.23
Enjoy this week’s curated list of articles, podcasts, and more from the web to help you live a better, healthier life.
Coaching Conversations: The Battle Between Long vs Short-Term Goals
Three important points to pull from this client conversation:
Most often, the things that are fun right now actively detract from the things you want later. It’s helpful to make this assumption whenever you’re faced with a decision for how to act in the present. (Actions that promote long-term goal achievement are usually far less enjoyable.)
This doesn’t mean that the fun things right now aren’t important. Most of us are bad at judging the implications of quality vs quantity. (A few very high quality experiences can be orders of magnitude more significant to our lives than a very high quantity of mediocre experiences.)
When faced with the decision to act in the interests of a short-term pleasure or a long-term goal ask yourself, “Am I willing to delay the achievement of my long-term goal for this experience right in front of me?” This helps shift the perspective of the cost you’re paying and can help differentiate the high quality experiences from the low quality ones.
“5 Skills Everyone Should Know To Improve Their Social Life”
Takeaway: In this post I’m sharing five skills everyone should know to improve their social life. Cocktails, food, dancing, and socializing, following this advice will make you seem more confident, interesting, and fun to be around.
“3 Equations For Better Relationships”
Takeaway: A happy life is a connected one, according to the author. She shares three equations to shift your relationship with your partner:
Connectedness = positivity + synchrony + mutual care
Relationship Satisfaction = What's Going On Around Us + What's Going On Inside Us + What's Going On Between Us
Fighting Better = Soft Start + Receptivity + De-escalation + Positivity
Read the full article for a breakdown of each.
Takeaway: Learning is one of the wondrous experiences of life. Ideas are gifts to be cherished. What follows in this article are 29 ideas worth pondering. Here are a few of my favorites to get you started:
“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”
“Growth and comfort do not coexist.”
“It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.” (Shoutout to my HP fans.)
“Always go above and beyond; strive to deliver the Baker’s Dozen. Like the cherry atop a dessert, the well-placed, unexpected detail is often the sweetest part.”