Stop Obsessing Over "What-If", Defining Your Main Character, The Correlation Trap, & More
Article Round-Up: 11.13.22
Enjoy this week’s curated list of articles, podcasts, and more from the web.
Coaching Conversations:
“What Does ‘Be The Main Character of Your Life’ Actually Mean?”
Takeaway: Read the transcript of this coaching call as Patrick and I discuss what it means to be the main character of his life.
Being The “Main Character” Means:
You define your values and goals. You get to determine what the main character role in your story looks like. No one else.
Once you’ve defined the character, live by that code. Don’t let external or societal pressures cause you to stray from your values or your mission. Protect and live your mission.
The main character leads through inspiration, not fear. Inspire others through kindness and hope. Living your mission sets the example for others in your life to discover their own main character’s role. Leading through fear is the villain’s job.
“How To Stop Obsessing Over ‘What-If?’”
Takeaway: You know the feeling. You fell short on a task, in a relationship, or on a goal, and your brain starts obsessing over every little thing you did wrong—every little thing you could have changed for a better outcome.
This is called counterfactual thinking.
It turns out, according to the author, there are three factors that can increase the likelihood of counterfactual thinking:
Proximity. The closer you feel to success, the more you’ll obsess over how you didn’t succeed.
Routine. If you usually have a routine, and then you fail after deviating from that routine, you’ll believe the deviation was to blame.
Control. If you’re a person who usually feels in control, you’ll be kicking yourself for how you could have done something different.
Unfortunately, there’s no good way to get over beating yourself up in these scenarios. Each person finds different ways to cope. But a point the author made, that he heard from psychologist Amy Summerville, is that you wouldn’t be experiencing counterfactual thinking if you didn’t care a lot about the outcome.
Their advice: Accept it as the price for caring deeply about something.
“Armchair Experts: Interview With Constance Wu” [Podcast]
Takeaway: This interview with actress Constance Wu—star of the television series “Fresh Off The Boat” and the movie “Crazy Rich Asians”—shares some of her experiences in acting and in life. Primarily, their conversation about “seeing things from others’ perspectives” was very captivating. (Jump to the 20:00 mark for the start of this conversation.) *Warning: This conversations includes stories of sexual assault.*
Just For Fun:
Takeaway: As the saying goes, “Correlation does not equal causation.”
This website pools together data to illustrate this point in a humorous way—by finding obscure phenomena that are almost perfectly correlated.
For example:
The correlation between per capita cheese consumption and the number of people who die by being tangled in their bedsheets.
The divorce rate in Maine and the per capita consumption of margarine.
Number of people who drowned by falling into a pool and the number of films Nicolas Cage has appeared in.