He always knows how to hit me where it hurts the most. “It was all for nothing.” According to one of the more annoying voices in my head, if I don’t remember something, it was wasted. Perhaps you know the feeling: you’ve lost your memory of an awesome event or an instructive book. You feel […]
Categorie: Knowing yourself
Who Are You ‘Really’? Traits, Dispositions, And Vanishing Autonomy
Let’s get one thing straight. I am the most interesting thing in the universe. And so are you. So let’s think about who we are. I used to be doubtful about ‘who we are’ — about personality — as an overarching thing ‘over and above’ consistent regularities in behavior: “I am all these behavioral tendencies — to argue when I’m annoyed, drunk or tired and to […]
This Is Water: How To Understand People (A Little Bit)
In 1806, US entrepreneur Frederic Tudor sailed to tropical Martinique with a big scheme to sell ice to the locals. Sounds like a solid business plan. Didn’t work. The islanders found the product to be nothing other than a curiosity. Having never experienced a cold drink, they could not get why ice had any such […]
Learn to Express, Not Impress
Something’s wrong. Using Instagram, Facebook and whatnot, my generation of millennials curatestheir lives: we present ourselves to the world as how we want to be seen. Not as how we are. Of course, the desire to make oneself look good is nothing new, but nowadays we have more control over our appearance than ever. It’s not that we mention […]
Who Are You ‘Really’? Personalities, Narratives And Psychology’s Crisis
Human beings are a complicated bunch. I, for one, consider myself to be an introverted person. I dislike big groups, don’t get any energy at all from meeting new people and two of my most favorite things in the world are quiet libraries and silent nature. My former flatmate in Budapest, on the other hand, saw me as an extrovert. […]
Meta-Ethics: Think Way Too Deep About Why Things Matter In Life
What are the most important things in life? Here’s my answer: 1. Family 2. Friends 3. Work What does your list look like? I hope this exercise didn’t consume all your thinking power — we’re just getting started. Second question: Why are these the items on your list; what about them makes them important? Be warned: this question has been known to cause […]
F. Scott Fitzgerald And What We Owe To Ourselves
F. Scott Fitzgerald, author of the classic The Great Gatsby(1925), is widely regarded as one greatest writers of the 20th century. Although Fitzgerald’s passion lay in writing novels, only his first book sold well enough to support the opulent lifestyle that he and his wife Zelda adopted as New York celebrities. To make matters worse, his […]
My Year Of Growth And Disappointments
The academic year 2017–2018 is done. Time to reflect. To keep track of my progress, I conduct monthly evaluations. They are metric-based and are designed to answer the question: ‘Am I making enough progress towards the goals I’ve set?’ This annual review goes beyond assessing goal-attainment and covers the deeper stuff. It reminds me to look back on […]
How To Discover What The Hell You Want To Make Of Your Life
When I keep procrastinating on something, that can mean two things. One, the task involves something scary or too difficult: I’m too afraid or not ready. Two, my procrastination-instinct knows something that my conscious thoughts haven’t figured out yet. In cases where the second explanation is the correct one, procrastination is a signal that the thing you’re […]
You Are The Average Of The Five People You Spend The Most Time With
Take a look at this Abraham Lincoln quote and think about it: “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the ax.” Whenever you set out to achieve something, it might come in handy to invest a lot in the tools that you’re going to be using. When one has a goal, one should […]
