Gratitude Hack/Sobriety App/Journaling Routine

I definitely judged a book by its cover with this YouTuber at first. 

Alex Hormozi looks like just another buff entrepreneur bro on YouTube, but his videos are so insightful. YouTube must have realized that I secretly liked them because I kept getting recommended more and more of his videos. This one here has stayed with me for days straight. 

The way he imagines he’s an old man looking back on his life now is so relatable and practical. I’ve been trying it out, and it works.

Dealing with addiction is so incredibly difficult. 

The farther along you get, the more all-consuming your addiction becomes. I’ve definitely had my own minor addictions. My OCD doesn’t help matters. But thankfully I’ve never had it completely take over my life. Still, I’ve worked in a dual-diagnosis / addictive disorders unit in a hospital and I’ve learned how bad it can get. People who keep fighting are so courageous. 

I Am Sober helps you track days sober for all kinds of things. It also has a built-in community of other people staying sober and features like calculating how much money you've saved by staying sober. 

I learned about this while spending time learning about the Instagram poetry community this week. Someone had been tracking their days free of self-harm. I like how this app also connects you to others going through the same thing, something that is so important when trying to deal with anything traumatic / extremely difficult in your life.

Thank you to a very kind newsletter subscriber for sharing this with me after I sent out a link to calming YouTube videos in last week’s issue. 

They pointed out that if you listen to calming YouTube videos to fall asleep, and you haven’t paid for YouTube premium, you’ll most likely be hit with ads as you’re trying to wind down. The River of Calm radio station only plays peaceful music, and I was assured that there are no ads!

Another pro tip from this thoughtful subscriber: use the My Tuner Radio app to listen to this station—any many, many more—for free.

I’ve been following Nicolas Cole for years. His writing is all over the Internet. For instance, he was the top writer on Quora for a while. He's also posted on Medium, then Twitter, then LinkedIn, which is where I found this insight.

His discipline is out of this world. 

His recent post on LinkedIn made me stop and think about my own journaling routine. 

There’s no doubt that journaling every morning has changed my life. I also like how he’s settled on prompts that work for him. What’s most important when it comes to journaling: Do what works for you. Here are the prompts: 1) What did I do yesterday? 2) What am I working on? 3) What’s coming up 4) What am I grateful for?

I listened to this entire podcast episode featuring psychologist Gary Klein this week and thought it was very, very good. If you’re a curious person, you’re going to love it. 

Rather than hit you over the head with why I liked it, here are the timestamps to see if it looks interesting to you:

00:00

– Intro

01:02

– What sparks insights for decision making?

08:08

– How to maximize insights personally and institutionally

12:59

– On changing experience

14:45

– What’s the difference between expertise and experience?

20:33

– How do we evaluate people’s decision making?

29:30

– What Gary means by “Mental Model”

31:45

– Reflections on the Learning Loop

34:47

– What role stories play in situations

37:28

– On exploring anomalies

42:29

– How do people become true masters of their practice?

48:29

– Cognitive Flexibility Theory

50:09

– How to conduct useful pre-mortems

01:01:13

– How to limit cognitive biases

01:08:04

– How to make team decisions

01:21:51

– The Zone of Indifference

01:24:57

– On shadowboxing

01:33:34

– What role environment plays in decision making

There are days when I really, really hate that I have anxiety. But it’s just how I am and likely always will be. 

This short, simple article with four tips was really helpful. 

Sometimes I need pithy wisdom to remind me to get out of my own head. 

I hadn’t heard of the strategy of engaging a core value unrelated to the topic of anxiety. The idea is to take a value and do something for 5-15 minutes (keep it short!) related to embodying that core value. Just getting started and doing it for a small amount of time almost always helps me feel better. 

Little bits of momentum lead to big jumps.

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