May 5, 2024 | #575 | read on the web | Free Version

Welcome to Brain Food, a weekly newsletter full of timeless ideas and actionable insights you can use in life and work.

FS

"Sailors have an expression about the weather: they say, the weather is a great bluffer. I guess the same is true of our human society — things can look dark, then a break shows in the clouds, and all is changed, sometimes rather suddenly."

— E.B. White’s Timeless Letter to Someone Who Lost Faith

Insights

*

"He is careful of what he reads, for that is what he will write. He is careful of what he learns, for that is what he will know."

— Annie Dillard

**

“Competence is how good you are when there is something to gain. Character is how good you are when there is nothing to gain. People will reward you for competence. But people will only love you for your character.”

— Mark Manson

***

“When we reach an impasse at any point in the creative process, it can be helpful to step away from the project to create space and allow a solution to appear.”

— Rick Rubin

Tiny Thoughts

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The more comfortable you are with yourself, the less you need the approval of others.

**

The most common response when we're scared is avoidance.

The longer we wait, the greater the fear.

Action reduces fear.

***

The price you pay for doing what everyone else does is getting what everyone else gets.

—
(Share Tiny Thought one, two, or three, on X).

TKP Podcast

Dr. Jim Loehr, one of the world’s foremost experts on mental toughness and performance psychology, offers a powerful story on fear:

“The way you speak to yourself, the way you walk, the way you carry your shoulders matters. I got a fabulous opportunity to interview one of Spain’s most famous bullfighters, Martín Vázquez. I wanted to know how a matador controls fear when they know that there’s this massive bull who is going to do everything possible to kill them, and to subdue this potential threat that the bull is seeing. How do you control fear? How do you keep from being paralyzed? Because when you choke, you’re very likely going to get gored and can very possibly die. And he smiles and he says, “Is it not obvious, Jim?” And I said, “No, I came all this way. It’s not that obvious.” And he said, “Have you ever seen a bullfighter in the ring show anything but supreme confidence? Have you ever seen them mope around with rounded shoulders, saying, ‘Oh, I’m having a bad day. I don’t feel like I’m on my game today,’ being negative or a little bit pessimistic and irritated at the bull because the bull is just not cooperating or whatever?” He said, “We start training as a young boy at a very early age on how to walk, how to turn, how to carry our shoulders, where to put our eyes. Every single detail is done meticulously.” And he said, “The bull can see that and knows that you have no fear, and that you dominate the bull by your presence. We control fear by our physical presence.”"

— Listen to this episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or watch on YouTube.

Etc.

• I enjoyed this David Remnick interview with Jerry Seinfeld. Particularly this part: "Every artist is only showing you his best. When you watch a movie, every scene—they only show you the one take that worked. Seventeen times, they missed it. You’re only seeing the peak of it. But in standup you gotta make it happen every night. That’s the difference. That’s why actors, I think, like to do the theatre. They want to be honest. They want to be held to account. And only a live audience holds you to account."
• I can't remember what prompted me to re-read The Richest Woman in America: Hetty Green in the Gilded Age, but I enjoyed it the second time more than the first. This sentence is very revealing. "A passerby might say she looked as poor as a church mouse, but her clothes were merely a costume to conceal her incredible wealth." (I posted all my highlights from the book in our learning community).

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Thanks for reading,

— Shane

P.S. A perfectly timed photo.

P.P.S. My instant NYT bestseller, Clear Thinking: Turning Ordinary Moments into Extraordinary Results, is currently 34% off on Amazon. For international editions and translations, click here.

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