3-2-1: On mental toughness, when confidence fools you, and the importance of neighborhoods

Happy 3-2-1 Thursday!

Here are 3 ideas, 2 quotes, and 1 question to consider this week...

I.

"You can handle whatever you face."

(Share this on Twitter)

​II.

"Do not mistake a confident explanation for an accurate prediction.

An engineer can predict how much weight a steel bridge will hold and you can be quite sure reality will match their calculation. That's an accurate prediction.

Meanwhile, strongly held opinions about what will happen in markets or sports or politics have little predictive power. A lot of what you hear can be summarized as: confident, but inaccurate."

(Inspired by a recent conversation with Morgan Housel.)

III.

"One of life's counterintuitive lessons is that you will often gain energy by spending a little bit of energy.

When you feel lethargic and like you want to lay around all day, it is usually the case that getting up and moving will make you feel better than simply sitting around. Getting outside for 10 minutes or doing the first set of a workout or simply stretching on the floor for a moment — anything to get your body moving — will often leave you feeling more energized.

If you want to get your day going, then get your body going. It's harder for the mind to be sluggish when the body is moving."

​

I.

Author Cormac McCarthy on the benefits of bad luck:

"You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from."

Source: No Country for Old Men
​​

​II.

Entrepreneur Phil Levin on the importance of neighborhoods:

"You are going to spend 1000x more time in your surrounding 5 blocks than you will in any other neighborhood in your city. Thinking about all the things that New York City has—or the next city has—is a lot less important than thinking about the things within the five blocks where you live.

Most neighborhoods in your city you might never step foot in. They might as well be in the other side of the country. But the things in your immediate vicinity are the things that are going to dominate your life. So picking and influencing your neighborhood is really important... the neighborhood determines quite a bit about our life and our happiness."

Source: The Importance of Picking Your Neighborhood

​

How do you want to feel at the end of today? What do you need to do now, so you can feel this way?

(Share this on Twitter)

​

Want to share this issue of 3-2-1 via text, social media, or email? Just copy and paste this link:

https://jamesclear.com/3-2-1/june-20-2024

​

​

Until next week,

James Clear
​Atomic Habits, the #1 best-selling book
​Atoms, the official Atomic Habits app
​3-2-1 newsletter with 3 million subscribers

​

p.s. Sex, drugs, and oats. ​

​