Good morning, friends!

On May 6, 1968, astronaut Neil Armstrong took off on a simulated lunar landing mission in Houston. It was a routine test flight — his 22nd at this point in time.

In the first five minutes of the flight, a thruster stuck and Armstrong suddenly lost control of the vehicle. About 200 feet above ground, he chose to eject himself from the aircraft. The vehicle crashed and burned while Armstrong parachuted safely to Earth.

The default response for most humans would be to react emotionally after an event like this. You better believe that if I had to self-eject from an aircraft, I would re-live every single second of it, make a big deal about it, call everyone I know, and likely develop a debilitating fear of flying. At the very least, I'd tell my astronaut buddies about how I just nearly died.

Armstrong did none of those things. After the crash, fellow astronaut Alan Bean saw Armstrong, still in his flight suit, filling out paperwork. They made small talk, and Armstrong went about his business. After this encounter, someone informed Bean about what had just happened. Bean couldn't believe Armstrong hadn't even mentioned it.

He walked to Armstrong's office, asked if he had just crashed the lunar lander, and Armstrong simply said: "I did." When Bean asked him to explain, Armstrong casually said: "I lost control and had to bail out of the darn thing." That was the end of the conversation.

When interviewed about this incident, Bean said that if any other astronaut had survived a crash landing like this, he would've joked about his piloting skills and entertained his peers with every detail.

Here's what Bean said about Armstrong's response:

"I don't think it was that Neil was so extraordinarily cooler than the other guys. But offhand, I can't think of another person, let alone another astronaut, who would have just gone back to his office after ejecting a fraction of a second before getting killed.

"He never got up at an all-pilots meeting and told us anything about it. That was an incident that colored my opinion about Neil ever since. He was so different than other people."

The big difference between Armstrong and most people is that he didn't internalize this event as a traumatic, near-death experience. Why? Because Armstrong lived in chaos. In training, he went to the extremes every day. As a result, he developed a greater threshold for discomfort than most of his peers.

Sometimes, we subject ourselves to hardship voluntarily, and sometimes, life throws us into a vortex of suffering without our consent.

There's a phenomenon psychologists call "the psychological immune system," which refers to the cognitive mechanisms that protect us from experiencing extreme negative emotions.

When it comes to imagining the emotional impact that future events will have on us, humans are pretty poor predictors. Studies show that in forecasting our responses from mildly uncomfortable to greatly traumatic, people typically misjudge how good or bad they will feel — and for how long. In other words, we tend to underestimate our ability to weather ferocious emotional storms.

I've profiled a number of individuals who have survived — and thrived — in the face of tragedy.

When he was 21 years old, Stephen Hawking was diagnosed with early-onset ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease, which would gradually paralyze every part of his body. Luckily, Hawking would defy the odds and live another 55 years since the day he was given a death sentence. He became a world-renowned physicist, wrote best-selling books, visited every continent, became a father, appeared on "The Simpsons," went up on a hot-air balloon, and took part in a zero-gravity flight.

Actor Keanu Reeves was only 3 years old when his father left the family, he struggled with academics because of his dyslexia, his younger sister was diagnosed with leukemia, his daughter was stillborn at eight months, and his ex-girlfriend died in a car accident. Despite everything he's been through, Reeves has taught us that tragedy can be used to create a beautiful life filled with joy and acts of kindness.

Edith Eva Eger was a 16-year-old who had a promising career in ballet when her family was taken to the Auschwitz concentration camp. She survived the impossible and went on to get married, have kids, move to the United States, and become a clinical psychologist.

From Eger, I learned about "choice therapy." Through her work as a psychologist, she helped people recover from severe trauma by showing them that ultimate freedom lies in the power to choose.

Suffering is universal, Eger says, "but victimhood is optional." We're all likely to be victimized in some way through the course of our lives. At some point, we will suffer some kind of affliction or abuse, caused by circumstances or people over which we have little to no control. "This is victimization," she says. "It comes from the outside. It's the neighborhood bully, the boss who rages, the spouse who hits, the lover who cheats, the discriminatory law, the accident that lands you in the hospital."

On the flip side, victimhood comes from the inside. No one can make you a victim but you. "We become victims not because of what happens to us but when we choose to hold on to our victimization. We develop a victim's mind — a way of thinking and being that is rigid, blaming, pessimistic, stuck in the past, unforgiving, punitive, and without healthy limits or boundaries. We become our own jailers when we choose the confines of the victim's mind.”

For every Armstrong, Hawking, Reeves, and Eger, there are hundreds of people who buckled under the weight of stressful life events. That's what's so puzzling and counterintuitive about the human condition: Nearly every experience is contextual.

Maria Konnikova writes: "Human beings are capable of worry and rumination: we can take a minor thing, blow it up in our heads, run through it over and over, and drive ourselves crazy until we feel like that minor thing is the biggest thing that ever happened. Frame adversity as a challenge, and you become more flexible and able to deal with it, move on, learn from it, and grow. Focus on it, frame it as a threat, and a potentially traumatic event becomes an enduring problem; you become more inflexible, and more likely to be negatively affected."

For some of us, this past year has been the cause of an immense amount of loss, suffering, and sadness. For others, it's been a time of re-prioritization, self-reflection, and a great deal of learning.

Take Armstrong's near-death experience as a metaphor for life: You have no control over whether your vehicle jams at the last second, but you have the choice to self-eject, move toward safety, and go forward with life in spite of past setbacks.

As Armstrong once said: "I believe that every human has a finite amount of heartbeats. I don't intend to waste any of mine."

Read the Full Article Here

THE PROFILE DOSSIER: On Wednesday, premium members received The Profile Dossier, a comprehensive deep-dive on a prominent individual. It featured Gay Talese, the pioneer of narrative non-fiction. Become a premium member, and read it here.

A WORD FROM OUR PARTNER: On Deck Angels (ODA) is an eight-week fellowship for top angel investors looking to hone their investing craft through community, tactical workshops and deal flow. ODA addresses topics such as: mental models and investing frameworks, establishing a track record, adding value post-investment, and learning how to build an angel brand. Some of the founding fellows include Dan Romero, VP of Coinbase; Michael Vaughan: COO of Venmo; and Ann Ferracane, founder of Patch Ventures. Interested in joining ODA? Learn more and apply here.

—

PROFILES.

— The Guggenheims of NFT art
— America's relationship guru
— The child star who built a new life
— China's vaping billionaire
— The billion-dollar influencer stock market [**HIGHLY RECOMMEND**]
— The company building the future of audio
— Silicon Valley's hottest startup

PEOPLE TO KNOW.

The Guggenheims of NFT art: In March, NFT art began seizing headlines. Mike Winklemann, also known as Beeple, became the poster child for NFTs (non-fungible tokens) when he sold his digital artwork for $69 million. Some artists have made a killing, but it's the early collectors who have made the big bucks. There's WhaleShark, Pablo, and etyoung — meet some of the biggest and most active collectors. (Bloomberg)

“Our life is slowly turning from physical to digital."

America's relationship guru: Couples therapist Esther Perel believes our relationships determine the quality of our lives. Perel identifies less as a psychotherapist and more so as a scriptwriter, the person who propels a plot forward when life’s main characters are otherwise paralyzed by self-doubt. Here's how she helps couples confront and resolve their most troubling problems. (Want more? Read Perel's Dossier here.)

"Therapy is an art for me, not just a science or a method. For that, you need to be able to use many different tools.”

The child star who built a new life: Justin Bieber earned his success while he was still a child; then his gift turned into his biggest curse. How do you become a well-adjusted person when you don’t have access to a single normal thing in your entire life? You can’t. As a teen, he made pretty much every single mistake a child star could make, including ones that nearly destroyed him. Now—fortified by God, marriage, and a new album—Justin Bieber is putting his life back together, one positive, deliberate step at a time. (GQ)

"I have a wife who I adore. I feel safe. I feel like my relationship with God is wonderful. And I have this outpouring of love that I want to be able to share with people, you know?”

China's vaping billionaire: Kate Wang, 39, jumped into the ranks of the world’s richest people when her vaping company RLX went public on the New York Stock Exchange in January. Now the Procter & Gamble and Uber veteran faces looming threats from Chinese regulators and skeptical investors. While Wang doesn’t claim to have all the answers, she is unbowed. “It’s not like I’m a superwoman,” she says. “Tough problems inspire me.” (Forbes)

“It’s not an easy job. I have a lot to learn and I have a gap to close.”

COMPANIES TO WATCH.

The billion-dollar influencer stock market: The basic idea behind crypto social network BitClout is to create a token-based marketplace for shares in someone’s (or something’s) reputation and influence. Go viral on Instagram for something delightful? Bull run. Say something stupid on Twitter? Could be the start of a bear market. BitClout’s backers, who include Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia, and Social Capital, have poured more than $100 million into it. So why is it so controversial? (New York Magazine)

"When BitClout arrived on the internet last month, it befuddled much of the cryptocurrency world."

The company building the future of audio: Buzzy audio app Clubhouse offers users a chance to get in on the ground level of the next big platform and find success — something that’s almost impossible to do on the big, established platforms. The biggest issue facing Clubhouse right now is the race to innovate and beat its competitors, most of whom already commend sizable user bases and massive engineering teams. Can it beat behemoths Twitter and Facebook? (The Verge)

“I get anxiety when I’m not on it. I have Clubhouse FOMO.”

Silicon Valley's hottest startup: The pandemic threatened to clobber payment startup Stripe. Instead, it turbocharged it. When more than 500,000 doctors’ offices, farmers markets and other businesses migrated to online payments, they used Stripe to do it. Now sitting atop a $95 billion valuation—the highest for a private Silicon Valley company—Stripe is bulking up overseas, preparing to go public and working to build a one-stop financial supermarket for the internet economy. Here's how Stripe became the darling of Silicon Valley. (WSJ; reply to this email if you can't access the story)

“I was quite blown away by just how much opportunity still exists."

This installment of The Profile is free for everyone. If you would like to get full access to all of the recommendations, including today’s audio and video sections, sign up below.

AUDIO TO HEAR.

Sendhil Mullainathan on manufacturing nostalgia: Sendhil Mullainathan, author of Scarcity, says you should write a few emails to yourself for "future you" to open in five years. "The shock value even at three months will blow you away," he says. "Write anything. I mean, it's like a sci-fi movie." Mullainathan explains how this nostalgia rooted in "naive realism" affects our mental state. This is one of the best podcast episodes I've listened to in some time. (Link available to premium members.)

Esther Wojcicki on teaching kids to develop confidence: How do you teach kids to be secure and confident? Start by trusting them with small acts of responsibility. "We have restricted the freedom of our kids," says author and educator Esther Wojcicki. "We don't let our kids go anywhere by themselves." Here's how Wojcicki recommends molding your child and helping them develop habits that will turn them into independent adults. (Link available to premium members.)

VIDEOS TO SEE.

Megan McArthur on dominating fear: On Thursday, astronaut Megan McArthur will put on her custom space suit and strap in the same Crew Dragon capsule seat that her husband, Bob Behnken, rode to the International Space Station last summer. Behnken spent two months on the ISS, while McArthur will spend six. In this video, she explains what her mission will entail, what's she's leaned about leadership, and how preparation trumps fear. (Link available to premium members.)

Esther Perel on building a strong sense of self-esteem: A lot of people’s sexuality and relationships will improve, couples therapist Esther Perel says, when their sense of self-worth improves. But the problem is that people often mistake confidence with arrogance. We live in a society that values performance and condemns true vulnerability. Perel says this idea can wreak havoc in our relationships. “Self-esteem is the idea to see ourselves as flawed individuals and still hold ourselves in high regard. It’s anything but perfection. So welcome your flaws, people.” (Link available to premium members.)

Shane Parrish on using mental models in everyday life: The best way to make intelligent decisions? Use mental models like Hanlon’s Razor, first principles thinking, and inversion. These different frameworks help us simplify complex situations and make better choices. In this conversation, Shane Parrish explains that the quality of our decision-making is of utmost importance in times of chaos. “You can often break big decisions into smaller decisions and gather information that could change the path,” he says. (Link available to premium members.)

👉 Members receive the best longform article, audio, and video recommendations every Sunday. Join the club by signing up below: