Do you ever think about the person you could've become if you started your life over and made wildly different decisions throughout?

I've played that game many times.

If my parents hadn't won the green card lottery and decided to move to the United States in 1999, I would have grown up in Bulgaria. I probably wouldn't have become a journalist, most likely wouldn't be working on a newsletter full-time, and our paths, dear reader, definitely wouldn't have crossed.

In a recent feature titled What If You Could Do It All Over, Joshua Rothman writes, "Swept up in our real lives, we quickly forget about the unreal ones." What would the alternate non-journalist, Bulgarian-living Polina think about the real one living in the U.S. today?

It's easy — and almost alluring — to go down this spiral. What if you hadn't gone to college? What if you had spent an adventurous year backpacking through Europe in your early 20s? What if you had married your high school sweetheart instead of your current spouse? What if, what if, what if?

The endless forks in the road that you took (and didn't) are the reason you are reading the words on this page today. It's because you chose certain things in lieu of other things, you turned left instead of right, and you happened to click on something that led you to be here in this exact moment.

It's fun to go down this rabbit hole, but we can get ourselves into trouble when we begin to dwell on the possibility of our alternate reality if only we had made a different decision.

Edith Eva Eger was 16 years old when her family was taken to the Auschwitz concentration camp. After getting off the train, she joined a "selection line" alongside her mom and sister. When they got to the front of the line, Josef Mengele (also known as "the Angel of Death") would decide their fate. Her mom was standing in-between Eger and her sister. Mengele asked: “Is she your sister, or is she your mother?”

"I never could forgive myself, and I said, 'Mother,'" Eger says. "She was sent to the other side, and I followed her. He came and grabbed me and told me, 'Your mother is just going to take a shower. You’re going to see her very soon,' and promptly threw me on the other side."

Her mom was sent to the gas chamber that day. Eger spent years blaming herself for her mother's death. "If I had said she was my sister, she would have been sent with me but instead, she was sent to the gas chamber," she says. "I had so much survivor's guilt about this moment."

Over the years, though, Eger realized that to run away from the past or to fight against the present are both ways we imprison ourselves. Freedom, she says, lies in accepting and forgiving our former selves.

“I can’t heal you – or anyone – but I can celebrate your choice to dismantle the prison in your mind, brick by brick," she writes. "You can’t change what happened, you can’t change what you did or what was done to you. But you can choose how you live now.”

We let our imaginations run wild with endless possibilities, some of which keep us prisoners of the past and others that allow us to be thankful for our lives today.

All we have is this present moment. Physicist Stephen Hawking once reminded us, “The past, like the future, is indefinite and exists only as a spectrum of possibilities.”

And here's the mind-blowing revelation I recently had: No matter your situation at this present moment, you can choose to see it in a new light.

Robert Hoge was born with a tumor in the middle of his face and two severely mangled legs. Doctors suspected an anti-depressant his mother took when she was pregnant might have caused Hoge's birth defects. When a reporter asked him if he could go back in time and tell his mother not to take the anti-depressants, would he do it?

His answer is a resounding no. "I have a good life. I’m happy, I’m healthy. I've got a wonderful wife, two wonderful daughters. And the other life I would have had might have been wonderful in many different ways, but it would not have been this life, and I'm pretty happy with this life," he says. Hoge has made peace with the choices of the past, and he doesn't waste time playing the anxiety-inducing game of "what if."

When you fall into such a spiral, remind yourself of this Wait But Why graphic, and focus on the green lines rather than the black:

Polina @polina_marinova

This @waitbutwhy graphic is absolutely mesmerizing.

April 26th 2021

3,518 Retweets19,208 Likes

The truth is that we'll never know where our unled lives could've led us and the people we could've become — and that's probably for the best.

Nat Sharpe on Twitter put it perfectly: "There are thousands of lives you could live. And be perfectly happy in each one."

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THE PROFILE DOSSIER: On Wednesday, premium members received The Profile Dossier, a comprehensive deep-dive on a prominent individual. It featured Robert Hoge, the 'ugly' human living a beautiful life. Become a premium member & read it here.

UPCOMING EVENT: I'll be participating in a Q&A on Tuesday, May 11 at 12 p.m. EST. We'll be talking about leadership lessons I've learned from studying the world's most successful people, and so much more. If you can join, make sure to sign up here.

PROFILES.

— The activist short-seller who won't quit [**HIGHLY RECOMMEND**]
— The star who flipped Hollywood's power dynamic
— The queen of Roblox
— The internet weirdo who became a pop star
— The Jonas brother finding his own way
— The director making movies in the age of Netflix
— The streaming platform on a quest to end scrolling

PEOPLE TO KNOW.

The activist short-seller who won't quit: Carson Block has made his name calling out China frauds through his hedge fund Muddy Waters Capital. He catapulted from obscurity to fame in 2011 after a research report he penned took down Sino-Forest Corp., a Chinese company he alleged was a fraud, and tarnished billionaire hedge-fund legend John Paulson, who was one of its investors. In this profile, we learn what drives Block: fighting off a feeling of betrayal that's been present his whole life. (Institutional Investor)

“I’m not an adrenaline junkie. What I do is very, very personal to me.”

The pandemic's loneliest worker: Guatemalan immigrant Lourdes Cerna is one of many workers in a lonely profession that's played a critical role during the pandemic. She works as a medical interpreter, a person who helps patients with limited English skills navigate their treatment and the healthcare system more broadly. This is an inside look at this emotionally taxing but incredibly important profession. (The New Yorker)

“Many times, I would cry by myself in my home alone, because there would be nobody to talk to.”

The star who flipped Hollywood's power dynamic: Reese Witherspoon has transformed her role in Hollywood from movie star to business leader—and maker of her own fortune. With her production company Hello Sunshine, Witherspoon doesn't want to run a vanity shingle—she wants to build a media empire. There are many female-focused production companies, but no one has yet tried to do what Witherspoon is attempting: build a premium independent film studio within a female-led brand that operates on multiple platforms.

“Culture shifts. Culture changes. Once you know better, you do better. We have to make room for that.”

The queen of Roblox: In 2018, Megan Letter was making about $400 a month posting videos of herself playing the life simulation game The Sims on YouTube. Then she switched her focus to Roblox, the platform for user-created games that’s recently become a sensation with the preteen set. Known as "MeganPlays," she now earns millions of dollars annually from posting YouTube videos for her 3.6 million subscribers. Meet Letter, who's an influencer, a gamer, and a developer. (Bloomberg)

The internet weirdo who became a pop star: How did Doja Cat reach meteoric levels of fame? By rejecting society's social norms. In 2018, the 25-year-old singer-rapper-producer recorded “Mooo!,” a video in which she twerked in cow-print couture to an off-the-cuff freestyle about the joys of being a bovine. Since then, she has dominated radio and award shows. Her biggest tour yet, planned for last spring, sold out in 10 minutes. You can probably guess what happened next. (Billboard)

"If I can just be myself, that’s probably the best thing for me.”

The Jonas brother finding his own way: Millennials often know Frankie Jonas by the nickname "the Bonus Jonas," the much younger brother of Kevin, Joe, and Nick Jonas, the trio that rose to fame. For the 24 and younger crowd, though, Jonas is best known for his presence on TikTok, where @iamfrankiejonas has netted nearly 2 million followers in less than six months. Here's how the youngest Jonas is learning to pave his own path. (Bustle)

“I have massive anxiety about everything I post because I don’t want to fail."

The director making movies in the age of Netflix: What does legendary screenwriter and director Paul Schrader thinking about the future of cinema? "The normal mall cinema or multi-cinema, I think that’s a real struggle," he says. "They say that 50% of the restaurants in New York won’t reopen. Well, I think that’s certainly true also of the movie theatres." This is a fantastic interview. (The New Yorker)

"What Reed Hastings realized was that you could reverse the formula. You could make it a pool of entertainment so large that people didn’t need to go anywhere else."

COMPANIES TO WATCH.

The streaming platform on a quest to end scrolling: Netflix wants you to decide. To help, the company is launching Play Something, a new viewing mode designed to make it easier for the indecisive among us to quickly find something to watch. The goal of this new shuffle feature is to eliminate, or at least ease, the endless scroll anxiety so many of us feel. Here's what this means about how the company's thinking about its future. (New York Magazine)

"Some people, they like that choice and they want their choice. But some people get analysis paralysis.”

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AUDIO TO HEAR.

Robert Hoge on growing up 'ugly:' What do you do when the way you look forces you to confront that every day? And even if you can get past it — what about the rest of us? In this podcast episode, Robert Hoge explains how the day his life transformed was the day he said no to any more surgeries. As the interviewer notes: "Most of us are caught in this sort of uncanny valley. We look fine but we’re convinced that a few little tweaks could totally transform our lives. Robert gave up on tweaks and he transformed his life anyway." (Link available to premium members.)

Shonda Rhimes on scaling creativity: How do you create stories that people crave? “That’s the lightning in a bottle thing,” says showrunner, executive producer, and writer Shonda Rhimes. “It’s making the pitch, getting in the room, doing the work, and hoping it pans out.” In this conversation, Rhimes breaks down how she caters to her audience, when she knows a show is a hit, and what data is useful in the creative process. (Link available to premium members.)

VIDEOS TO SEE.

Carson Block on how to identify fraud: In this in-depth interview, short-seller Carson Block articulates his process for finding, researching, shorting, and exposing a potentially fraudulent company. "Living and doing business in China was very important to my evolution into an investor and short-seller, not just because there were these massive Chinese companies that were total frauds listed in the U.S but because it taught me to think in more dimensions." (Link available to premium members.)

The world's biggest names on what makes a great leader: Jeff Bezos. Warren Buffett. Oprah Winfrey. Bill Gates. They all reached the upper echelon of success, but how? In this compilation, David Rubenstein examines the keys to great leadership. It takes charisma, communication skills, a willingness to fail, and so much more. This is a must-watch. (Link available to premium members.)

David Blaine on the psychology of magic: David Blaine is an illusionist and endurance artist. He’s done stunts where he was buried alive for a week, endured two days inside of a large block of ice, hung upside down for 60 hours, and caught a .22 caliber bullet fired from a rifle with just a small metal cup he held in his mouth. In this podcast episode, Blaine explains that understanding the psychology of magic is way more important than the tricks. (Link available to premium members.)

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