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Strategies for building self-confidence
Techniques for embracing your strengths and accomplishments
Tips for seeking support and feedback
People set goals and make plans to arrive at a future point called “progress.” But will it be progress? How can we be so sure? Some goals—even good ones—overstay their welcome.
But it’s worth asking where goals come from in the first place. Every goal is embedded within a system.
Mimetic desire is the unwritten, unacknowledged system behind visible goals. The more we bring that system to light, the less likely it is that we’ll pick and pursue the wrong goals.
110
424 reads
MORE IDEAS ON THIS
There’s something strange about our relationship to imitation. Humans possess advanced capabilities of imitation that allow us to create new things. Our ability to imitate in complex ways is why we have language, recipes, and music.
We are generally fascinated with people who have a differe...
118
780 reads
We don’t rise to the level of our goals, we fall to the level of our systems. From the standpoint of desire, our goals are the product of our systems. We can’t want something that is outside the system of desire we occupy.
The obsession with goal setting is misguided, even counterproductive...
114
455 reads
The ultimate way to test desires—especially major life choices such as whether to marry someone or whether to quit your job and start a company—is to practice this same exercise but to do it while imagining yourself on your deathbed. Which choice leaves you more consoled? Which choice causes you ...
127
422 reads
Models are the gravitational centers around which our social lives turn.
If you look hard enough, you will find a model (or a set of models) for almost everything—your personal style, the way you speak, the look and feel of your home. But the models that most of us overlook are models of de...
123
1.29K reads
What we commonly call “social media” is more than media—it’s mediation: thousands of people showing us what to want and colouring our perception of those things.
Smartphones are like slot machines. Both work through the power of intermittent variable rewards—pulling the lever of a slot mach...
118
620 reads
Silence is where we learn to be at peace with ourselves, where we learn the truth about who we are and what we want. If you’re not sure what you want, there’s no faster way to find out than to enter into complete silence for an extended period of time—not hours, but days.
All of hum...
128
431 reads
Discernment is an essential skill because it’s a process for making decisions that includes but also transcends rational analysis. It’s critical for deciding which desires to pursue and which ones to leave behind.
Desires are discerned, not decided. Discernment exists in the liminal space b...
110
380 reads
Wanting well, like thinking clearly, is not an ability we’re born with. It’s a freedom we have to earn. Due to one powerful yet little-known feature of human desire, that freedom is hard-won.
People don’t choose objects of desire the way they choose to wear a coat in the winter. Instead of ...
131
1.64K reads
Discovering and developing thick desires protects against cheap mimetic desires—and ultimately leads to a more fulfilling life.
Thick desires are like diamonds that have been formed deep beneath the surface, nearer to the core of the Earth. Thick desires are protected from the volatility of...
114
400 reads
Desire is a path-dependent process. The choices we make today affect the things we’ll want tomorrow. That’s why it’s important to map out, the best we can, the consequences of our actions on our future desires.
Start by thinking seriously about what a positive cycle of desire might look lik...
117
475 reads
We don’t want things that are too easily possessed or that are readily within reach. Desire leads us beyond where we currently are. Models are like people standing a hundred yards up the road who can see something around the corner that we can’t yet see.
So the way that a model describes so...
127
1.03K reads
If someone’s primary objective is innovation for the sake of innovation, they usually end up in a mimetic rivalry with everyone in their field to compete primarily on the basis of originality.
Being different for the sake of being different is the ethos behind shock-value art and academics ...
114
497 reads
It’s a sign of maturity to be able to hold on to two conflicting desires or two opposing ideas at the same time without immediately rejecting one or the other before there has been time for careful discernment. To live with desire is to live with tension.
Wise people have said that it’s bes...
121
401 reads
Desire is a contract that you make with yourself to be unhappy until you get what you want
119
523 reads
Smartphones project the desires of billions of people to us through social media, Google searches, and restaurant and hotel reviews. The neurological addictiveness of smartphones is real; but our addiction to the desires of others, to which smartphones give us unfettered access, is the metaphysic...
118
543 reads
Rivalry is a function of proximity. When people are separated from us by enough time, space, money, or status, there is no way to compete seriously with them for the same opportunities.
Celebristan external mediators of desire. They influence desire from ou...
114
684 reads
One hundred years ago, there was a much wider gap in knowledge between someone who had a doctoral degree and someone who didn’t. Today, with the world’s information at nearly everyone’s fingertips, the knowledge gap between people with a great amount of formal education and those with less has na...
112
620 reads
Mimetic models(subconsious imitation) lie in wait every time we glance at our phone. The families of childhood friends post photos in which every day looks like a Christmas card, and Instagram models with bleached white teeth show us how they eat their nutritious breakfasts.
The universe of...
119
943 reads
Imitation is natural to man from childhood, one of his advantages over the lower animals being this, that he is the most imitative creature in the world.
124
2.58K reads
There is no person we encounter—not even in the most uninteresting interaction of our day—whom we do not help desire in one of these three ways. The changes are usually imperceptible. But like a giant flywheel, we are gently nudging other people’s desires in one or another direction.
The tr...
115
426 reads
CURATED FROM
The real reason we want what we want.
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We know that happiness is a good thing, but we also know from research that people who pursue happiness directly end up unhappy and are more likely to experience depression.
The way to find happiness is to pursue it indirectly. Using the SPIRE model can trigger the antifragile sys...
We all start on goals with good intentions. But a common mistake is failing to identify the tangible actions needed to make meaningful progress toward that goal.
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