Validate, acknowledge, and reassure yourself.

If you wouldn't say it to a friend, don't say it to yourself. We would seldom tell a friend 'it's not that bad', or 'look on the bright side.' We need to recognise within ourselves when we're hurting.

Thinking from first principles is not a new idea. It's actually the single most consistent factor among great thinkers.

For example, Aristotle believed that you could not possess true knowledge without first understanding the first principles. He thought that everything could be divide...

It happens when asking someone for a favor makes them like you more.

This is believed to work because our brains try to solve the dissonance between helping someone and not being interested in their well-being by liking them.