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Why it's so tempting to build walls and shut people out (and what to do instead)
The costs of walling ourselves off
- Once we slap a label on others, we don’t bother to look more closely, and our fears grow.
- We are actually less safe. Labeling entire groups of people as good guys or bad guys is dangerous, because we end up accidentally putting white hats on bad guys and black hats on good guys.
- We waste precious resources. Trying to wall ourselves off from entire groups of people is exhausting and inefficient.
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SIMILAR ARTICLES & IDEAS:
5
Key Ideas
The Planning Fallacy
We all have busy schedules, but we are incorrectly planning our day around the time we have, not around priorities.
Our estimates on how long certain tasks will take are almost always ...
The 4 Kinds of Priorities
The Decision Matrix on how to approach tasks has 4 quadrants:
- Quadrant 1: The Urgent Problems which are important.
- Quadrant 2: Not Urgent but important tasks
- Quadrant 3: Urgent but not really important
- Quadrant 4: Distractions and time-wasting tasks.
Prioritize the important (Quadrant 2) to attain maximum benefit from your work.
4
Key Ideas
Eating Distract from Emotions
We often associate eating with relief or even excitement, and it’s only natural that we’d reach for those same feelings when we’re worried or sad.
Why we choose comfort food
Comfort foods don’t tend to be healthy. We want cake or pasta or chips when we’re emotionally eating. We have emotional memories around certain foods, which are more likely to involve your grandma’s lasagna than a salad.
But after we eat for emotional reasons, we’re replacing our original feelings with the emotions that arise out of eating.
Comfort food
We associate comfort food with positive memories.
Think about all the happy and comforting memories you have involving food. Maybe your family used to celebrate occasions with a trip to the ice cream shop, or maybe your mom or dad used to soften the blow of a bad day with macaroni and cheese. When you’re feeling rejected or anxious today, eating one of those foods is an instant connection to that soothing time.
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Key Ideas
Accept your emotions
Recognize what happened and how you feel. Suppressing your emotions will get you nowhere. It’s important to first focus on how you feel.
You can also journal your emotions or speak with a clo...
Focus on the facts
Take a step out of the emotions and stress to really look at the facts of the situation. Try to look at the situation objectively and seek ways to work productively toward solving it.
Get an outside perspective, if you struggle with getting the facts in an objective manner.
Don't let it consume you
Once we’ve made what we’d call a bad decision, we give it a lot of meaning it does not inherently have.
So try to mentally separate yourself from the decision. Doing so can help you strip it of its power.