It seems normal now that plans are made far in advance — scheduled around travel and weddings and kids and work commitments — and then canceled right before. Someone doesn’t follow up, or cancels and then never proposes an alternative plan. Promising new adult friendships never seem to blossom into the kind of quotidian check-ins that the friendship of our younger years is based on. Life-long friends make new life choices, drift apart. The friendship fizzles into WhatsApp volleys back and forth, and then someone doesn’t answer the last message, and then it’s a year before you ever talk again.

Friendships are, by their very nature, made of friction. To know what is going on in someone’s day-to-day life, to make plans with them, and then reschedule those plans when someone inevitably gets sick, and then bring over soup.And friction is not just interrupting your day or life to help out a friend, but also admitting you need the kind of help you cannot pay for or order yourself. To pierce through your veil of seamless productivity and having-it-together to say: I need something from you, can you help me?

Friendships are made of friction

Modern loneliness masks itself as hyper connectivity. And so people have easily 1000 virtual friends, but no one they can ask to feed their cat. That loneliness, which is really a depletion of the social capital, is extremely powerful.

We are so burned out by our data-heavy, screen-based, supposedly friction-free lives that we no longer have the time or energy to engage in the kind of small, mundane, place-based friendships or acquaintance-ships that have nourished and sustained humans for centuries.  We simply don’t have the energy for the kinds of in-person, easy interactions that might actually give us some energy and lifeforce back.

The concept of "social atrophy"

In addition to making the effort with friends — new and old— and asking for the kind of help and support we need, as well as providing it in return (and in order for this all not to feel like yet more admin), we need to make changes to regain the capacity to show up for these kinds of interactions and relationships: I know if I want to be available for more of the kind of recurring, place-based relationships where I can give and receive support, that means I have to be less available for other thing.

Rebuilding the social muscle

Why friendships have started to feel strikingly similar to admin

remotework

Remote Work

parenting

Parenting

technologyandthefuture

Technology & The Future

loveandrelationships

Love & Relationships

travel

Travel

The friendship problem

"If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all."

1177 quotes from Noam Chomsky: 'We shouldn't be looking for heroes, we should be looking for good ideas.', 'If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all.', and 'The whole educational and professional training system is a very elaborate filter, which just weeds out people who are too independent, and who think for themselves, and who don't know how to be submissive, and so on -- because they're dysfunctional to the institutions.'

philosophy

Philosophy

Discover the world of business and economics.

economics

Economics

career

Career

business

Business

humanresources

Human Resources

Noam Chomsky Quotes (Author of Hegemony or Survival)

“In order to get over a problem it helps to look at it. You can’t climb a mountain that you pretend isn’t there.”

“Curiosity and passion are the enemies of anxiety. Even when I fell into anxiety, if I get curious enough about something outside of me it can help pull me out. Music, art, film, nature, conversation, words. Find passion as large as your fear. The way out of your mind is via the world.”

“There will be other days. And other feelings.”

“To know which path to take, it helps to take a few wrong ones.”

“Don’t absorb criticism from people you wouldn’t go to for advice.”

“It’s okay to be the teacup with a chip in it. That’s the one with a story.”

"Hope, in its simplest form, is the acceptance of possibility.”

“The hardest question I have ever been asked is: ‘How do I stay alive for other people if I have no one?’ The answer is that you stay alive for other versions of you. For the people you will meet, yes, sure, but also the people you will be.”

“No is a good word. It keeps you sane. In an age of overload, no is really yes. It is yes to having the space you need to live.”

“It’s okay to like things for literally no other reason than because you like them and not because they are cool or clever or popular.”

An instant New York Times Bestseller! The new uplifting book from Matt Haig, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Midnight Library, for anyone in search of hope, looking for a path to a more meaningful life, or in need of a little encouragement. Named by The Washington Post as one of the best feel-good books of the year “It is a strange paradox, that many of the clearest, most comforting life lessons are learnt while we are at our lowest. But then we never think about food more than when we are hungry and we never think about life rafts more than when we are thrown overboard.” THE COMFORT BOOK is Haig’s life raft: it’s a collection of notes, lists, and stories written over a span of several years that originally served as gentle reminders to Haig’s future self that things are not always as dark as they may seem. Incorporating a diverse array of sources from across the world, history, science, and his own experiences, Haig offers warmth and reassurance, reminding us to slow down and appreciate the beauty and unpredictability of existence.

Understand yourself and those around you.

psychology

Psychology

mentalhealth

Mental Health

books

Books

Matt Haig was born in Sheffield, England. He writes books for both adults and children, often blending the worlds of domestic reality and outright fantasy, with a quirky twist.

Matt Haig

The Comfort Book

"Follow your envy - it shows you what you want."

“We tend to think that the future happens later, but we're creating it in our minds every day. When the present falls apart, so does the future we had associated with it. And having the future taken away is the mother of all plot twists. But if we spend the present trying to fix the past or control the future, we remain stuck in place, in perpetual regret."

"The things we protest against the most are often the very things we need to look at."

This is the habit of giving opinions and advice on matters outside of one’s knowledge or competence.

Ultracrepidarianism

Numbness is in the absence of feelings.It’s a response to being overwhelmed with too many feelings.

Numbness

It refers to the part of the mind that holds ancestral memory, or experience that is common to all humankind.

Collective Unconscious 

"Too many parents make life hard for their children by trying, too zealously, to make it easy for them."

Freedom involves responsibility.And there’s a part in most of us that finds responsibility frightening.

You Are Your Own Jailer 

"The opposite of depression isn’t happiness, but vitality."

There’s no hierarchy of pain. Suffering shouldn’t be ranked because pain isn’t a contest.You can’t get through your pain by diminishing it, you get through it by accepting it and figuring out what to do with it.You can’t change what you’re denying or diminishing.

On Pain

"The nature of life is change. The nature of people is to resist change."

Many people avoid trying for what they really want in life because it’s more painful to get close to the goal but not achieve it than not to have taken the chance in the first place.

"Almost" Is Always The Hardest

To people, going into the depths of their thoughts and feelings it’s like going into a dark alley and they don’t want to go there alone.People come to therapy to have someone to go there with.

A Metaphor For Therapy

<ul><li>Counseling is getting advice. </li><li>Therapy is acquiring more self-understanding.</li></ul>

Counseling Vs Therapy

Privacy is good, but secrets are toxic.

Privacy Vs Secrecy

<ul><li>A therapeutic alliance is a trust that is needed before work can be done. Patients need to feel heard and understood. </li><li>But therapy work is an intricate dance between support and confrontation.</li><li>Therapists help patients see themselves better and ask the right questions until something happens internally or externally.</li></ul>

On Therapy

"But part of getting to know yourself is to unknow yourself—to let go of the limiting stories you’ve told yourself about who you are so that you aren’t trapped by them, so you can live your life and not the story you’ve been telling yourself about your life."

"Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom."

"The inability to say no is largely about approval-seeking. The inability to say yes is more about lack of trust in oneself."

"Avoidance is a simple way of coping by not having to cope."

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER! Now being developed as a television series with Eva Longoria and ABC! "Rarely have I read a book that challenged me to see myself in an entirely new light, and was at the same time laugh-out-loud funny and utterly absorbing."--Katie Couric "This is a daring, delightful, and transformative book."--Arianna Huffington, Founder, Huffington Post and Founder & CEO, Thrive Global "Wise, warm, smart, and funny. You must read this book."--Susan Cain, New York Times best-selling author of Quiet From a New York Times best-selling author, psychotherapist, and national advice columnist, a hilarious, thought-provoking, and surprising new book that takes us behind the scenes of a therapist's world--where her patients are looking for answers (and so is she). One day, Lori Gottlieb is a therapist who helps patients in her Los Angeles practice. The next, a crisis causes her world to come crashing down. Enter Wendell, the quirky but seasoned therapist in whose of-fice she suddenly lands. With his balding head, cardigan, and khakis, he seems to have come straight from Therapist Central Casting. Yet he will turn out to be anything but. As Gottlieb explores the inner chambers of her patients' lives -- a self-absorbed Hollywood producer, a young newlywed diagnosed with a terminal illness, a senior citizen threatening to end her life on her birthday if nothing gets better, and a twenty-something who can't stop hooking up with the wrong guys -- she finds that the questions they are struggling with are the very ones she is now bringing to Wendell. With startling wisdom and humor, Gottlieb invites us into her world as both clinician and patient, examining the truths and fictions we tell ourselves and others as we teeter on the tightrope between love and desire, meaning and mortality, guilt and redemption, terror and courage, hope and change. Maybe You Should Talk to Someone is rev-olutionary in its candor, offering a deeply per-sonal yet universal tour of our hearts and minds and providing the rarest of gifts: a boldly reveal-ing portrait of what it means to be human, and a disarmingly funny and illuminating account of our own mysterious lives and our power to transform them.

Lori Gottlieb

Maybe You Should Talk to Someone

It’s easy to feel intimidated because you’re not an expert on the Renaissance and you can’t quickly name the difference between the Baroque and the Rococo. But it all comes down to one thing: Your reaction is the one that counts. There is no value in mouthing the conventional wisdom. Identifying your reaction, in its emotional, intellectual, and spiritual dimensions, is the whole point of the enterprise.

When Art Feels Too Much

Curators, professors, gallerists and critics have all devoted themselves to the study and appreciation of art. But the experts’ job is not to supply answers that you must commit to. They can instead help you, if you want, to come up with your own questions: "How was something made? What other artwork is relevant? Is there a hidden story or a backing idea that isn’t apparent?" Remember that an expert opinion is still an opinion. It’s not a judgment that you necessarily have to agree with. Once you realize that, you will likely find these experts extremely helpful.

Aren’t There Experts on This?

Want to find meaning and inspiration in art but aren’t sure where to start? Even if you’ve never set foot in a gallery before, we'll help you learn how to trust your inner critic, how to appreciate the big ideas and small details of a piece, and how to discover new art, both in and out of the museum.

creativity

Creativity

artsandculture

Society, Arts & Culture

How to Enjoy Art - A Year of Living Better Guides

There is no one dominant philosophy or ideology. Contemporary art is characterized by its global nature. It is also not media-dependent. The whole idea of art as a series of movements is "a modernist schema" more useful for scholars and others to understand the past than for artists working in the present.Today's art crosses boundaries in terms of discipline. For example, artists can be designers, focus on mass consumption, work in fashion or even collaborate with industrial designers.

There Are No Art Movements Today

﻿"Rather than offering answers, contemporary art asks questions."

We're all at least passingly familiar with the art movements of the past – impressionism, dada, pop, cubism – but what are today's movements called? Turns out, pinning them down is a bit tricky.

There Are No Art Movements Today, Says Michael Rooks of Atlanta's High Museum

Depending on who you ask and from which generation the word ‘rap’ will take on different meanings.<ul><li>Today rap means saying rhymes to the beat of music making it one of the four major elements within hip hop culture. Because the other elements (deejaying, breakdancing and graffiti) aren’t as widespread, the words Hip Hop and Rap have been used interchangeably over the years.</li><li>The word rap wasn’t always used to describe this activity. The act of rhyming to the beat of music was initially called emceeing. The term rap first became associated with Hip Hop around 1979.</li></ul>

Meaning Of The Term 'Rap'

The first song that associated rap with hip-hop music was called King Tim III [Personality Jock] by the Brooklyn based Fatback Band, which is considered Hip Hop’s first record.Opening lyrics: You just clap your hands then you stomp your feet/'Cause you're listenin' to the sound of the sure shot beat/ I'm the K-I-N-G the T-I-M/ King Tim III, and I am him/ Just me, Fatback, and the crew/ We doin' it all just for you/ We're strong as an ox and tall as a tree/ We can rock you so viciously/ We throw the highs in your eyes, the bass in your face/ We're the funk machines that rock the human race.

King Tim III: The First Rap Song (March, 1979)

The second song that associated the term Rap with Hip Hop was the song ‘Rapper’s Delight‘ by Sugar Hill Gang.Whereas “King Tim III” failed to cross over from any R&B activity into the mainstream, never cracking the Billboard Top 40, “Rapper’s Delight” became a worldwide smash.Opening lyrics: I said-a hip, hop, the hippie, the hippie/ To the hip hip hop-a you don't stop the rock/ It to the bang-bang boogie, say up jump the boogie/ To the rhythm of the boogie, the beat/ Now what you hear is not a test: I'm rappin' to the beat/And me, the groove, and my friends are gonna try to move your feet.

Platinum Seller ‘Rapper’s Delight‘ (1979)

In the late 50's early 60's, people in the black americam communities used to play a variety of rhyme word games:<ul><li>The Dozens: totally destroy somebody else with words, by insulting each other until one gives up (and dissing their mothers)</li><li>The Signifying: dissing your opponent or make them feel good; you had to know how to skillfully put words together so you could accurately express your feelings.</li></ul>The winner was determined by crowd reaction. But this was rapping just the same, rapping by another name.

The Grandparents of Rap: Rhyme Games

With respect to hip hop, it was characterized by one’s ability to syncopated to a beat. Ideally, an emcee rapped from the heart. His rhymes were spontaneous, not memorized or read aloud from a written document.Ideally a rap is a group of rhymes that are thrown together so everything has meaning. It reflects the here and now and ideally the lifestyle of the one rapping. Ultimately and historically an artist rapped for no one but himself. His rap was a call for attention to himself..

The Art Of Rappin'

music

Music

A Definition Of The Term Rap

"I don’t divide the world into the weak and the strong, or the successes and the failures... I divide the world into the learners and non-learners."

Mindsets are just beliefs; powerful ones, but they’re just something in your mind, and you can change them.Just by being aware of the two mindsets (fixed and growth), you can start thinking and reacting in different ways. It’s also important to realize that even if people have a fixed mindset, they’re not always in that mindset. Many people have elements of both.

Mindsets are powerful beliefs

<ul><li>Having a fixed mindset means believing that your qualities are carved in stone. This creates an urgency to prove yourself all the time.</li><li>People with a fixed mindset expect ability to show up on its own before any learning takes place. </li><li>Some of us are formed in this mindset from childhood. As soon as children become able to assess themselves, some of them become afraid of challenges. They become afraid of not being smart.</li></ul>

The fixed mindset

<ul><li>The growth mindset is the belief that abilities can be cultivated through effort. Everyone can change and grow through application and experience. </li><li>This is the mindset that allows people to succeed during challenging times.</li><li>People with a growth mindset seek challenge; the bigger the challenge, the more they stretch. For them, even geniuses have to work hard for their achievements.</li></ul>

The growth mindset

The growth mindset shows that people can change, but it doesn’t tell you how much change is possible or how long change will take.The growth mindset also doesn’t mean everything that can be changed should be changed. We all need to accept some of our imperfections, especially the ones that don’t really harm our lives or the lives of others.

The growth mindset and change

People with a fixed mindset usually say the ideal partner would:<ul><li>Put them on a pedestal.</li><li>Make them feel perfect.</li><li>Worship them.</li></ul>People with the growth mindset hope their ideal partner is someone who would:<ul><li>See their faults and help them to work on them.</li><li>Challenge them to become a better person.</li><li>Encourage them to learn new things.</li></ul>

Mindsets in relationships

<ul><li>The fixed mindset says that tests or experts can tell us what our potential is, what we’re capable of, what our future will be: you can simply measure the fixed ability right now and project it into the future.</li><li>The idea that one evaluation can measure you forever is what creates urgency for those with a fixed mindset: they must succeed perfectly and immediately.</li><li>But many of the most accomplished people of our era were considered by experts to have no future.</li></ul>

Having "potential"

People with a fixed mindset usually try to prove that they’re special. The problem is when special begins to mean better than others.People who believe in fixed traits feel an urgency to succeed, and when they do succeed, they feel and display a sense of superiority because their victory means that they (and their traits) are better than the rest of the people.

The fixed mindset and entitlement

<ul><li>For the fixed mindset, failure is transformed from an action (I failed) to an identity (I am a failure). For people with this mindset, failure can define them in a permanent way. And they might try to repair their self-esteem by assigning blame or making excuses.</li><li>Failure can be a painful experience for the growth mindset too. But it doesn’t define people. It’s a problem to be faced, dealt with, and learned from.</li></ul>

Mindsets and failure

From the point of view of the fixed mindset, effort is only for people with deficiencies. Needing it casts a shadow on your ability.Effort also leaves you with no excuses. Without effort, you can always say, “I could have been ...” But once you try, you can’t say that anymore.

Effort is terrifying for the fixed mindset

<ul><li>For the rest of your life, seek constructive criticism, even when you're tempted to create a world in which you're perfect.</li><li>Is there something in your past that you think measured you? A test score, being fired from a job or being rejected? Focus on that thing and feel all the emotions that go with it.</li><li>Look honestly at your role in it, but understand that it doesn’t define your intelligence or personality.</li><li>Next time you feel low, put yourself in a growth mindset: think about learning, challenge, confronting obstacles.</li><li>See effort as something positive.</li></ul>

How to grow your mindset

Back to school resources & advice for parents

education

Learning & Education

food

Food

Back to School Basics for Parents

Reveals how established attitudes affect all aspects of one's life, explains the differences between fixed and growth mindsets, and stresses the need to be open to change in order to achieve fulfillment and success.

productivity

Productivity

problemsolving

Problem Solving

From the renowned psychologist who introduced the world to “growth mindset” comes this updated edition of the million-copy bestseller—featuring transformative insights into redefining success, building lifelong resilience, and supercharging self-improvement. “Through clever research studies and engaging writing, Dweck illuminates how our beliefs about our capabilities exert tremendous influence on how we learn and which paths we take in life.”—Bill Gates, GatesNotes “It’s not always the people who start out the smartest who end up the smartest.” After decades of research, world-renowned Stanford University psychologist Carol S. Dweck, Ph.D., discovered a simple but groundbreaking idea: the power of mindset. In this brilliant book, she shows how success in school, work, sports, the arts, and almost every area of human endeavor can be dramatically influenced by how we think about our talents and abilities. People with a fixed mindset—those who believe that abilities are fixed—are less likely to flourish than those with a growth mindset—those who believe that abilities can be developed. Mindset reveals how great parents, teachers, managers, and athletes can put this idea to use to foster outstanding accomplishment. In this edition, Dweck offers new insights into her now famous and broadly embraced concept. She introduces a phenomenon she calls false growth mindset and guides people toward adopting a deeper, truer growth mindset. She also expands the mindset concept beyond the individual, applying it to the cultures of groups and organizations. With the right mindset, you can motivate those you lead, teach, and love—to transform their lives and your own.

Carol S. Dweck, Ph.D., is one of the world’s leading researchers in the field of motivation and is the Lewis and Virginia Eaton Professor of Psychology at Stanford University. Her research has focused on why people succeed and how to foster success. She has held professorships at Columbia and Harvard Universities, has lectured all over the world, and has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Her scholarly book Self-Theories: Their Role in Motivation, Personality, and Development was named Book of the Year by the World Education Federation. Her work has been featured in such publications as The New Yorker, Time, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Boston Globe, and she has appeared on Today and 20/20.

Carol S. Dweck

Mindset

Mindset: The New Psychology of Success

"It's perhaps easier now than ever before to make a good living. It's perhaps harder than ever before to stay calm, to be free of career anxiety."

A snob is anybody who takes a small part of you and uses that to come to a complete vision of who you are. And the dominant type of snobbery that exists nowadays is job snobbery. You encounter it within minutes at a party when you get asked, "What do you do?" Depending on your answer, they decide how much attention you deserve from their part.

Job Snobbery

Never before have expectations been so high about what human beings can achieve with their lifespan. We're told, from many sources, that anyone can achieve anything.

Overwhelming Career Expectations

A meritocratic society is one in which, if you've got talent and energy, and skill, you will get to the top, nothing should hold you back. The problem is, if you believe in this system, you'll also believe in a society where those who deserve to get to the bottom also get to the bottom and stay there. So, your position in life comes to seem not accidental but merited and deserved. And that makes failure seem much more crushing.

Failure In The Meritocratic Society 

"We are the first society to be living in a world where we don't worship anything other than ourselves. We think very highly of ourselves, and so we should; we've put people on the Moon, done all sorts of extraordinary things. And so we tend to worship ourselves. Our heroes are human heroes. That's a very new situation."

You can't have it all. So any vision of success has to admit what it's losing out on, where the element of loss is. And the thing about a successful life is that a lot of the time, our ideas of what it would mean to live successfully are not our own.

You Can't Be Successful At Everything

"When we think about failing in life, when we think about failure, one of the reasons why we fear failing is not just a loss of income, a loss of status. What we fear is the judgment and ridicule of others."

videos

Videos

http://www.ted.com Alain de Botton examines our ideas of success and failure -- and questions the assumptions underlying these two judgments. Is success always earned? Is failure? He makes an eloquent, witty case to move beyond snobbery to find true pleasure in our work.

TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design, and TEDTalks cover these topics as well as science, business, development and the arts. Closed captions and translated subtitles in a variety of languages are now available on TED.com, at http://www.ted.com/translate. Watch a highlight reel of the Top 10 TEDTalks at http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/top10

The TED Talks channel features the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes (or less). Look for talks on Technology, Entertainment and Design -- plus science, business, global issues, the arts and more. You're welcome to link to or embed these videos, forward them to others and share these ideas with people you know.

TED's videos may be used for non-commercial purposes under a Creative Commons License, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives (or the CC BY – NC – ND 4.0 International) and in accordance with our TED Talks Usage Policy: https://www.ted.com/about/our-organization/our-policies-terms/ted-talks-usage-policy. For more information on using TED for commercial purposes (e.g. employee learning, in a film or online course), please submit a Media Request at https://media-requests.ted.com

A kinder, gentler philosophy of success | Alain de Botton

Gabrielle Chanel is known as the designer who popularised trousers, making them a key piece in women's wardrobes.She broke down sartorial codes by borrowing elements of men's fashion, such as pockets and tweed, and erased waistlines and bustlines to create androgynous silhouettes.&nbsp;

Coco Chanel and the societal and gender norms

The two-piece ensemble, instantly recognizable as signature Chanel, remains a staple in the modern woman's luxury wardrobe nearly 70 years after it was first introduced to the world, and is plagiarised frequently in cheap versions by high-street brands.

The Chanel iconic tweed suit

"Fashion is something that makes changes visible and contributes to change."

"Here is a woman who created her own company in the early 20th Century, was a super-successful businesswoman, who never married, and fought for her own economic freedom. She may not have called herself a feminist, but she made huge contributions to women's history in the 20th Century."

comfort, ease, and liberty were the guiding principle that would dominate Chanel's life’s work; this was unheard of in fashion until then, and especially in a world of haute couture.

Comfort, ease, and liberty

How comfort and freedom became chic in France a century ago – and still are today. Vivian Song explores the progressive work of Coco Chanel.

The friendship problem

Noam Chomsky Quotes (Author of Hegemony or Survival)

The Comfort Book

Maybe You Should Talk to Someone

How to Enjoy Art - A Year of Living Better Guides

Andreea Ciocan