1: Turns out anxiety and excitement are the exact same emotion.
Physiologically, that is. Which just means how your body operates.
“Whether you are anxious about something or excited about it, your body responds in a nearly identical ‘high arousal’ state,” Jane McGonigal writes in her book SuperBetter: The Power of Living Gamefully.
How does your body react?
“You have excess energy, you may feel butterflies in your stomach, … continue reading
1: “We had lost our bearings. We were wandering in the valley of death,” Andy Grove writes in his book Only the Paranoid Survive: How to Exploit the Crisis Points That Challenge Every Company.
The year was 1984, a pivotal moment for Intel.
The company had been founded 16 years earlier. “Every start-up has some kind of a core idea,” Andy notes.
“Ours was simple. Semiconductor technology had … continue reading
How to Promote Calm: Science-Backed Breathing
1: Stress gets a bad name.
Like many things in life, the Goldilocks rule applies here.
Too much stress. Not good. In fact, it will kill us.
But too little stress is not good either.
To perform at our best, we want to harness stress and use it to our advantage.
Or as Goldilocks says, “Not too hot. Not too cold. Just right.”
“Stress … continue reading
1: “Should Yahoo bring back Koogle?”
Felicia Horowitz smiled at her husband, venture capitalist Ben Horowitz.
“Huh?”
It was 2012, and Yahoo had just fired its CEO, Scott Thompson.
“Tim Koogle? How do you even know who Tim Koogle is?” he writes in his book The Hard Thing About Hard Things.
Felicia then recalled a conversation they had shared eleven years earlier, back in 2001.… continue reading
1: The summer of 1995 was a dizzying time for the people working at Netscape.
In August of that year, the company went public.
“The Netscape initial public offering (IPO) was both spectacular and historic,” Ben Horowitz writes in The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers.
“The stock initially priced at $14 per share, but a last-minute decision doubled the … continue reading
1: The default mode for peak performers is not recovery, rest, and relaxation.
“If momentum matters most, sitting still feels like laziness,” Steven Kotler writes in The Art of Impossible: A Peak Performance Primer. “And the more aligned with passion and purpose we become, the more ‘wasteful’ time off starts to feel.”
Yet, we need to prioritize recovery to avoid burnout.
“Burnout is identified by three symptoms: exhaustion, depression, … continue reading
1: The answer, according to one of the world’s leading experts on human performance?
Learning to be at our best when we are at our worst.
“And you have to train this kind of grit on its own, as a separate skill, But if we can do this, what we discover is real power. There’s real power there—and it’s power we probably didn’t know we had.” Steven Kotler writes in … continue reading
1: “Early-stage passion doesn’t look like late-stage passion,” Steven Kotler writes in The Art of Impossible: A Peak Performance Primer.
Imagine LeBron James as “a little kid standing in front of a big hoop, trying to get his shots to drop,” Steven writes. “On the front end, passion is nothing more than the overlap of multiple curiosities coupled to a few wins.”
Sure, to be passionate, we want to … continue reading
1: Gallup researchers have calculated a national stress index based on a survey of more than 125,000 people from 121 countries. The analysts ask participants whether they had experienced a significant amount of stress the previous day, Dr. Daniel Friedland writes in his brilliant book Leading Well from Within.
The results? The higher the nation’s stress index, the higher the nation’s well-being.
“Further, individuals who were stressed but not … continue reading
So, what exactly is courage? Is it the absence of fear?
No, philosopher Brian Johnson tells us. It’s feeling the fear… And then getting on with it. Doing what needs to be done.
Brian argues this is the mindset to cultivate as we show up in life. Yes, there will be challenges. Expect obstacles, he tells us. Then, get on with it. Feel the fear. Then, do what needs … continue reading
