Nir and Far

The Pain Paradox: How Fear of Pain Creates More Pain

Taming your overprotective brain

In the opening shot of the music video for “Throw Some Ass,” the camera scans a clinical white sign: “Sofi Tukker Center for Asses That Don’t Move Good.” Inside the mock hospital, a heart monitor flatlines—until the beat drops. Suddenly, the music video erupts into a NSFW riot of sensual movement. To fans, the song is a catchy ode to booty shaking, but to Sophie Hawley-Weld, one half of electronic music duo Sofi Tukker, it was a revelation of her journey through chronic pain and the power of the mind.

In 2018, Sophie and Tucker Halpern were in the middle of a whirlwind year—releasing their first (later Grammy-nominated) album, launching their own record label, and headlining tours—when Sophie began to have chronic migraines.

“We were full-time touring … there was so much happening,” Sophie explained on the podcast Like Mind, Like Body. “We were going out five nights a week. We were traveling way crazier than we are now … Because our career was so new, we said yes to every opportunity, and it put our bodies through a strain. I didn’t do the simple things as well, like take a walk and go get sunlight, all these things I’ve learned how to do since this [pain]. So my body was really confused.”

For the next year and a half, Sophie endured debilitating chronic migraines that forced her to retreat to dark rooms. “I was having to cancel shows, and nothing was working.”

Later, back pain created a destructive cycle when traditional medical approaches failed. She tried every drug and treatment she could find, but they didn’t work. Doctors recommended cortisone injections for her back, which only intensified her fear and worsened her condition—a phenomenon well-documented in pain studies.

As a performing artist, her inability to move without pain didn’t just affect her health; it jeopardized her thriving career.

Yet today, Sophie has been nearly pain-free for almost seven months. How did she get there?

Predicting Pain

Sophie says that her back pain started out of the blue. “Maybe there was an injury associated with it”—Sophie’s healing journey led her to discover that she’s hypermobile and has to be careful doing certain exercises—“but … I don’t think [the pain] was that intense to begin with. I was just like, ‘What is this weird thing? This is weird. Oh, this is weird weird. Weird weird weird weird!’

“The more I was focusing on the pain and trying to make the pain go away, and obsessing over the pain, the pain got worse,” she recalled, describing what pain specialists recognize as the “pain-fear-pain cycle.” The more she anticipated pain, the worse it became—a classic example of the brain’s predictions creating the very suffering they warn against.

Sophie’s story illustrates a profound truth: All pain is real, but not all pain is necessary.

Pain isn’t in your tissues, but in your brain. It’s meant to be the brain’s way of protecting the body from harm. When you touch a hot stove, for example, danger receptors in your finger send signals so you pull your hand away fast. But your brain creates the experience of pain. This distinction is crucial for understanding chronic pain, which often persists long after tissues have healed.

Research increasingly suggests many chronic pain conditions result from “neuroplastic pain,” pain maintained by the brain’s predictions rather than ongoing tissue injury. Pain psychologist Alan Gordon explains, “The brain learns to predict pain to protect you. But sometimes these predictions become overprotective, warning you of danger even when there’s no tissue damage occurring.”

In normal pain processing, our bodies follow a straightforward path:

Normal Pain Process:

Diagram of: Damage → Pain → Memory associated with sosource of pain → We avoid the trigger.

This is how we learn not to touch hot stoves after being burned once. The process is adaptive and protective.

But for millions of chronic pain sufferers like Sophie, something different happens:

Neuroplastic Pain Loop:

Diagram of: Damage → Pain → Panic → Memory → Incorrect association → More Panic, Stress, Anxiety → Pain → Hypersensitivity

Gordon explains it with stark clarity in his book The Way Out: “When we respond to pain with fear, it reinforces that it’s dangerous, and the pain persists. Fear is the fuel for the pain.”

In other words, chronic pain is a conditioned response. The brain connects a physical sensation with a neutral trigger, like when Sophie felt low-level, unfamiliar back pain, that leads to an incorrect association with pain (or worse pain).

This isn’t just theory. A Netherlands study found that people with low back pain who scored high on pain-related fear were much more likely to still be in pain six months later, regardless of how bad their pain was initially or how long they’d had it.

From Pain to Performance

Sophie’s pain set her on a journey to healing, and she went to a slew of doctors: an ophthalmologist, an otolaryngologist, a neurologist, an endocrinologist, and a nutritionist.

The turning point came when Sophie learned about pain psychology and Pain Reprocessing Therapy (PRT). She discovered that her sensitivity, a trait that made her perceptive as an artist, also predisposed her to pain. “Hypersensitivity is both a strength and weakness. It makes me perceptive but also prone to pain,” she reflected.

Her breakthrough came unexpectedly through movement and dance, something she had initially feared would worsen her pain. “We wrote a song called ‘Throw Some Ass,’ basically about the mind-body connection,” Sophie explains. “When you do something ridiculous with your body and feel free and happy, it can make the pain go away.”

The song’s central refrain—“Throw some ass, free the mind”—captures the essence of her discovery: physical movement as a pathway to mental liberation. This simple phrase encapsulates what took pain researchers decades to formalize in therapeutic protocols.

“You’ve created the chronic pain anthem!” the podcast interviewer exclaimed during their conversation.

The Science of Unlearning Pain

Sophie, and thousands of others, have used PRT to recover, which operates on a revolutionary premise: Chronic pain often persists not because of ongoing tissue damage but because the brain has learned to produce pain inappropriately. The therapy focuses on three key steps:

Notice without judgment: Observing pain mindfully, without fear
Send messages of safety to your brain: Consciously reminding yourself that the sensation isn’t dangerous
Observe physical sensations with lightness and curiosity: What Gordon calls “positive affect induction” or simply “making jokes”

Readers of my book Indistractable will notice that PRT is similar to the first three steps of my four-step framework for mastering internal triggers, or negative feelings that drive us to distraction (or, in this case, chronic pain):

Look for the discomfort that precedes the distraction, focusing on the internal trigger
Write down the trigger
Explore your sensations

Like PRT, my method helps people notice, recognize, and explore their negative feelings with curiosity rather than contempt. It teaches them to understand and deal with their discomfort rather than attempt to escape it.

In The Way Out, Gordon describes a session with a patient named Janet who practiced these techniques. She reported, “It’s not pulsing anymore. It’s steadier. And still more spread out. It hurts less than before.”

Gordon’s response reveals the counterintuitive nature of the approach: “That’s great, but just remember, that’s not our goal. Whatever happens to the pain happens. You’re just watching and feeling with lightness and curiosity. This reinforces to your brain that the sensation is safe.”

The Wisdom of Pain

When asked about her journey, Sophie offers a perspective that surprises most chronic pain sufferers: “I’m genuinely grateful for the journey despite its challenges.” Rather than viewing her pain as something to merely overcome, she came to see it as a profound teacher—one that revealed parts of herself she might never have discovered otherwise.

“I think that’s the gift of migraines and of chronic pain, is that you have to look at every part of your life and try to improve every single part of your life,” she said. The pain forced her to make space in her highly stimulating and hectic life for her health.

This represents a profound shift from viewing pain as an enemy to recognizing it as information. The very hypersensitivity that made her vulnerable to pain also heightened her artistic perception, becoming both her challenge and her superpower.

“I’m just learning what Sophie needs and what Sophie wants,” she said. “I can be kind of bendable … Someone can be like, ‘I want eggs,’ and I’ll be like, ‘Eggs sound pretty good, let’s do that.’ Figuring out what I need and want and like has been a process that I’m actively in now … and probably will be forever.”

The Path Forward

The science of neuroplastic pain offers a revolutionary perspective: For millions suffering from chronic pain, the problem isn’t damaged tissue but a brain caught in a fear-pain cycle. When we respond to pain with fear, we unintentionally tell our brains the sensation is dangerous, perpetuating the very pain we’re trying to escape.

But when we approach pain with curiosity instead of fear, the brain can unlearn what it has mistakenly learned. The pain that once seemed like a life sentence can become the doorway to a more authentic, connected way of living.

Pain isn’t always caused by damage—it’s often a brain habit we can unlearn. Dance, laugh, and retrain your brain. Share on X

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When asked what advice she had for other chronic pain sufferers, Sophie said, “I always think about the simple metaphor, ‘Taking 10 steps forward and nine steps back’ and knowing it’s still a step forward. When I was in the middle of pain, I would constantly feel like, ‘I just took five steps back’ and be like ‘What, why [is this happening]?!’ Know that you’re still taking steps forward even if it doesn’t feel like it. You’re gathering information about what works for you, and it’s just going to take some time.”

Healing isn’t always found with a sterile white coat and yet another prescription. Sometimes the best way to quiet an overprotective brain is to do something ridiculous, joyful, and a little defiant. So the next time your brain tells you not to move a muscle, don’t. Throw some ass instead.

Let’s Not Decide Who Kids Are Before They Do

Give Children Space to Grow

The true joy of parenthood lies in watching our children unfold into their authentic selves. Week by week, month by month, year by year, they evolve into increasingly complex human beings with their own preferences, talents, and perspectives. Yet in our eagerness to know them—and as a natural result of our constant proximity—we often fall into the trap of assigning fixed identities to them prematurely.

As humans, we instinctively categorize and label the world around us. But when applied to developing children, this tendency can be not just unfair but actively harmful to their growth potential.

Our habit of pigeonholing children the moment they display any consistent personality trait or behavior creates invisible boundaries around their development. Though the human brain continues developing well into our mid-twenties, we start categorizing children as early as elementary school, sometimes even in preschool.

I didn’t truly understand who I was until well into adulthood—and I’m not alone. Many adults still joke, “I don’t know what I want to be when I grow up!” Yet we expect children to fit neatly into the boxes we create for them.

Labels alter the course of children’s lives—typically not for the better. If we want our children to thrive, we must give them the space to evolve. After all, they’re nowhere near finished becoming who they’re meant to be.

The Hidden Dangers of Labeling Children

Labels stick tenaciously, even when they’re inaccurate. Worse, they often become self-fulfilling prophecies. Any identity we assign to children shapes how they perceive themselves and how others treat them, forming the foundation of their mental frameworks. Once labeled as “this” or “that,” children may unconsciously avoid venturing beyond those prescribed boundaries.

This effect isn’t limited to obviously negative labels like “troublemaker” or “slow learner.” Even seemingly positive labels like “gifted” carry significant downsides.

Mary C. Murphy, professor of psychological and brain sciences and author of Cultures of Growth, notes: “Labeling [kids] as gifted may actually decrease their odds of success. Consider how many high school valedictorians—most of whom were probably labeled as gifted—go on to underperform.”

Why does this happen? According to Murphy’s research with thousands of students across hundreds of classrooms, children labeled as “smart” often develop an intense fear of failure. They worry about losing their status or disappointing the adults and peers in their lives. This fear leads them to avoid challenges and risks—the very experiences essential for true growth. Instead of pushing beyond their comfort zones, they stick to what they already know they excel at.

Kids aren’t houseplants—you don't get to pick a pot and expect them to stay there forever. Let them surprise you, break molds, and bloom however the hell they want. Let your kids become who they decide to be. Share on X

In today’s environment, children face labeling from multiple directions: parents, teachers, school grades, and standardized testing all contribute to defining who a child “is” rather than recognizing what they’re temporarily experiencing or doing.

Consider a child struggling academically without receiving appropriate individualized support. According to self-determination theory developed by researchers Edward Deci and Richard Ryan, feeling competent is one of three psychological nutrients all humans need for wellbeing. Without experiencing competence, this child will likely conclude that achievement is impossible for them and stop trying altogether.

Labeling doesn’t just affect how children see themselves or how they’re treated—it fundamentally limits their potential.

A 2023 study found that students’ self-perception is heavily influenced by how school administrators, teachers, and peers view them. The labels assigned to students shape their behavior, motivation, and social identity. Perhaps most telling, the researchers concluded, “The reasons behind labels often reveal more about the labeler than the labeled individual.”

That’s the greatest injustice: Labels rarely reflect the truth about children, yet they powerfully determine what happens to them.

Similar to receiving a mental health diagnosis, being labeled in childhood exposes children to the constant reinforcement of that bias. Teachers, parents, and peers unconsciously treat children in ways that align with their assigned labels. The label activates confirmation bias: both adults and peers tend to seek evidence that confirms these labels while ignoring contradictory signs.

In their landmark study, researchers Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson investigated the relationship between teacher expectations and students’ intellectual development. After administering a standard IQ test to all students in an elementary school, they randomly selected a group of students—regardless of their actual test results—and told teachers this group would exhibit “dramatic intellectual growth.” Eight months later, these randomly selected students scored significantly higher on a follow-up IQ test.

The study concluded that teachers’ positive perceptions correlated strongly with students’ high performance on intellectual and academic assessments. Conversely, negative perceptions led to poorer outcomes. Importantly, it was the perception—not the children’s tested intelligence—that played the determining role in their achievement.

How to Avoid Labeling Children

1. Evaluate Your Own “Trapped Priors”

Parents often unconsciously develop what are called “trapped priors” about their children—perceptions of reality colored or “trapped” by past experiences. When we form fixed ideas about our child’s personality, abilities, or limitations, we unknowingly reinforce those beliefs through our interactions with them. These trapped priors become increasingly rigid and unexamined over time, even when they no longer reflect reality. This disconnect can damage our relationship with our evolving children, creating emotional distance.

“Lo Life” podcast host Lo VonRumpf, an entrepreneur and stylist, described this exact phenomenon to therapist and author Lori Gottlieb:

“I remember at one point I was a little bit lazy. I was a sloth as a teenager…and I was passive aggressive, and now I’m definitely not passive aggressive, but for some reason, like with my dad, for example, if we get into it, he will go right back to that teenage version of me and refer to me as lazy…. And it’s so triggering because I’ve worked my ass off to not be lazy, but it’s so quick that he reverts back to saying that to me and…I get so worked up when he does that.”

Gottlieb acknowledged this as a common issue in family relationships.

To release trapped priors about your children, start by giving them the benefit of the doubt. Reflect honestly on how you conceptualize your child and question why you hold those perceptions. Does your child’s current behavior actually match how you describe them—or have you been selectively noticing only the behaviors that align with your existing perception?

Embrace the reality that your child is constantly growing and evolving, and shouldn’t be defined by behaviors exhibited during a single period of their development.

2. Focus on Verbs Instead of Nouns

Verbs are powerful tools for preventing us from labeling our children and developing trapped priors. As action words, verbs describe transient behaviors that naturally change over time. They don’t define identity; rather, they acknowledge that we are people first and foremost, not whatever a singular noun might suggest we are.

Language plays a crucial role in shaping both our expectations and reality. While I often encourage adults to make identity pacts to help them commit to behavior change (identity change being key to behavior change), this approach doesn’t serve developing children well.

For children who are still growing and learning, verbs provide a much more appropriate framework.

Instead of labeling a child as “lazy” or “such a procrastinator,” try saying, “I’ve noticed you’ve been procrastinating on schoolwork lately. What’s going on?” or “I’ve noticed that you’ve been lounging around the house and haven’t seemed very motivated. Can I help in some way?”

3. Follow the LOPI Method at Home

Learning by Observing and Pitching In (LOPI) is an informal learning practice common in Indigenous communities throughout the United States, Mexico, and Central America. In this approach, children participate in genuine community activities like cooking without being subjected to external assessment. As one study noted, informal learning methods don’t “involve assessment external to the activity,” meaning children aren’t graded, tested, or given separate feedback. The emphasis falls on learning through active participation and supporting children in whatever they’re doing.

You can implement LOPI at home by involving children in cooking, gardening, and household repairs. If a child struggles while learning to hammer a nail, for instance, you might simply demonstrate the correct technique rather than explicitly pointing out their error or labeling them as “good” or “bad” at the task.

We tell kids 'you can be anything,' then immediately slap labels on them that say otherwise. Drop the labels, ditch the predictions, and give kids room to unfold into whoever they're meant to become. Share on X

4. Implement Elements of Self-Directed Learning

My daughter, now 16, has chosen homeschooling since first grade (I share more about this in this interview). One significant advantage is that after completing her regular curriculum in the morning, she has afternoons dedicated to self-directed education—”the self-chosen activities and life experiences of the learner, whether or not those activities were chosen deliberately for the purpose of education.” By age 14, my daughter had earned certification as a Python entry-level engineer and completed a Google Data Analytics Professional Certificate.

I’m not suggesting every child should be homeschooled. However, you can incorporate self-directed education into your child’s life outside traditional school hours. Rather than automatically enrolling children in predetermined after-school activities like sports or art classes, self-directed education gives children control over how they spend their time—and then supports them in pursuing those interests.

This approach allows children to explore what genuinely interests them and develop competence in activities they find meaningful.

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Conclusion

Children need freedom to experiment, fail, and grow to truly understand themselves. While one of the greatest joys of parenthood is witnessing our children’s personalities and interests unfold, we must be careful not to mistake temporary behaviors for fixed identity.

It’s natural to be excited about getting to know our children more deeply. But always remember: who they are at 4, 10, or 17 won’t be who they are forever. By giving them space to evolve without the constraints of premature labels, we offer them the greatest gift of all—the freedom to become their authentic selves.

How to Find Fulfillment When Your Job Doesn’t Provide It

What to do when your work feels meaningless—but quitting isn’t an option (yet).

I can’t tell you how many conversations I’ve had with friends and readers who feel stuck in jobs that don’t fulfill them. They’re not necessarily in toxic work environments or dealing with poor treatment (although that happens too—it’s the main cause of dissatisfaction at work). More often, they’re simply bored, feel undervalued, or think their work doesn’t matter.

They’re not alone. A 2024 Gallup report found that 62 percent of people globally are not engaged at work, and another 15 percent are actively disengaged. That means nearly 8 in 10 people feel checked out while on the clock.

Our job enables us to provide for ourselves and our families, but that can make us feel all the more shackled to a work situation that makes us miserable or unfulfilled. Are we meant to suck it up? Do we just have to accept the fact that not everyone gets to have a fulfilling job?

No. Even when your job doesn’t seem meaningful, you can still create meaning. Fulfillment doesn’t have to be something your job gives you. It can be something you bring to your job.

What Happens When Your Work Feels Meaningless

When we don’t feel good at work, we don’t feel good, period. Dissatisfaction at work tends to seep into other parts of our lives, affecting our self-worth and our relationships. Ironically, feeling unfulfilled often makes us worse at our jobs. It also tends to cause work to take over other domains of our lives.

Dissatisfaction is a powerful internal trigger—a negative feeling that drives us to distraction. The drive to relieve discomfort, including the emotional kind, is the root cause of all our behavior, and distraction is one way our brains attempt to deal with that discomfort. At work, when you feel bored with your tasks, undervalued by your boss or coworkers, or regretful that you didn’t choose another career path when you had the chance, you’ll seek relief from that discomfort. So you start scrolling your phone or obsessively checking email, doing anything other than what you’re supposed to be doing.

You may waste away the whole workday thanks to distraction. The projects that you should have worked on during office hours, you’ll now have to work on in the evening, when you could be spending time with family or friends or hobbies. This is how the vicious cycle of distraction functions.

Diagram of a circular path where Distraction leads to a Lack of Time which leads to Frustration, which leads back to Distraction.

So not only do you not enjoy your job, but you don’t think you’re doing a good job. Feeling that you’re not competent or that you’re not a valuable contributor is a demoralizing feeling that, in turn, pushes you more toward distraction.

Finding fulfillment can break that cycle. But first, we have to question where fulfillment comes from.

Where Does Fulfillment Come From?

Too many of us grew up believing that a job should bring purpose, meaning, and happiness to our lives. But that belief is a cultural construct. Western cultures believe we must be alive for a purpose, to achieve and make money. In the early 1900s, sociologist Max Weber traced this belief back to Protestant values: the idea that material success signifies moral virtue and divine favor. Capitalism and industrialization emphasized innovation, measurable outcomes, productivity, self-reliance, and competition. The American dream, the grandparent of today’s hustle culture, posits that anyone can achieve a better life if they work hard enough.

If you believe that your job should bring you life meaning and fulfillment, it’s no wonder that a job that doesn’t is such a source of discontent for you.

So, consider the beliefs of other cultures.

Many Indigenous groups worldwide view fulfillment differently. As a semi-nomadic people, Aboriginals tend to forego material success; they value relationships, respect, and connectedness among their community and a deep spiritual connection to their land. In the Ecuadorian Amazon, the Achuar people want nothing more than to continue their lifestyle of close family connection and harmony with nature. In North America, the Lakota people live by seven values, including generosity, kinship, and compassion, and historically, their driving principle has been to provide for the general well-being of everyone in their community.

Those Indigenous groups are collectivist cultures, prioritizing the needs of the group over those of the individual. Western cultures are individualist, focused on personal achievement and independence.

The belief that your job should bring not only income, but purpose, meaning, and happiness to your life is a cultural construct shaped by Western ideals of productivity and self-worth. Are we asking for too much from our jobs? Share on X

The guidebook on how to live a meaningful life doesn’t read the same everywhere. That should give you some perspective: You don’t need your job to fulfill you or define your worth. Many people in the world don’t even believe that it alone could. One study of more than 700 people found that a diverse range of factors contribute to a fulfilled life.

If what gives us fulfillment is a construct, then by changing our mindset, we can find fulfillment even if we have a job we don’t like.

Shift Your Mindset: “I Create My Own Fulfillment”

There is no perfect job. Every job, even if it’s based on your passion, is going to feel like a slog at some point. Mark Twain probably never knew how much misery his quote, “Find a job you enjoy doing, and you will never have to work a day in your life,” would cause.

Of course, there are people who get fulfillment from work. But fulfillment isn’t something you find. It’s something you make.

If you feel unfulfilled, it’s time for a mindset shift: Stop asking, “Why isn’t my job fulfilling me?” and start asking, “How can I bring fulfillment to my job?”

You don’t necessarily need to change jobs. You may just need a new approach to the one you have.

Reframe Your Role: Align with Your Values

Pinpoint how your job enables you to meet your values—or not.

Values are the attributes of the person you want to be. They’re not goals; they’re the guiding principles behind your behavior.

I recommend people identify their values across three life domains: you, your relationships, and your work.

Now ask yourself how your job enables you to fulfill those values.

Even if you dislike your tasks, your job may allow you to meet your values of independence or community. Perhaps your value of altruism allows you to connect with the socially minded mission of your organization, or maybe your job helps you meet your value of creativity.

Seeing your job through the lens of your values helps you to connect with what you do on a personal level, even if your job isn’t perfect.

Transform the Daily Grind with Play

Sometimes the problem isn’t that your job is bad—it’s tedious and boring. Maybe a project or task isn’t intellectually stimulating, or maybe it’s so hard you don’t want to start!

Reimagining the task may help you find the motivation to tackle it by bringing a little play to your work.

Ian Bogost, a professor of interactive computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology, wrote in his book Play Anything that “fun turns out to be fun even if it doesn’t involve much (or any) enjoyment.” Huh?

Bogost tells us that “fun is the aftermath of deliberately manipulating a familiar situation in a new way.” Instead of running away from the pain of doing a task, the idea is to pay such close attention that you find new challenges that provide the novelty to engage our attention and maintain focus when tempted by distraction.

I’m a writer, but sometimes I find the act of writing really hard. I learned to stay focused on the tedious work of writing books by finding the mystery in my work. I write to answer interesting questions and discover novel solutions to old problems.

This woman who works at a pizza shop learned how to fold stacks upon stacks of pizza boxes as fast as she could.

What could finding the fun in your work look like for you?

Track how fast you can complete certain tasks.
Create small experiments to improve efficiency.
Learn a new skill and apply it in your current role.
Find one thing to improve in your workflow each week.

Even tasks you’re loath to start can become more engaging when you inject creativity and challenge into them. You may discover that finding the fun in your work is its own kind of fulfillment.

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Seek Fulfillment Outside of Work

Your job is not your whole life.

If your work isn’t a source of deep meaning, find fulfillment elsewhere. Spend quality time with family or friends. Volunteer. Learn something new. Travel. Join a community. Start a side project.

This is why it’s critical to make sure distractions at work don’t cause your job to take over your life. You need to set aside time for the activities that will make you feel you’re spending your time the way you want to.

If you’ve honestly tried these avenues and your job remains a major source of discontent, that’s a clear sign: It’s time to do what you need to do to leave.

Maybe your job clashes with some of your values, or it’s in a field you simply have no interest in. Perhaps nothing you do eases a toxic work environment or helps you build a better relationship with your boss.

If your work is getting in the way of feeling fulfilled, you owe it to yourself and the other people in your life to find a way to be happier.

Why Seeking Approval is Killing your Potential

The Hidden Cost of Seeking Others’ Approval

That flutter of excitement when someone likes your post. The warm glow after your boss praises your presentation. The slight panic when your work receives criticism instead of praise. Sound familiar?

We’ve all been conditioned to seek approval from our families, friends, and bosses before taking action. But here’s the uncomfortable truth: we’ll never live on our own terms if we live by external validation.

“For those with high need for approval, their self-esteem is correlated with how positively they believe others perceive them,” concluded researchers in one study. This dependency creates a psychological trap where your sense of worth becomes hostage to others’ opinions—opinions that are fickle, subjective, and completely beyond your control.

What Artists Can Teach Us About Self-Belief

There’s something I’ve always admired about artists: their unerring (and nearly stubborn and unrealistic) belief in their talents and abilities.

Think about it. If you have your heart set on becoming an artist, you’ll face more adversity than if you had chosen almost any other profession. People who plan to study art in college will inevitably hear, “Oh, but what are you going to do with that degree?” Someone who wants to be a professional actor or dancer is bound to hear, “But there’s so much competition. Only a few people make it.”

Artists can’t allow criticism or external validation to stop them or dictate what they create—even though receiving critique is an inherent aspect of their work.

Igor Stravinsky, today considered one of the greatest composers of the 20th century, caused riots in theaters in the early 1900s because the French aristocracy wasn’t ready for his unusual music. Popular musicians now argue that Stravinsky’s indifference to public opinion enabled him to revolutionize the music of the age.

During the heyday of socio-political art in Mexico, Frida Kahlo’s paintings—which depicted physical and emotional pain and the female identity, subjects that were considered personal and narrow rather than universal—were overlooked, and often overshadowed by the work of her husband, artist Diego Rivera. Today she is more famous than her husband.

This ability to push forward—despite doubt, rejection, and disapproval—isn’t exclusive to artists. It’s a skill anyone can cultivate.

The Trap of External Validation

Seeking external validation isn’t just unreliable—it’s actively harmful to your psychological wellbeing. Research shows it’s closely associated with anxiety and diminished performance over time.

This aligns with self-determination theory, a widely accepted framework developed by psychologists Richard Ryan and Edward Deci. Their research demonstrates that people need three psychological nutrients—autonomy, relatedness, and competence—to thrive. External validation undermines these needs by making our sense of competence dependent on others rather than ourselves.

Brad Stulberg, co-author of The Passion Paradox, explains this phenomenon through two types of passion in a New York Times article. Harmonious passion occurs when we’re absorbed in an activity because we love how it makes us feel (intrinsic motivation). Obsessive passion happens when we become “hooked” on activities that result in rewards and recognition (extrinsic motivation).

The latter creates what Stulberg calls “a volatile and fragile sense of self” because “people who are obsessively passionate tie their self-worth to outcomes that are often outside their control.”

Think about Sarah, a marketing professional I worked with, who found herself refreshing her inbox every few minutes after sending a campaign proposal, anxiously awaiting her client’s feedback. Her mood would swing wildly between elation and despair based on others’ responses. The habit loop was clear: uncertainty triggered checking behavior, which was occasionally rewarded with praise, reinforcing the cycle of external validation seeking.

The need for approval feeds anxiety. Instead, follow the example of Frida Kahlo, who painted for herself, not her critics. Share on X

5 Strategies to Cultivate Self-Validation

Let’s break the cycle. Here are five practical ways to build self-validation into your daily life:

1. Identify Your Values and Live By Them

Identifying our values gives us a clear, intrinsic sense of purpose. When we are uncertain about what truly matters to us, we default to looking outward—chasing approval, social status, or material success based on what others deem important.

Try this today: Write down three core values (e.g., creativity, connection, growth) and ask yourself before each major decision: “Is this action aligned with my values, or am I just seeking external validation?” This simple question can transform how you make choices.

2. Identify When and Why You Seek External Validation

The first step in changing any behavior is recognizing when and why it happens.

Try this today: Keep a “validation journal” for one week. Each time you find yourself craving external validation, note:

What triggered this need?
What emotion am I feeling? (Insecurity? Fear? Uncertainty?)
What am I really seeking? (Reassurance? Confirmation? Recognition?)

After a week, you’ll likely see patterns that help you understand your validation-seeking habit loops.

3. Replace External with Internal Validation

Once you understand when and why you seek external validation, cultivate the habit of self-validation.

Try this today: Create a “win jar” where you write down small daily victories on slips of paper. These could be as simple as “spoke up in a meeting” or “chose a healthy lunch.” Reviewing these periodically reinforces your ability to recognize your own achievements. You can also use my free habit tracker to monitor your progress.

4. Work on What You Like, Instead of Trying to Be Liked

Igor Stravinsky and Frida Kahlo ignored the trends of their time to create work that was meaningful to them—even though it meant receiving meager recognition initially.

Try this today: Set aside 30 minutes for a “curiosity experiment” where you explore something purely because it interests you, with zero expectation of showing the results to anyone else. Notice how different this feels from activities done for others’ approval.

5. Focus on Input, Not Outcomes

Excessive need for external validation places our worth on outcomes (number of awards, rewards, compliments) that are outside of our control. It’s smarter and healthier to focus on input: the time and attention we give to something.

Try this today: For your next project, set process goals rather than outcome goals. Instead of “get 100 likes on my post,” aim for “write for 30 minutes with full concentration.” Studies show that visualizing the process, not the outcome, leads to better performance—which in turn reinforces positive beliefs about ourselves.

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Break Free From the Validation Cycle

External validation, if you get it, is fleeting and fickle. The only approval you need is your own. By building these five strategies into your daily habits, you can gradually shift from external dependence to internal confidence.

Which strategy will you try first? Start today—not for anyone else’s approval, but for the freedom that comes from living on your own terms.

Nir Eyal is a former Lecturer at Stanford and is the bestselling author of Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products and Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life. Indistractable won numerous honors and was named one of the Best Books of the Year by Amazon.

BONUS: Nir offers a complimentary Indistractable workbook on his blog, NirAndFar.com

How Successful People Timebox

A Step-by-Step Guide to Timeboxing, With Examples

Timeboxing is the most powerful time-management technique. However, there is no one way to timebox. Some people keep the same schedule every week and review it on Sundays. Others change their timeboxed calendar daily and review it the night before.

Some people use a spreadsheet in 30 or 15-minute increments (get my free schedule maker here), others use Google Calendar, and others use one of the many timeboxing apps available.

This step-by-step guide, plus timeboxing examples from real people, will help you figure out what timeboxing looks like for you.

Remember: No productivity technique is effective and easy. It’s going to be effective and hard. Nothing will magically solve time management without some effort.

Step One: Identify Your Values

According to Russ Harris, author of The Happiness Trap, values are “how we want to be, what we want to stand for, and how we want to relate to the world around us.”

Values are attributes of the person we want to be.

For example, your values may include being an honest person, being a loving parent, or being an appreciated part of a team. We never achieve our values any more than finishing a painting would let us achieve being creative. A value is like a guiding star; it’s the fixed point we use to help us navigate our life choices.

Categorize those values into the three life domains below to build an authentic, holistic image of the person you want to be.

A set of nested circles representing life domains: yourself, your relationships, and your work

Step Two: Turn Your Values into Time

Decide how much time you need to spend on each life domain to be consistent with your values.

List the activities and tasks that exercise your values, which I call “traction.” These are the activities that you will plot into your weekly timeboxed calendar.

To meet your value of being healthy, perhaps you’ll pick activities like a workout class or meal planning. To exercise the relationship value of being a good life partner, schedule regular date nights to give the two of you time for deep conversations. To practice the value of playfulness, list activities like time to play video games, a game night with friends, or playtime with your kids.

Notice that timeboxing isn’t just about “getting things done.” It’s about being the kind of person you want to become. If the kind of person you want to become enjoys an hour of playing video games or scrolling social media, great! Do it! But do it according to your schedule and your values.

Step Three: Create a Timeboxed Calendar

Create a calendar template for your perfect week, guided by how much time you’ve decided to spend on each life domain. Schedule the activities you listed in the previous step.

A quick side note on the planning fallacy: Humans tend to be overly optimistic about how long tasks take. One study found that even when forced to consider the worst-case scenario for the time a task would take, participants regularly disregarded it in favor of the best-case scenario. We can’t help but try and pack as much as we can into each day! But that sets us up for failure before we even begin.

Say you’re going to the gym for a 45-minute workout. You’re not timeboxing just 45 minutes; you’re also timeboxing the time it takes to get there and back, plus the time you need to shower, get dressed, and eat something. So you might be talking about two hours!

A trick for avoiding the planning fallacy is to triple the time you estimate a task will take, especially for work-related tasks with strict deadlines.

Step Four: Track How Well You Follow the Calendar

Inevitably, three things will get in the way of your timeboxed calendar. There are only three possible causes of any distraction (click on a link below to learn more about each):

To prevent those three distractions in the future, you’ll need to identify the source.

As Paulo Coelho said, “A mistake repeated more than once is a decision.”

If you keep getting distracted by the same things again and again without putting practices in place to prevent them from happening in the future, you are deciding to be distractible.

I recommend using my free distraction tracker to note:

The time you went off-track
The source of the distraction (either an internal trigger, external trigger, or a planning problem)
Ideas for how to overcome the distraction next time

Step Five: Reflect and Refine

Timeboxing is a long-term experiment. You should schedule 15 minutes every week to review and refine your calendar.

First, ask yourself, “When in my schedule did I do what I said I would do, and when did I get distracted?”

If an internal trigger distracts you, what strategies will you use to cope the next time it arises? If it was an external trigger, like a phone call or a talkative colleague, how can you prevent that kind of interruption in the future?

If a planning problem was the reason you gave in to distraction, ask yourself, “Are there changes I can make to my calendar that will give me the time I need to better live out my values?” For example, if the planning problem was an unexpected event, was it a one-time interruption or something that may happen again? If the latter, what contingency plan can you put in place?

It may take several weeks of repeating Steps 2 through 5 before you land one that suits you. Even then, if you experience changes in your environment or life circumstances, such as moving homes or starting a new job, you’ll likely have to adjust your timeboxed calendar.

Tips for Timeboxing Newbies

Start with “you” time. You need time in your schedules for rest, intellectual enrichment, proper nourishment, prayer, or whatever else helps you live out your values. By setting aside time to live out your values in the “you” domain, you will have the time to reflect on your calendar and visualize the qualities of the person you want to be. With your body and mind strong, you will also be much more likely to follow through on your other commitments.

Schedule fun stuff! Many people make the mistake of thinking everything on their calendar should be productivity-focused. Quite the opposite! To see the real power of timeboxing, start by building your perfect day.

When you use timeboxing to schedule activities you want to do—even if they include watching TV or playing video games—you’ll see just how you really can do anything you want to do, just not all at once. You’ll enjoy those activities more without feeling guilty.

Give yourself options. Some think preplanning exactly what they will do is too constraining. But timeboxing offers structure with room to play. You don’t have to schedule a specific activity, like “wash the dishes.” You can schedule a broader category.

For example, I timebox “admin” every week and keep an ongoing list of admin tasks, like “pay this bill” or “schedule a dentist appointment.” When the admin time comes around, I can choose any task. My daughter and I used to schedule time for “planned spontaneity.” Every week at the same time, we picked an activity from a “fun jar” together.

You can timebox exercise, chores, independent learning, and fun with friends without scheduling a precise activity. How do you know whether the category is too broad? As long as it’s specific enough so that you know what you will not be doing at that time, it’s niche enough.

Know what a crisis is (and is not). A crisis is an unexpected event requiring immediate attention. If you could have planned for it, or it doesn’t actually require immediate attention, it’s not a crisis. Stop acting like every email requires an immediate reply. Crises are rare, and chances are you’re getting worked up because you don’t feel like doing the hard work you know you have to do (see internal triggers). Put contingencies in place for things that could go wrong and ask yourself whether something really, truly can’t wait or are you looking for distractions.

The goal is not to finish. Unlike a to-do list, the goal of timeboxing is not to finish anything! Instead, it is to learn how much you get done when you work without distraction, creating a feedback loop that will help you plan your time properly in the future.

That may make timeboxing seem unsuitable for people with strict deadlines or unpredictable jobs, but I assure you, it’s not.

The goal isn’t to complete as many tasks as possible in a day. We can’t control the number of tasks we complete. The only things we can control is the amount of time and attention we put into each task. Timeboxing is the only way to learn how long things actually take by working on them without distraction so you can plan accordingly in the future.

To-do lists make you feel good checking cute little boxes, even when you do irrelevant work. Timeboxing forces you to make tradeoffs so you can focus on what’s truly important.

Timeboxing Examples from the Experts

“If I didn’t have this [timeboxed calendar], I’d be in a panic the very first moment I wake up,” Marc Andreessen once admitted

Although Andreessen is a well-known, super-successful entrepreneur and investor, he has the same 24 hours daily as you and me. He’s realized that keeping a schedule allows him to devote his precious hours to what matters most.

Andreessen schedules not only important meetings but also sleep, wake-up time, and even free time:

Free time is critical because that’s the release valve. You can work full tilt for a long time as long as you know you have actual time for yourself coming up. I find if you don’t schedule enough free time, you get resentful of your own calendar. … We’ve both worked with executives where they were scheduled to the ‘nth’ degree. The three things you tend to notice with executives like that. One, they just never have any time to actually think. And that turns out to be a fairly important thing. Two, they have a hard time adjusting to changes in circumstances. In our business of venture capital, you get a lot of problems that come up. There is a lot of firefighting. It’s like those classic movie scenes when there’s a huge crisis and somebody calls out to their secretary “Cancel my schedule!” Well, maybe you wouldn’t need to do that if you had some flexibility in your calendar.

-Marc Andreessen, A16Z.com

Marc Andreessen’s Timeboxed Calendar

Marc Andreessen’s timeboxed weekly calendar example

Source: Andreessen Horowitz

If you don’t schedule enough free time, you get resentful of your own calendar. —Marc Andreessen (@pmarca) #Timeboxing #Productivity Share on X

Neha Kirpalani is a senior marketing consultant and personal brand strategist. A self-described “productivity nerd,” she found my course after searching for a better time-management technique after being promoted to a management role, which came with additional responsibilities that threw her schedule “off kilter.”

In Harvard Business Review, Kirpalani says timeboxing helped her strategically prioritize tasks, stop wasting time figuring out what to do next, and be more realistic about the available time she had for new commitments.

As is the case for all people who start to use timeboxing, Kirpalani needed an orientation period:

I began experimenting with timeboxing on a small scale. I gave myself a fortnight to get used to the process. Every week, I would take a few new tasks from my to-do list, estimate how long each would take, and then block that time on my calendar. At the end of the workday, I would reflect on how much progress I had made and iterate my schedule as needed. If an urgent meeting or task came up unexpectedly, I rescheduled my priorities accordingly.

Neha Kirpalani’s Timeboxed Calendar

Neha Kirpalani’s timeboxed weekly calendar from her guide to timeboxing

Source: Harvard Business Review

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Kirpalani highlights a critical point: Don’t approach timeboxing like a drill sergeant. Rather, the right mindset is that of a scientist, and the job of a scientist is to experiment to gather evidence about a subject.

Timeboxing enables us to think of each week as a mini-experiment and to improve with each iteration. The goal is to figure out where your schedule didn’t work in the prior week so you can make it easier to follow the next time around.

There is no one way to timebox. It will take time and experimentation to figure out how to best use it to your advantage.

Stop Gaslighting Yourself: Why Your Memory Isn’t as Reliable as You Think

Have you ever cringed while showering, suddenly remembering something embarrassing you said years ago? That memory still feels so fresh, so real—but what if I told you it might be entirely distorted?

We navigate life believing our memories are faithful recordings of the past. We replay conversations with crystal-clear certainty, convinced that what we remember is exactly what happened. But here’s the uncomfortable truth: our brains are unreliable narrators.

The Illusion of Perfect Memory

False memories aren’t rare glitches in cognition; they’re the default. Studies consistently show that memory isn’t a recording device—it’s a reconstruction. Every time we recall an event, we subtly rewrite it, influenced by current emotions, biases, and external inputs.

In fact, memory is so malleable that researchers can implant entirely false memories in people. Cognitive psychologist Elizabeth Loftus has demonstrated this repeatedly in her groundbreaking research. In one landmark study, she and her colleagues showed participants doctored photographs of events that never happened—such as taking a hot air balloon ride as a child. Astonishingly, about 30 percent of participants “remembered” these fictional events with vivid detail.

Even subtle language changes can dramatically alter our recall. In Loftus’s classic car crash experiment, participants who were asked how fast cars were going when they “smashed” into each other estimated higher speeds and even falsely recalled seeing broken glass. Those asked about cars “hitting” each other reported lower speeds and no broken glass.

These false or reconstructed memories don’t just distort our perception of external events—they fundamentally shape how we see ourselves.

Researchers can implant entirely false memories in people. Our recall is surprisingly malleable. #FalseMemories #CognitiveBias Share on X

When Memory Distortion Becomes Self-Gaslighting

Gaslighting typically refers to when someone invalidates another person’s experience through manipulation. But we’re equally capable of gaslighting ourselves, and our faulty memories provide the perfect fuel.

Consider this scenario: You made an awkward comment during a team meeting five years ago. In your memory, the room fell silent, colleagues exchanged uncomfortable glances, and your boss frowned disapprovingly. This memory reinforces your belief that you’re “not good with people” or “always say the wrong thing.”

But what actually happened? Perhaps there was a brief pause, a few people didn’t even notice, and the meeting continued normally. Or maybe your comment was received better than you remember, but your negativity bias—our tendency to remember and dwell on negative experiences more than positive ones—has amplified the awkwardness in your memory.

Self-gaslighting happens when:

You take a memory—especially one tied to shame or failure—and exaggerate its significance
You convince yourself that one moment defines your character or abilities
You override a balanced perspective with a harsh, self-critical narrative
You selectively remember evidence that confirms your negative self-image

If you tend to see yourself as someone who is always at a disadvantage or inherently flawed, your memory distortions will likely lean toward reinforcing those beliefs. This creates a vicious cycle: negative self-perception → biased memory recall → strengthened negative self-perception.

Breaking Free from Memory-Based Self-Criticism

If our memories are unreliable, can we ever be sure what happened? Probably not—and that’s surprisingly liberating. Instead of obsessing over whether your perception is objectively true, ask a more useful question: Does this belief serve me?

Psychologists call it belief perseverance—our stubborn tendency to cling to beliefs even after they’ve been discredited. Even if you discovered that a long-held memory was distorted, your brain would likely resist changing the belief it created. This is why many people continue to see themselves in certain limiting ways, despite evidence to the contrary.

Practical Steps to Stop Self-Gaslighting

1. Question the utility of your memories

When a painful memory surfaces, ask yourself:

Does believing I embarrassed myself at that party help me enjoy social gatherings now?
Does holding onto the belief that I wasn’t a “math person” in school help me grow today?
Does seeing myself as “always disorganized” improve my productivity?

2. Collect evidence that contradicts your negative narratives

Our brains love confirmation bias—we notice evidence that confirms our beliefs while ignoring contradictory information. Actively seek and document counter-evidence:

Keep a “wins journal” where you record daily successes, no matter how small
Ask trusted friends about their perceptions of events you remember negatively
Take note when you act contrary to your negative self-belief

3. Reframe memories as tools, not truths

A belief is only as valuable as the result it creates in your life. If a memory strengthens you, keeps you accountable, and pushes you toward the person you want to become, use it. If it drains you, narrows your world, and fuels resentment, consider letting it go—whether it’s “true” or not.

4. Practice deliberate memory reconstruction

Try this exercise: Take a negative memory that haunts you and deliberately reconstruct it with compassion.

Write down the memory as you currently remember it
Identify where you might be filling in gaps or making assumptions
Rewrite the scene with the understanding that others were likely focused on themselves, not judging you
Imagine watching the scene as a compassionate observer—what would they notice that you missed?

Traction, Not Busyness

Being busy doesn’t build success. Being intentional does.

The path to meaningful productivity isn’t about filling every minute of your calendar. It’s about creating the time and space for traction—making progress on what matters most to you. This connects directly to Eyal’s concept of “traction” versus “distraction,” where traction pulls you toward what you want while distraction pulls you away.

I’ve found that the professionals who advance most rapidly aren’t necessarily working more hours—they’re working more focused hours. They’ve mastered the art of saying no to the trivial many so they can say yes to the vital few.

By setting appropriate boundaries around your time and attention, you aren’t being difficult or uncooperative. You’re creating the conditions necessary for your best work to emerge. You’re telling the world that your contribution matters enough to be protected.

What’s one boundary you could set this week to protect your time and attention?

Memory isn't replay; it's rewrite. Understanding this changes everything about how we view our experiences and our identity. #Memory #CognitiveScience Share on X

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Choosing Better Stories

This isn’t about denying accountability or ignoring genuine lessons from past mistakes. It’s about recognizing that memory is fallible and that we can be selective about the stories we tell ourselves.

The next time you find yourself trapped in a cycle of self-criticism based on past memories, remember: your brain is an imperfect historian but an excellent storyteller. You can acknowledge the uncertainty of your memories while choosing stories that empower rather than diminish you.

Your past doesn’t define you—and your memories of that past are far more flexible than you think. Use that flexibility to your advantage.

How to Protect Your Focus Without Burning Bridges

Nir’s Note: This guest post is by Jenny Wood, a former Google executive who led one of the company’s biggest career programs, helping thousands take charge of their professional growth. Her new book, Wild Courage: Go After What You Want and Get It, is a bold guide to standing out and getting ahead by embracing 9 unexpected traits.

Most professionals don’t struggle with time management. They struggle with people-pleasing.

From an early age, we’re conditioned to say “yes.” Yes to additional responsibilities. Yes to impromptu meetings. Yes to anything that signals we’re cooperative team players. But this automatic response creates a significant dilemma: every time we say yes to something inessential, we’re implicitly saying no to work that actually matters.

As Nir Eyal points out in Indistractable, if you don’t take control of your time, someone else will.

An illustration showing an hourglass filled with sand and a hanging spotlight, emphasizing that achieving goals isn't about having more time but about directing your energy with greater focus

The Hidden Cost of Interruptions

A study by Gloria Mark from the University of California, Irvine shows that the average knowledge worker is interrupted every 11 minutes. Once that interruption occurs, it takes approximately 23 minutes to fully regain concentration.

This isn’t just frustrating—it’s fundamentally incompatible with meaningful work. A few unexpected notifications, messages, or drop-by conversations can completely derail your productivity and transform your workday into a cycle of distraction and reaction rather than intentional action.

The constant context-switching doesn’t just feel exhausting—it is exhausting. This pattern increases stress, mental fatigue, and error rates, while dramatically reducing your capacity for focused work.

What’s even more concerning is how these interruptions compound over time. If you’re interrupted just five times in a workday (a conservative estimate for most professionals), you’re losing nearly two hours of productive time—not counting the interruptions themselves. Over a week, that’s an entire day of work evaporating into the ether.

The People-Pleasing Trap

Why do we keep falling into this trap? The answer lies in our deeply ingrained fear of social rejection.

During my time at Google, I noticed a pattern among even the most brilliant professionals. Many of us were unconsciously prioritizing short-term social harmony over long-term impact. We’d say yes to a 30-minute coffee chat to avoid potentially hurting someone’s feelings, even if it meant pushing an important deadline into evening hours.

This isn’t just about being nice—it’s about a fundamental misunderstanding of how respect is earned in professional settings. Counter-intuitively, setting clear boundaries often increases others’ respect for you, while constant accommodation can diminish it.

Every time you say yes to something inessential, you're saying no to work that truly matters. Protect your focus. #Productivity #TimeManagement Share on X

Becoming Intentional With Your Time

Having led major career development programs at Google, I’ve seen firsthand how the highest performers handle their time. They don’t just manage it—they defend it with an almost religious fervor.

I address this challenge in my new book, Wild Courage: Go After What You Want and Get It, where I identify being “brutal” with your time as essential for high performance, a concept that aligns with Eyal’s strategies for becoming “indistractable.”

I used to say yes to everything: meetings I didn’t need to attend, projects that weren’t mine to own, and favors that drained my capacity. While I thought I was being collaborative, I was actually avoiding the discomfort of setting boundaries.

When I finally began protecting my time as if my career depended on it (because it did), I discovered something surprising: no one seemed to mind. My colleagues didn’t keep score of declined meeting invitations or take offense at my newfound boundaries. Instead, I finally had bandwidth for the work that truly mattered.

The Psychology of Saying No

What makes saying “no” so difficult? Neuroscience offers some insights. When we anticipate potential social rejection, our brains activate the same regions associated with physical pain. This helps explain why declining requests feels so uncomfortable—we’re literally wired to avoid it

Understanding this biological response is the first step toward overcoming it. The discomfort you feel when setting boundaries isn’t a signal that you’re doing something wrong—it’s simply an outdated survival mechanism firing in a context where it’s no longer helpful.

The good news is that this discomfort diminishes with practice. Each time you successfully protect your time without damaging relationships, you’re retraining your brain to associate boundary-setting with positive outcomes rather than social danger.

Practical Ways to Protect Your Time

If you want to reclaim your schedule this week, try this five-step approach:

Audit your calendar: Identify your biggest time-wasters and recurring distractions. Look for patterns—are there specific people, projects, or meeting types that consistently drain your energy without proportional returns?
Practice saying no—without over-explaining: Keep it simple with “I can’t commit to this right now.” Research suggests that using the word “can’t” rather than “don’t want to” is perceived as less personal and more acceptable to the receiver.
Time-block your focus work: Schedule and defend periods for focused work as if they were unmissable meetings. Eyal calls this technique “timeboxing” in Indistractable and it’s one of the most powerful tools for ensuring that your priorities actually get your time.
Create friction for interruptions: Make it slightly harder for others to access your time. This might mean closing your office door, working from a different location, or using status indicators in communication tools to signal when you’re in focused work mode.
Batch similar activities: Group similar tasks like email checking, Slack responses, or approval reviews into dedicated time blocks rather than allowing them to fragment your entire day.

When you need to decline requests gracefully, these three simple scripts can help:

For meeting requests: “I’d love to help! Can we start by collaborating via email to get ideas flowing? If we need more time after that, I’m happy to explore meeting options.”

For timeline management: “I’m deep into a priority project this week, but I’d be happy to circle back next week. Does that timeline work for you?”

For clarity on commitments: “Happy to discuss this further. Could you send over a quick agenda first, so I can see where I can best contribute?”

These approaches allow you to maintain relationships while protecting your most valuable resource—your attention.

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Traction, Not Busyness

Being busy doesn’t build success. Being intentional does.

The path to meaningful productivity isn’t about filling every minute of your calendar. It’s about creating the time and space for traction—making progress on what matters most to you. This connects directly to Eyal’s concept of “traction” versus “distraction,” where traction pulls you toward what you want while distraction pulls you away.

I’ve found that the professionals who advance most rapidly aren’t necessarily working more hours—they’re working more focused hours. They’ve mastered the art of saying no to the trivial many so they can say yes to the vital few.

By setting appropriate boundaries around your time and attention, you aren’t being difficult or uncooperative. You’re creating the conditions necessary for your best work to emerge. You’re telling the world that your contribution matters enough to be protected.

What’s one boundary you could set this week to protect your time and attention?

The Real Culprit Behind Plummeting Children’s Mental Health

Before treating kids with therapy and medication, make sure they’re getting enough “psychological nutrients.”

Kids are suffering. In the United States, 13 percent of three- to 17-year-olds had a mental or behavioral health diagnosis. That number climbs to 20.3 percent among teens aged 12 to 17 (as of 2023). Globally, 15 percent of 10- to 19-year-olds have a mental health disorder.

You’re right in thinking it hasn’t always been like this. There’s been a sharp spike in recent years—even before the COVID-19 pandemic’s contribution. Between 2012 and 2018, there was a 34.6 percent increase in child mental illness. ADHD, anxiety, depression, and behavior/conduct problems are the most common conditions afflicting youth. Diagnoses of depression in children aged 3 to 17 grew 27 percent from 2016 to 2020.

Parents and teachers often blame social media for rising teen depression rates. But many studies show only a correlation between the two (and a low one at that), not causation. It’s just as or more likely that kids experiencing poor family dynamics, a lack of autonomy, academic pressures, or other issues find solace and distraction in excessive social media use. Too much tech use is a symptom of a deeper problem, not the sole cause.

As mental health diagnoses surge, so does the reliance on therapy and medication. While these interventions can be helpful, they are reactive rather than preventive. To support children’s mental health, we need to focus on one of the root causes.

But what exactly about modern childhood environments is making kids so unhappy? The answer lies in understanding the stark gap between what children need psychologically and what their daily lives actually provide.

Kids’ Lives Aren’t Easy

What many people don’t know is that many childhood struggles stem from lifestyle factors rather than chemical imbalances. Addressing those factors should be the first step in helping a suffering child.

“If we treat children with mental, emotional, and behavioral problems without individually and collectively addressing social and relational health risks, or even assessing them, which is often the case, we are missing some of the biggest factors driving the mental and emotional suffering of our children,” says Christina Bethell, professor at Johns Hopkins and director of the Child and Adolescent Health Measurement Initiative at the Bloomberg School.

The truth is, kids have a lot bringing them down. For starters, school.

“Schools produce anxiety and depression in children,” according to Boston College research professor Peter Gray. He notes that U.S. school systems have reacted by spending tons of money on mental health professionals and programs (more than $1.7 billion in the 2021–22 school year went to social and emotional learning). But, he wrote, “if schools would stop stressing kids out as they do, and stop preventing them from being kids, our kids wouldn’t need so much therapy!”

A survey of 65,000 third- through 12th-grade students, released in January 2025, showed that kids’ severe lack of agency in school is part of the problem. It found that 26 percent of 10th graders say they love school, compared to 74 percent of third graders, which Jenny Anderson and Rebecca Winthrop—co-conductors of the survey and authors of The Disengaged Teen: Helping Kids Learn Better, Feel Better, and Live Better—attribute to 33 percent of 10th graders saying they don’t develop their own ideas in school. “School feels like prison, many teenagers told us over three years of research,” Anderson and Winthrop wrote in a New York Times op-ed. “The more time they spend in school, the less they feel like the author of their own lives, so why even try?”

The comparison to prison isn’t an exaggeration. Robert Epstein, the researcher who wrote “The Myth of the Teen Brain” in Scientific American, has a similar conclusion: “Surveys I have conducted show that teens in the U.S. are subjected to more than 10 times as many restrictions as are mainstream adults, twice as many restrictions as active-duty U.S. Marines, and even twice as many restrictions as incarcerated felons.”

Most formal schooling in America and similar industrialized countries is the antithesis of a place where kids have the autonomy to make their own choices. And that’s not the only problem.

While some standardized tests like the SAT serve an important role in providing an objective measure of academic achievement, the sheer volume of testing in schools can take a toll on students’ well-being. Kids today take standardized tests in mathematics and English language arts every year from third to eighth grade and once in high school, plus less frequent science tests. In-class tests account for a significant percentage of students’ grades—as high as 40 to 60 percent in some school districts. This constant assessment creates an environment where many students feel perpetually evaluated rather than focused on learning; that potentially undermines their sense of competency and increases stress levels.

The education system has begun recognizing these challenges. The 2015 U.S. Every Student Succeeds Act, which replaced the No Child Left Behind Act, reduced some testing requirements. Poor test scores and grades can make children feel incompetent. Persistent stress in schools is shown to adversely affect children’s physical and mental health into adulthood.

No, traditional Western school isn’t the only factor that contributes to poor mental health in children. However, kids consistently report that school is the primary source of their distress. In one survey, 83 percent of the teens said school pressures were responsible for some of their stress.

Perhaps the most damning indictment of our educational environment comes from this sobering statistic: teenage suicide attempts drop by 28% during summer months when school is not in session. Let that sink in—the very institution we trust to nurture our children’s minds may be contributing significantly to their psychological distress.

Recognizing the challenges of children’s day-to-day life allows us to understand that raising happy, healthy kids means addressing these challenges. Instead of jumping to therapy, we should first assess whether children’s basic psychological needs are being met.

The Psychological Nutrients Kids Need to Thrive

According to self-determination theory, all humans—kids included—need three psychological nutrients to flourish, a widely accepted theory of human motivation and flourishing developed by renowned human-behavior researchers Richard Ryan and Edward Deci.

Autonomy: A sense of control over their own lives. Many kids feel anxious because their lives are overly structured and controlled.
Competency: Feeling capable and effective. Without opportunities to succeed at meaningful tasks, kids may develop low self-esteem.
Relatedness: Feeling connected to others. Genuine connection and supportive relationships, not just therapy sessions or structured socialization, are essential for emotional well-being.

Even if kids don’t get all these nutrients at school, caregivers can provide them in other ways.

Before medicating our children, let's ask: Are they getting their psychological nutrients? Autonomy, competence, and connection are the real antidepressants kids need. #ParentingTruth Share on X

How to Give Your Kid a Rich Life

What does feeding your kid the psychological nutrients they need look like? My wife and I have a teenage daughter, but our approach to raising her isn’t the only way and may not even apply to yours.

Instead of prescribing advice, I offer several studies that point to what kids need to be mentally healthy.

1. Make Their Choices Count

A 2009 study examined children’s attention and learning during an experiment with Guatemalan Mayan and European American five- to 11-year-olds. Two children were brought into a room where an adult taught one of them how to build a toy while the other one waited; researchers observed what the nonparticipating child, the observer, would do while waiting. In the United States, most of the observer children shuffled in their seats, stared at the floor, and generally showed signs of disinterest. But the Mayan children concentrated on what the other child was learning and sat still in their chairs as the adult taught the other child.

Overall, the study found that American children could focus for only half as long as Mayan kids, even though the Mayan children had less exposure to formal education. Less schooling meant more focus. How could that be?

Psychologist Suzanne Gaskins, who has studied Mayan villages for decades, told NPR that Mayan parents give their kids a tremendous amount of freedom. “Rather than having the mom set the goal—and then having to offer enticements and rewards to reach that goal—the child is setting the goal. Then the parents support that goal however they can,” Gaskins said. Mayan parents “feel very strongly that every child knows best what they want and that goals can be achieved only when a child wants it.”

Any parent can offer their child this same freedom. A great way to start is by helping them build an indistractable summer. Kids may not have much autonomy during the school year, but in the summer, they have unlimited free time. Caregivers can support kids in planning a balanced schedule for spending their time how they want.

Other ways to give kids autonomy:

Let them choose their extracurricular activities instead of pushing them into what we think is best.
Give them choices in everyday life, such as picking out their clothes and meals.
Allow them to take (reasonable) risks, like climbing trees, biking to a friend’s house, or picking up an ingredient at a nearby grocery store.

2. Connect with Them

Another multi year study, led by Bethell, concluded that strong family connections and resilience can offset kids’ mental health conditions.

Nearly 70 percent of children with mental health conditions in the study experienced at least one of eight social or relational health risk factors including economic hardship, food insecurity, unsafe neighborhood, racial discrimination, and adverse childhood experiences such as substance abuse or domestic violence.

Relational health risks—namely, poor caregiver mental health, low levels of caregiver coping, or high aggravation with their child—in particular influence children’s mental health: Compared to social health risks, they are not only more prevalent among kids with mental health conditions but also more strongly associated with those conditions, according to Bethell’s study.

Strong relational health can alleviate mental health problems by promoting children’s self-regulation and resilience. For example, children with a strong parent-child connection were 5.73 times more likely to demonstrate good self-regulation and 2.25 times more likely to do so “when their family reported staying hopeful and could identify strengths to draw on during difficult times.”

To build strong family connections, try having regular family dinners without screens, or go on one-on-one outings with your kids. When she was younger, my daughter and I used to have a fun jar of activities we would pull from, and today we have planned spontaneity together.

3. Take Care of Yourself

Did you hear? Poor caregiver mental health can adversely affect kids’ mental health. So if you ever needed an evidence-backed reason to practice self-care, this is it.

To convince you further, this study found that “people who are surrounded by many happy people and those who are central in the network are more likely to become happy in the future.” Your happiness, as the guardian of a child, is important. Devote time to yourself. Taking care of yourself is at the core of the three life domains—you, your work, and your relationships—because the other two depend on your health and wellness. If you’re not taking care of yourself, your relationships, including with your kids, suffer.

4. Let Them Play

Remember playing pickup games at the basketball court, hanging out at the mall on weekends, or simply roaming around the neighborhood until you found a friend? Sadly, spontaneous socializing for kids isn’t as common as it used to be.

“But the world is different now,” some parents argue. “We can’t just let kids roam free like in previous generations.” While safety concerns are valid, the data doesn’t support the level of restriction many children experience today. Crime statistics show that children are safer now than in previous decades, despite parental perceptions to the contrary. The real danger may lie in overprotection itself—depriving children of the very experiences that build confidence, resilience, and social skills.

Peter Gray, who has studied the decline of play in America, reported that since about 1955, “children’s free play has been continually declining, at least partly because adults have exerted ever-increasing control over children’s activities.” Parents restrict outdoor play due to “child predators, road traffic, and bullies,” according to a survey in an Atlantic article—even though kids today are statistically the safest generation in American history.

Kids have no choice but to stay indoors, attend structured programs, or rely on technology to find and connect with others.

Although virtual social interactions can be positive because they allow people to feel relatedness, the loss of in-person play has real costs, including social isolation and loneliness. According to Gray, “Learning to get along and cooperate with others as equals may be the most crucial evolutionary function of human social play.”

Gray argues that schools should integrate more play into the day. Until that happens, caregivers can make sure kids have time for free play outside of structured academic or athletic activities.

Considerations Before Therapy or Medication

The environmental factors discussed throughout this article—school stress, lack of autonomy, limited play, and poor relational health—create the foundation for children’s mental well-being. By addressing these fundamental needs first, we can prevent many mental health challenges before they require clinical intervention.

That said, we must acknowledge an important truth: some children will need professional support even with the most nurturing environments. The key is approaching mental health as a spectrum rather than a binary choice between “environment fixes everything” or “medication is always necessary.”

When environmental changes don’t fully address a child’s struggles, consider these principles:

1. Normalize emotions without pathologizing them

There’s a crucial difference between experiencing anxiety and having an anxiety disorder. Teaching children that uncomfortable emotions are normal parts of life—not symptoms to be eliminated—builds emotional resilience. This perspective helps them develop healthy relationships with their feelings rather than fearing them.

2. Seek support thoughtfully

If professional help becomes necessary, approach it with intentionality. Find practitioners who consider the whole child—their environment, relationships, and unique circumstances—not just their symptoms. The best mental health professionals for children recognize that diagnosis should inform care, not define identity.

3. Maintain agency in treatment

Even within therapeutic contexts, children need autonomy. Involve them in decisions about their care when appropriate, and ensure that any intervention strengthens rather than diminishes their sense of competence and connection.

The path to better mental health for our children isn’t found in either rejecting or embracing therapy and medication wholesale. Instead, it lies in creating environments where children can thrive naturally while recognizing when additional support serves their well-being. By addressing the root causes first—the environmental factors that deprive children of autonomy, competence, and relatedness—we give them the best chance at flourishing, with or without clinical intervention.

Our responsibility isn’t to shield children from all difficult emotions or experiences, but to ensure they have the psychological nutrients and supportive relationships that allow them to navigate life’s challenges with resilience and hope.

What You Can Do Today:

Audit your child’s schedule for balance between structured activities and free time. Does it allow for daily periods of self-directed play?
Evaluate your own expectations about achievement, grades, and performance. Are they serving your child’s well-being?
Advocate within your school system for more unstructured time, less testing pressure, and greater student agency.
Become an “Indistractable” parent by modeling healthy technology use. Children learn more from what we do than what we say. When you set boundaries around your own screen time—putting your phone away during meals, establishing tech-free zones in your home, and being fully present during family time—you teach powerful lessons about attention management. Show your children that technology is a tool to be used intentionally, not something that controls your attention. This modeling is far more effective than rules and restrictions that apply only to them but not to you.
Teach the “why” behind technology boundaries, not just the rules. Empower them with strategies to maintain control over their attention. When children understand the psychology behind distraction, they develop critical thinking skills that serve them throughout life.

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The mental health crisis among children isn’t inevitable—it’s the product of environments we’ve created, and we have the power to change them. Our children’s well-being depends on our willingness to examine and transform the worlds they inhabit, not just treat the symptoms that result from environments that fail to meet their most basic psychological needs.

The 4 Secrets to Storytelling for Business

Nir’s Note: This guest post is by Will Storr, an acclaimed author and journalist known for his deep exploration into human behavior, storytelling, and psychology. His newest book, “A Story is a Deal: How to Use the Science of Storytelling to Lead, Motivate, and Persuade,” reveals how powerful storytelling techniques can be harnessed in business, leadership, and communication to drive impactful results.

Every successful leader, marketer, or entrepreneur is, at heart, a great storyteller. Storytelling is not just an art—it’s a science, grounded in psychology, neuroscience, and behavioral design. Here are four science-backed principles for crafting persuasive narratives, adapted from my new book, A Story is a Deal.

1. Make Your Audience Identify

For stories to persuade effectively, your audience must identify with the protagonist or the situation. Identification triggers a psychological phenomenon where listeners subconsciously experience the protagonist’s journey as if it were their own. When people see their struggles reflected, they engage deeply and retain more of your message.

Neuroscience supports this: A BBC StoryWorks study involving 2,179 participants globally revealed that emotional storytelling significantly enhances long-term memory formation. The intensity and frequency of emotional peaks—not necessarily the type of emotion—drive lasting impact. Crucially, engaging emotional moments early in the narrative amplify recall.

Insight for business storytelling: To increase brand retention and customer loyalty, frame your narrative around relatable, emotionally resonant situations or characters that mirror your audience’s lives, challenges, or aspirations.

Every successful leader, marketer, or entrepreneur is, at heart, a great storyteller. Storytelling is not just an art—it’s a science, grounded in psychology, neuroscience, and behavioral design. –Will Storr (@wstorr) Share on X

2. Keep it Simple

Reality is complex, but persuasive storytelling thrives on simplicity. Human brains crave clarity; complexity increases cognitive load, causing audiences to disengage. Simple stories, focusing on one clear protagonist and straightforward language, dramatically outperform complicated narratives.

Psychologists explain this with the “Identifiable Victim” effect. For instance, a heartbreaking image of three-year-old Syrian refugee Alan Kurdi on a Turkish beach increased donations to the Migrant Offshore Aid Station by a factor of fifteen. Conversely, overcomplicated language—like a recent Chanel ad’s overly abstract narrative—can obscure your message and reduce effectiveness. Research even suggests that excessive jargon often signals lower status, not sophistication.

Insight for business storytelling: When crafting your business pitch or marketing messages, opt for clear, simple language that directly resonates with your audience’s experience. Avoid jargon or overly abstract descriptions to maintain engagement and clarity.

3. Clarify Obstacles and Goals

Humans evolved storytelling to share lessons on overcoming life’s challenges within social groups. Persuasive stories clearly illustrate how a relatable protagonist encounters and overcomes specific obstacles, ultimately achieving their goal. The climax isn’t just victory; it’s also the lesson learned or the moral of the story.

In business contexts, the “lesson” should highlight precisely how your product, service, or vision solves the protagonist’s problem. People remember solutions that clearly connect a challenge to a tangible outcome, particularly when the story concludes with demonstrable success.

Insight for business storytelling: Clearly define the problem your customer faces, demonstrate how your solution resolves it, and highlight the resulting transformation. This method strengthens customer belief and encourages action.

4. Be Specific and Concrete

Vague storytelling is easily forgettable. Specific, concrete details activate the brain’s visual imagination, making your story vivid and memorable. Leaders particularly benefit from this technique: clear, concrete visions significantly increase employee motivation and clarity of purpose.

NASA’s goal of “landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to earth,” outlined by President Kennedy, replaced ambiguous aspirations with a tangible, achievable mission. Employees vividly envisioned their roles within this clear narrative. Similarly, Bill Gates’ concrete objective—”a computer on every desk in every home”—galvanized Microsoft’s workforce.

Insight for business storytelling: Define your vision, products, or outcomes using specific, concrete language that your audience can visualize. Abstract terms like “sustainability” or “growth” are less persuasive than clear, vivid goals people can immediately picture.

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Remember, a great story isn’t just told—it’s felt. When you harness these four rules of storytelling—Identification, Simplicity, Obstacles and Goals, and Specificity—you don’t just share information; you make deals. You persuade. You move people to action.

Adapted from “A Story is a Deal: How to Use the Science of Storytelling to Lead, Motivate, and Persuade” by Will Storr.

The Hidden Power of Social Comparison

I’ll never forget the day I learned about Facebook’s $19 billion WhatsApp acquisition. Instead of celebrating my own recent success as an author, I found myself spiraling into a pit of self-doubt. “Why hadn’t I created a simple messaging app?” I wondered, mentally berating myself for missing out on what seemed like an obvious opportunity.

Sound familiar?

We’ve all been told that comparing ourselves to others is toxic. It’s the ultimate happiness killer, the thief of joy, the fast track to misery—or so conventional wisdom tells us. But here’s the thing: If comparison is so destructive, why do our minds keep returning to it? What if there’s more to this story than meets the eye?

Recent research suggests that watching others succeed doesn’t just make us feel bad; it lights a fire under us, pushing us toward our own achievements. While comparison can certainly be a bad habit, there might be a hidden upside we’ve been missing.

A friend recently shared something intriguing with me. For years, she’s maintained what she calls a “secret mentor”—someone she follows online who serves as her unofficial measuring stick for success. This person changes periodically, but the pattern remains the same: Usually, it’s someone similar to her in age and background who’s achieved something she aspires to.

Yes, she admits, sometimes this comparison leaves her feeling inadequate. But more often, it serves as a north star, showing her what’s possible. These “comparison targets” prove her goals are achievable, not just pipe dreams.

Given that comparative thoughts comprise 12 percent of our daily mental activity, we’d better learn to harness them constructively. The key lies in developing a self-compassionate relationship with ourselves while acknowledging our natural tendency to measure ourselves against others.

The Fascinating Science Behind Social Comparison

To understand why comparison affects us so deeply, we need to dive into the psychology behind it.

Social comparison theory shows that humans have an innate drive to evaluate themselves against others. We measure everything from our wealth and social status to our physical appearance and professional achievements.

This comparison typically takes three forms:

Upward comparison: Looking at those we perceive as “ahead” of us
Downward comparison: Looking at those we perceive as “behind” us
Lateral comparison: Looking at those we see as our peers

For years, psychologists assumed upward comparisons were inherently harmful to well-being. However, recent research reveals something surprising: Depending on how we frame them, both upward and downward comparisons can have positive and negative effects.

The game changer? Understanding the difference between “assimilative” and “contrastive” comparisons and the two distinct types of envy they produce.

When we make assimilative comparisons, we focus on our similarities with the person we compare ourselves to. This tends to spark what psychologists call “benign envy”—the kind that makes us think, “If they can do it, so can I.”

Contrastive comparisons, on the other hand, emphasize differences and often lead to “malicious envy”—the kind that makes us want to see others fail.

This distinction explains why so many studies have mistakenly concluded that social media is universally bad for mental health. They primarily looked at contrastive comparisons, missing the potential benefits of assimilative thinking.

Some cultures explicitly recognize these two responses to others’ success. While both involve that familiar sting, benign envy channels our energy into personal growth, creating what psychologists call “approach motivation“—a fancy term for the drive to move toward our goals or what I like to call “traction.”

In contrast, malicious envy triggers avoidance motivation: We either try to distance ourselves from the person we envy or, worse, give up on our own similar aspirations.

Have you ever caught yourself unfollowing someone successful on social media or avoiding their latest achievement? That’s avoidance motivation in action.

The takeaway? Comparison, when channeled correctly, can be a powerful catalyst for personal growth.

When Comparison Becomes Toxic

Of course, not all comparisons are created equal. Comparison becomes harmful when it triggers thoughts like “That ship has sailed for me” or “I’ll never achieve what they have.” This is known as the “contrast effect,” a cognitive bias that distorts our perception of reality.

The contrast effect can turn a perfectly good day into an emotional tailspin. You might be feeling great about your life until you hear about someone else’s success, and suddenly, your own achievements seem insignificant. It’s like having your personal highlight reel interrupted by someone else’s championship game.

Take my reaction to the WhatsApp deal. The previous year, my book Hooked had become a bestseller, selling 5,000 copies in its first year (and eventually exceeding 500,000 copies worldwide). Yet one piece of news about someone else’s success temporarily blinded me to my own achievements—malicious envy in full effect.

Consider wealth, for instance. While society often equates success with income, some studies show that money stops contributing to emotional well-being once basic needs are met—around $60,000 to $75,000 annually. Unexpectedly, people earning $95,000 more often report lower life satisfaction than those making less.

A 2023 study somewhat contradicted those findings: It discovered that most people do experience an increase in happiness with an increase in income—with the caveat that the unhappiest 20 percent of study participants saw their happiness plateau at $100,000. Also, the level of happiness people experienced with a rise in income depended on their overall emotional well-being. The higher your emotional well-being generally is, the happier you’ll be with an income increase. Why is that? Income isn’t the only factor that influences happiness. You can be rich and unhappy, and more money won’t help you.

“Money is just one of the many determinants of happiness,” Matthew Killingsworth, one of the study’s researchers, told Penn Today. “Money is not the secret to happiness, but it can probably help a bit.”

This finding illustrates how our assumptions about “more is better” comparison can lead us astray. We chase higher salaries, thinking it’s the key to greater satisfaction when the data suggests money alone isn’t the answer; we should focus on other aspects of our lives, too.

Social comparison becomes harmful when it triggers thoughts like “That ship has sailed for me” or “I’ll never achieve what they have.” This is known as the “contrast effect,” a cognitive bias that distorts our perception of reality. Share on X

Harnessing the Power of Positive Comparison

When used wisely, comparison can spark inspiration and motivation. Research shows that we’re particularly inspired by role models, people similar enough to relate to but successful enough to admire. As one study found, focusing on how we can become more like these role models often leads to genuine inspiration.

Therapist Lori Gottlieb, author of Maybe You Should Talk to Someone, offers an interesting perspective: “Follow your envy; it tells you what you want.” Our envious feelings often point to our deepest desires, even when we’re unaware of them.

Dr. Susan Biali Haas suggests viewing envy as a tool for personal clarity and growth. Each twinge of envy is an opportunity to practice gratitude and cultivate goodwill toward others.

Practical Steps for Healthy Comparison

Here’s how to make comparison work for you:

1. Check Your Mental State Before Scrolling

Research shows that upward comparison during depressive episodes can trigger a negative spiral. Wait until you’re in a better headspace to engage with others’ success stories.

2. Build Authentic Self-Esteem

Studies show that secure self-esteem leads to benign envy, while fragile self-esteem triggers the malicious kind. You can build up your self-esteem by noting your accomplishments, such as how often you practice an instrument or go for a run. Track your progress using my free habit tracker and celebrate your wins, no matter how small.

3. Practice Active Gratitude

Research consistently links gratitude with life satisfaction. When comparison triggers negative feelings, redirect your focus to what’s going right in your life.

4. Remember the Incomplete Picture

Everyone’s struggling with something, even if it’s not visible on social media. My friend’s revelation about her comparison target’s personal struggles helped her develop a more nuanced, compassionate perspective about that person’s public successes.

5. Get Specific About Your Envy

List exactly what triggers your envy and why. Use this information to identify your true goals and aspirations. Consider reaching out to those you admire; you might gain valuable insights and demystify their success in the process.

6. Define Your Own Success Metrics

While it’s fine to draw inspiration from others, make sure you’re working toward your own definition of success. Start by clarifying your core values and align your goals accordingly.

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7. Let Go

Instead of unfollowing successful people, follow them mindfully. Take inspiration from others’ cultural practices when acknowledging their achievements. For example, people in Arabic-speaking cultures use the expression “Mashallah” (Arabic for “God has willed it” to express admiration and gratitude. As one Washington Post writer noted, this practice helps transform envy into genuine admiration and respect.

The key question isn’t whether to compare yourself to others. It’s how to use comparison constructively. Are you using it as a stepping stone to growth or a stumbling block to success? The choice and the power lie in your hands.

Taming your overprotective brain

Predicting Pain

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Neuroplastic Pain Loop:

From Pain to Performance

The Science of Unlearning Pain

The Wisdom of Pain

The Path Forward

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