Try to hold me back. Put obstacles in my way. Do whatever you want. But this new habit is here to stay.
Good things happen when you say those words to the world.
Even better things happen when you say those exact same words to yourself.
Wisdom doesn’t come from experience. It comes from reflecting on experience.
— Adam Grant (@AdamMGrant) December 11, 2022
Between ages 25 and 75, the correlation between age and wisdom is zero.
Gaining insight and perspective is not about the number of years you've lived. It's about the number of lessons you've learned. pic.twitter.com/8wbKsCMkED
Memory isn’t an objective account of the past – and that’s not its purpose either.
Memory stores the lessons we extract from life experience. And to do so, it modifies, adds, subtracts, highlights, and hides.
Hot soup burns my tongue – next time, I’ll remember the pain, but not if it was tomato soup or chicken soup. And I’ll remember to wait a couple of minutes before having the first spoon.
Experience lived. Irrelevant info deleted. Lesson learned. Memory created.
My country gets invaded – and that causes so much pain, I won’t just deliver an objective account of what happened: I’ll make sure to tell everyone who the evil guys are too.
Experience lived. Story modified. Lesson learned. Memory created.
I eat the most delicious dessert at a Mexico City restaurant – that’s the memory I’m going to tell my friends about, not which glass of dessert wine I had with it.
Experience lived. Dessert highlighted. Lesson learned. Memory created.
You’re going to make memories anyway. Which lessons do you want to learn?
Talking about “good and bad ideas” implies a ranking. Good, compared to what? Bad, compared to what?
The truth is that most ideas you produce will be average – because there is no other way.
Not all ideas can be your best idea – and if they are, they will soon be replaced by a better idea. Your previous best idea has now become average.
Not all ideas can be your worst idea either. And if they are, they will soon be replaced by an even worse idea. Your worst idea has now become average.
This dynamic matters. Because if you produce an idea a day, compared to someone producing one idea a month, your chances of replacing your current best idea with something better are much higher.
You’ll also likely replace your current worst idea with something even worse – and that’s fine. You’re increasing amplitude in both directions. It’s all part of the practice.
The more ideas you have, the bigger your sample size. The more elaborate the ranking. The better the good ideas. The worse the bad ideas.
All this to say: bad, average, and good ideas ALL stack the odds of striking gold in your favor. What matters is that you show up and generate ideas.
You can’t expect to hold on forever to happiness
Without also clinging to your fears
Emotions flow
They come and go
The best you can do
Is observe
Feel
Enjoy the show.
Before I write, I barely know what I want to write.
The more I write, the more I know what I’m meant to write.
Intention can be there before the practice. But meaning only shows up when YOU show up.
“Life made me who I am, and I can’t do anything about it.”
“While the past has shaped me, the way I choose to live my life today, tomorrow, and every day after, will determine who I am.”
You’re living anyway. Your actions are votes for an identity anyway. So you might as well do it intentionally.
Perfect recall is paralyzing.
Not everything is worth remembering.
And life isn’t better when you’re a bad forgetter.
Maybe life becomes easier to navigate if we remember the fact that we’ll always make mistakes – and the lessons we learn from them – yet forget (forgive) the specific slip-ups we and others make.
