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on-emotion

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On Emotion

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Stress isn’t poorly calibrated to modern life. It’s the energising force that allows us to perform. Optimal performance requires optimal stress. The difference between eustress and distress isn’t biological—it’s psychological. Controllability matters more than the stressor itself.

Stress is Good

audio

Everyone’s convinced stress is this outdated evolutionary technology—poorly calibrated to modern life, something to avoid at all costs. The story goes that it evolved to help us run from tigers, but now it’s just triggered by email notifications. This is nonsense. Stress is the only thing that gets us to perform at all. It’s the most valuable biological technology we have. This lecture walks through the Yerkes-Dodson Law—a simple, 100-year-old model that explains how stress actually works, why we need it, and how to use it well.
Stress isn’t poorly calibrated to modern life. It’s the energising force that allows us to perform. Optimal performance requires optimal stress. The difference between eustress and distress isn’t biological—it’s psychological. Controllability matters more than the stressor itself.
Check it out

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betterment gratification on-(un)happiness on-being-fruitful on-thinking-and-reasoning somatic-architecture

article

Glossolalia has a unique pattern of neural activity, distinct from psychopathologies and even other trance-like states. So, the feeling underneath is special, but the actual speaking itself seems learned. It makes you wonder where that feeling comes from.

Speaking in tongues

article

‘Speaking in Tongues’, or glossolalia, is one of those fascinating things that first got me interested in the brain. At church, as a kid, you’d see people close their eyes, raise their hands in the air, and start murmuring in languages unknown, filled with some force they couldn’t explain. But a phenomenon so widespread, found in many religions and many cultures, across time and place, should surely be found in the brain activity of other activities? The answer is, maybe not, and maybe what the brain does tell is leaves us with a more interesting question.
Glossolalia has a unique pattern of neural activity, distinct from psychopathologies and even other trance-like states. So, the feeling underneath is special, but the actual speaking itself seems learned. It makes you wonder where that feeling comes from.
Check it out

filed under:

gratification on-culture on-leadership on-politics-and-power on-the-nature-of-things spiritual-architecture

article

Active listening isn’t about ticking boxes in conversation; it’s about diving into emotions to transform surface-level chit-chat into deep, collaborative dialogue. Forget models, focus on feelings.

Active listening is misleading

article

LinkedIn invited me to contribute to a bunch of articles on active listening recently, and while I was thinking about whether I should bother answering, it actually is kind of an interesting topic. My point is not that it isn’t reasonable. My point isn’t even that people should be able to intuit this sort of thing, because although the principles are simple, it’s not always easy to take an empathetic stance during a fundamentally individualistic life. My point is that having a model for active listening almost defeats the purpose of the exercise.
Active listening isn’t about ticking boxes in conversation; it’s about diving into emotions to transform surface-level chit-chat into deep, collaborative dialogue. Forget models, focus on feelings.
Check it out

filed under:

betterment collective-architecture connection on-(un)happiness on-being-fruitful on-leadership somatic-architecture wealth-architecture

article

Our nervous system transforms senses to feelings long before they become thoughts and behaviours. One can’t talk about them in isolation. Our aversion to emotions is just an aversion to passionate emotions. But just remember that your body is better at your life that you are.

No action without emotion

article

There’s something that really scares us about emotions. We have some idealised version of ourselves that lives emotion free—flesh made automata—that we’re trying to achieve. We should really cut that shit out, because there’s no such thing as action without emotion. It doesn’t make any sense.
Our nervous system transforms senses to feelings long before they become thoughts and behaviours. One can’t talk about them in isolation. Our aversion to emotions is just an aversion to passionate emotions. But just remember that your body is better at your life that you are.
Check it out

filed under:

betterment gratification on-(un)happiness on-being-fruitful on-thinking-and-reasoning somatic-architecture

article

Focusing on edge-cases of “trans-regret” is missing the point. If you actually care about these cases, then the interesting issue are the underlying vulnerabilities that lead to regrettable decisions. But probably you shouldn’t care.

Trans-opportunism is boring

article

Even if there are some edge-cases in which people accidentally or opportunistically ‘change gender’, is that really the most valuable part of that conversation? People who, in some time of vulnerability, looked to something that appeared to fill some psychological deficiency, but later realised that it wasn’t the right fit. In this case, is it really the ‘transgender ideology’ or the ‘transgender medical industry’ that we should blame?
Focusing on edge-cases of “trans-regret” is missing the point. If you actually care about these cases, then the interesting issue are the underlying vulnerabilities that lead to regrettable decisions. But probably you shouldn’t care.
Check it out

filed under:

connection gratification on-(un)happiness on-being-fruitful on-culture on-ethics somatic-architecture wealth-architecture
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