Modal Notes

Notes on being a better you.

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The Science of Scarcity

How do we get people to want something? Whether we’re trying to get other people to want us, something we made, or something made by someone we work for, life is often about figuring out how to get other people to want what you’re proverbially selling.

The people who are the best at this know that there are a few handy tricks when it comes to hotwiring the human brain into wanting something really, really bad. One of them involves the psychology of scarcity.

Have you ever found yourself wanting something just because you can’t have it? Or heard the expression, “You’ve got to leave ‘em wanting more?” Both of these scenarios are utilizing the idea that scarcity creates the illusion of intrinsic value in the minds of a consumer. Important to note is that this concept works almost regardless of what’s actually being consumed.

The idea at work here is known as the scarcity heuristic, which is a “mental shortcut placing value on an item based on how easily it might be lost, especially to competitors.” A lot of the time, savvy salesmen or marketers use context to trigger this effect, using the right information to add the perception of value to a product or service when there might not actually be any.

Nir & Far invites us to think back to the early days of Facebook: remember how it was only for college students? Remember how badly the rest of the world wanted in? Facebook was smartly very tight-lipped about their plans for future rollouts, such that when they made Facebook available to the general public, it came as a bit of a surprise. This was definitely not on accident. By withholding their intentions in terms of Facebook’s access, they generated a huge amount of perceived scarcity.

So how do we apply this to life? This is one of those “tricks” that has a wide range of uses and applications, so it’s really up to you when it comes to how you’ll use this information moving forward. But let’s tease out some of the more practical uses for this trick.

Maybe you work in marketing: this is a concept that can help you go pretty far when it comes to generating buzz around your next product launch.

Perhaps you’re more concerned with personal development: use these ideas to adjust the way you approach your professional life. After all, we sell ourselves and our work, every day.

The Psychology of Scarcity | Nir & Far photo: https://www.flickr.com/photos/span112/3602277316

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Using the “Daisy Chain Method” to Defeat Self-Sabotage

Progress isn’t always easy. Making serious changes requires a pretty good deal of commitment — in fact, we talked yesterday about some of the skills that you can focus on to make sure you’re able to sustain your momentum as long as possible, and effect real, lasting change.

Which is great! But everybody still needs how to deal with the occasional roadblock, because they definitely come up. When they do, it helps to armed with a few of the following ideas.

Self-sabotage is, believe it or not, an important part of the change-making process. Understanding that failing is not always failure involves getting to know a lot of important information about yourself, and the more you learn the easy it is to harness your strengths and avoid letting your weaknesses (we all have ‘em!) hold you back.

As Lifehacker points out, mindfulness is a huge part of this process, and it involves teaching yourself how to think about things in a lot of ways that you might find similar to the techniques we’ve discussed for helping to identify and work on your belief structures.

Isolate Your Triggers

Typically, we make decisions that work against our goals because we’ve been triggered by something unpleasant and we’re seeking comfort in old patterns and habits. But consider this: have you ever given into a trigger and actually wound up benefitting from it in the long run?

Willpower, believe it or not, is something of which you have limited reserves, which means it’s certainly possible to use yours all the way up for the day. When you find your willpower slipping, stop and take a good look at exactly what triggered you: what made you go with the rationalization that breaking your momentum was a good idea? When you learn to examine what makes you think and behave the way you do, you’re able to isolate not only your self-destructive behaviors, but (more importantly) the attitudes, thoughts, and beliefs that bring them about.

Transcend Your Emotions

Emotional patterns and belief structures have a tendency to dictate what kind of world we live in, but they are never set in stone. You are much more than your emotions, and learning this is one of the things that will make it possible for you to appraise them without judgement and adjust them when they’re not working for you.

Use the “Daisy Chain” method we’ve talked about before. Determine the reasons for your emotions, and think about how you can go about mitigating the things that cause you to feel the emotions that lead to self-sabotage. Important here is the idea of taking responsibility for your own emotions: only YOU are in control of how you feel. If you find yourself reacting to something in a way that causes you to self-sabotage, maybe it’s time to adjust your exposure or relationship with that particular thing.

Oh Look, a Distraction!

Isolating exactly what makes you self-sabotage when you’re working towards a goal is great, but doesn’t necessarily solve the immediate problem of the strong emotions that cause these slip-ups in the first place. Dealing with big changes can be very tough, and one of the best solutions for sidestepping regressive behavior is simply distracting yourself with something that’s more healthy, productive, and constructive for you. Stop thinking about how badly you want to do whatever it is you’re trying to avoid doing, and instead focus on how great you feel once you’ve finally accomplished your goal!

The bottom line? Be patient with yourself. You can’t learn an instrument overnight, and learning new patterns or habits tends to work exactly the same way.

How to Combat Diet and Exercise Self-Sabotage with Mindfulness | Lifehacker photo by Geoff Stearns

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Six Smart Steps to Success

Look, there are about a million articles talking up a list of stuff that the most successful people always do. Sometimes these seem like common sense...which, hey — that really just probably means that you’re already well on your way to success, if you’re not there already. Still, it never hurts to consider adding something else to your toolbox. And as it turns out, there absolutely are a certain number of practices and habits that you can build for yourself if you’re looking to really push yourself a bit faster in your desired direction.

Success usually means a lot of different things to a lot of different people (value is only what we make it, after all). Whatever your success may be, though, these ideas are likely to help you find it sooner, rather than later.

1. Ratchet Up Your Ambition

Some of us wind up curbing our own potential because we simply don’t believe that we’re capable or deserving of whatever it is that we truly dream of for ourselves. Many might even take comfort in the logic that dreams are dreams for a reason.

Others, though, might take the position that dreams are really flashes of what might come to pass in the future. Suggestions from parts of our subconscious about what might lie ahead.

Don’t hesitate when it comes to going after what it is you truly want. Erase the idea that you don’t deserve the things that you desire for yourself.

2. Crank up the Courage

A lot of the time, when we try to do something new, ambitious, or daring, there’s a part of us that really rattles in its cage, urging us to stop and simply nurse the status quo that was in place before. Seth Godin has some ideas about this.

It takes courage to quiet this voice in your head and press on ahead to success. But don’t worry: that lizard brain piping up means you’re on the right track.

3. Commit, Commit, Commit

You’ll find yourself facing frustration if you let yourself do things halfway. When you’re doing something, commit to doing it as thoroughly as you possibly can. Invest in whatever you need to accomplish your goals, and focus on the reward towards which you’re working. Set up systems and put infrastructure in place that will make sure you get whatever you need done. A lot of the time this involves coming up with creative solutions to challenges you face on the regular.

4. Preparation Is Key

The sharpest tools in the box got to be that way because they constantly prepared, no matter what situation was at hand. Make sure you always do your due diligence, and put yourself in the habit of giving yourself the edge no matter what kind of situation you’re about to walk into. This is something that will dovetail nicely with your newfound sense of commitment!

5. Never Stop Learning

You have your entire life to stuff your brain full of knowledge. So use it! Now that you’ve got the Internet at your fingertips, you basically have access to a giant library that has everything every written, and it never closes. Seriously, if you’re smart in your Internetting, you can basically teach yourself anything, without necessarily having to pay for it.

Constantly broadening and expanding your skill-set is how you stay ahead of the pack and achieving whatever it is you want to do.

6. Responsibility Ties the Room Together

It’s really important to, simply enough, always take care of your responsibilities. Whatever this involves, just make sure you do your best. This is mandatory. It’s how you build trust. It’s how you get people to take you and your word seriously. It’s how you draw the line between someone who talks and someone who does. Showing that you’re responsible is one of the most important aspects of success.

6 Qualities of Wildly Successful People | Success.com photo by Mike Beauregard 

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This was used as part of a PhotoShop tutorial, but I thought it was too apt not to share.

[https://twitter.com/chrisspooner/status/623242370470027264]

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Four Steps to Fighting an Inferiority Complex

Comparing yourself to the people around us is something a lot of us do, but it’s important that we remember to do this in a healthy way, that doesn’t leave us trudging down the street, kicking tin cans, and wondering why we’re not as good as the next person. This type of trap is entirely too easy for people to fall into, but the steps that go into overcoming that inferiority complex before it manages to creep into your mind and make a mess of your day-to-day life are actually pretty easy.

Get Specific with It

It’s no secret that if you want to accomplish something you’ve got to get specific. It’s never easy to go about accomplishing something with just a general idea in mind, so when you’re looking to kick your inferiority complex to the curb, it’s going to help for you to isolate exactly which parts of your life are making you feel so insecure in the first place.

Figure out the areas in your life wherein you feel lacking or inferior. Next, isolate the people in your life who are making you feel that way. Once you’ve done that, you can figure out how these people are contributing to your feelings of inferiority.

If you’ve got folks in your life who are helping you to feel inferior through consistent negativity, posturing, and the like...then you might want to leave them behind. For the rest, ask yourself why you feel as though you’re not as good as so-and-so, or what it is about your life that makes it seem inferior to theirs — the answer has your solution.

You Matter the Most

It’s important to remember that awesome quote from Eleanor Roosevelt: “No one can make you feel inferior without your permission.” PicktheBrain has a great elaboration on this idea:

“There is a difference between being inferior and feeling inferior. Being inferior is simply a game of relativity. But not everyone feels inferior.”

The major takeaway here is as simple as not letting other people dictate your value system. Work at shifting your inner focus on what others think about you to what you think about yourself. It’s your life! Yours is always the opinion that matters the most.

Love to Love Yourself, Baby

Another of the biggest keys to beating back your inferiority complex is making sure that the company you keep is actively helping you out. Take stock of the relationships in your life: are any of them unhealthy or just bringing you down all the time? Part of loving yourself is identifying the parts of your life (personal, social, professional, whatever) that make it tough for you to love yourself.

Friends don’t always make it easy. If you start noticing that you spend time around people who just bring you down, reconsider how you’re spending that time. Surround yourself with people who will lift you up with love and support. Find people who dig other people just the way they are; you don’t need to be surround by judgement, analysis, and other unhealthy activities.

In our age of hyper-connectivity, it can get way too easy to compare our lives with the lives of those around us. Feeling like you don’t measure up to whomever’s pictures you’re looking at on Facebook is something we’ve all dealt with (this writer included). The good news is that it’s completely within your power to destroy your inferiority complex — which is empowering in and of itself!

How to Overcome Your Inferiority Complex | PicktheBrain Photo by Tambako the Jaguar

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Solutions vs. Responses: Why Making Problems Work for You Is Better Than Making Them Go Away

Think about your typical response to the problems with which you’re usually faced — you come up with a solution, right? And typically, those solutions are designed to make your problem go away, right? Problem solved. It’s gone. Now we can move ahead, continuing along on the same, comfortable path we were traversing before that pesky problem popped up and demanded that we make it go away.

Maybe There’s a Better Way to Troubleshoot

Entirely too often, we think about our problems or challenges as obstacles that need to be conquered. Removed. Destroyed. We want to make them gone and we want to forget about them, as soon as possible. Rarely do we think about finding ways that we can actually make those challenges work for us, in our favor.

In a recent post, we talked about now Neil deGrasse Tyson brought up this exact concept in relation to the eternal struggle for a work-life balance. On a recent episode of FiveThirtyEight’s What’s the Point podcast, Tyson talked about how, as a young man, he learned to stop trying to eradicate the perceived imbalance between work and life, and instead use it as a springboard to push him into unexplored realms of creativity and innovation.

Have you ever busted out some genius moves when you were behind the eight-ball and rushing like nobody’s business to meet a deadline?

Then you’re at least a little familiar with the idea that stress and pressure have a tendency to beget creativity, innovation, and all kinds of next-level problem solving. The question is: how do we harness that pressure, and use it in a way that’s healthy (ie, let’s not all go around giving ourselves heart attacks in the name of creativity)?

Ride the Spiral

While their music might not quite be your thing, it’s tough to deny that Tool’s singer/songwriter Maynard James Keenan is a pretty keen lyricist. The song “Lateralus” has a line that offers a bit of value whenever this particular concept comes up:

I’m reaching up and reaching out / I’m reaching for the random or / whatever will bewilder me

and following our will and wind / we may just go where no one’s been

we’ll ride the spiral to the end / and may just go where no one’s been

When you can embrace the chaos — ride the spiral, if you will — you’re able to transcend what normally happens when you try to eradicate your problems. Embracing the issue at hand and learning to ride the spiral pushes you into new and uncharted territories, where invention, innovation, and growth reign supreme.

It’s the same idea that Neil deGrasse Tyson talks about in his podcast appearance. Rather than expend energy trying to thwart the chaos that shows up in your life from time to time, learn to ride the spiral and let it take you to places you’ve never been before. Embrace the chaos when it shows up.

Ever hear of Stoicism? (The actual philosophy, not the quality with which old-school cowboy types conducted themselves.) One of their major philosophical tenets is simply and effectively summarized by a dog, tied to a cart. You are the dog, and the cart is your life. That cart is going places, whether you like them or not. You can rail against the direction your particular cart is taking, or you can ride along and make the best of wherever it takes you, creating value as you go.

The key doesn’t always lie in control. Rather, it comes from “reaching out to embrace the random / reaching out to embrace whatever may come.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tcW-j7KFgY

https://www.toolband.com/album/lyrics/lateralus.html

photo by Lachlan Donald

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Doing Important Stuff Online? Protect ALL Your Data from Hackers

Hackers — we know they’re out there, and we know they’re dangerous...but we don’t really know a lot about who they are, what they’re really after, and how they really go about doing what it is they do. Just like terrorists!

Unlike terrorists, however, it’s more than likely you and I will potentially find ourselves having to outsmart an irritating hacker at some point in the relatively near future. You might never need to know how to disarm an angry terrorist, but avoiding the traps of a wily hacker is definitely something you’re going to want to know how to do.

The problem is, most of us don’t consider ourselves to be high-value targets. The other problem is that we assume hackers are only interested in those high-value targets. What owners of smaller businesses and companies don’t realize, though, is that hackers can do a lot of things with a little bit of information.

This is why it’s important to make sure all your information is safe, secure, and protected. In this enlightening article for Entrepreneur, Sentek Global CEO Eric Basu points out a few of the ways that clever hackers might be able to use something as simple as publicly-posted Facebook information to start down a path that’ll lead them straight to some of your most sensitive information. Even if you aren’t worried because your most sensitive data is secured by third parties, you might still be putting yourself at risk by assuming you’re not big enough to be a target.

Why Hackers Go After All Your Info, Not Just the Important Stuff | Entrepreneur Photo by Andrea Verdiani

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Belief Structures: Your Life, Exactly the Way You Want It

Imagine a car accident. Two cars colliding. Twisted metal, rended steel, broken glass. The whole nine yards. Maybe there are injuries. Maybe not. The details are up to you; fill them in however you want. One thing's for sure: both drivers live. The two human beings who were driving the cars involved in the accident are able to continue their lives after the event.

So: was the car accident a good thing?

Most of us would pretty resolutely say no, right? But let’s make sure we don’t stop there. Why would we say that? We’re operating under the belief (for the sake of conversation) that car accidents are a resoundingly bad thing. We believe that. It is a fact, to us. And that’s it, right?

Well, maybe not. Try what we like to call “daisy chaining.” Examine what you believe that makes you so sure that a car accident is a bad thing only, and nothing else. It is because you believe that pain is an inherently bad thing? Is it because you believe that car troubles and financial challenges are completely terrible and without merit?

This thought exercise isn’t intended to suggest that those beliefs are wrong. Not by a longshot. Rather, it’s intended to help you realize that there are usually some pretty complex and underlying structures to the things that we believe. A lot of the time, we don’t examine these structures, and we take our beliefs at face value. Our beliefs shape and color the things that we experience every single day, without any exception. So how many of us are going through life, experiencing things through a lens unchecked?

Dissatisfaction seeps in through the cracks when this is the case. People feel like life is happening to them when this is the case.

Back to the car accident, now. Person A believes—just in a general outlook kinda way—that life is pain, people constantly hurt one another, and that everything tends to just suck. Based on Person A’s lived experience and belief structures, nobody can tell Person A that Person A is wrong. It’s simply what Person A believes.

Person B, on the other hand, believes—in a general sense—that life is love, people are here to help one another, and that everything is going to be just fine. For whatever reason, Person B believes this firmly. As such? Person B lives in a different world from Person A.

We’re not here to say whether Person A is dealing with a more correct belief structure or not. Granted, Person A’s lived experience might very well be vastly different from Person B’s, and as such, those belief structures might very well be informed by opposing elements.

Your belief structures aren’t inherently wrong or right. But if you find yourself consistently miserable, isn’t it maybe a good idea to examine those belief structures? No matter what experience you’ve had that led you to your belief structures in the first place, the ability that you have to examine them also allows you to transcend them. You are not your beliefs. You life was not inextricably shaped by what came before today. You have so much more power than that.

It’s up to you, and only you, to examine what you believe about the world, about yourself, and about your life. You must do this on a daily basis! It’s the only way you’re ever going to be able to isolate the beliefs and expectations that aren’t working for you, so you can pluck them out like ingrown hairs and replace them with new ones that get you to where it is you want to be going.

It’s actually not as hard as it might seem: it just involves being a little more mindful of your thoughts and reactions to things as you move throughout the day. Don’t let them be the place where your ideas stop moving: daisy-chain your thoughts as you go through your day. Examine why you think about and react to things the way you do.

When you can learn to thoroughly consider your beliefs and the ways they inspire action, thought, and relationships as you move through your life, you’ll learn to understand the ways in which your thoughts and beliefs shape the world around you and dictate the version of it that you wind up experiencing.

Then: isolate the beliefs that don’t work for you. Cull the ones that lead you to self-destructive behaviors, crappy thoughts, and negative patterns. They’re there, and all you have to do is find them.

When you do? You rip ‘em out by the root and replace them by planting newer, healthier beliefs.

And so your tree will grow.

The Takeaway:

Your beliefs and expectations about yourself and about the world around you will color and shape everything about what you experience. No matter what.

Learn to control the things that you believe about and expect from the world around you, and you’ll learn to change the way you experience the world and your life.

Do this by remembering the daisy chain: examine your thoughts and beliefs as you go throughout the day.

Think about why you think and feel the way you do. Challenge your emotions, and examine the beliefs and expectations that motivate them.

When you find beliefs and expectations about the world that repeatedly lead you to emotional places you don’t like going, simply replace them with more positive, helpful ones.

Photo by Amanda B.

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Defeating Your Dadbod (It’s Easier Than You Think)

As you’ve made your way across the vast stretches of content that make up the Internet over the last several weeks, you’ve probably run into a very popular new term: the dadbod. Even if you’ve never heard the term in this exact form before, it’s unquestionably something with which you’re very familiar.

Lifehacker offers up a pretty handy definition of the dadbod, pointing out that “it describes the body of a many whose belly suggests that he’s had a few thousand beers during NFL Sunday. Now, he’s not “fat,” by any means. In fact, his broad shoulders suggest that he balances his pizza intake with bench presses and curls.” In simpler terms, the dadbod is the body of a once-athletic man who’s beginning to let himself go.

Where Does The Dadbod Come From?

The following bit of information is the good news of this article, but it’s also going to rob a lot of dadbod-havers of the excuse they tend to enjoy the most: the dadbod has basically zero to do with metabolism. While it’s true that our resting metabolism (the amount of calories that we burn just by doing our thing and being alive) will start to slow down over age, this isn’t what makes the dad bod creep up on us.

Rather, the dad bod shows up when gentlemen who used to be athletic stop burning as many calories as they used to and begin taking more in. Interestingly enough, this typically comes from changes in lifestyle and environment, which makes the dadbod stunningly easy to reverse.

Sending It Back from Whence It Came

By definition, your dadbod indicates that you’ve got a bit of muscle going on, so all you need to worry about is excising the layer of fat that’s sitting on top of it and messing things up for you. Lifting weights isn’t going to help you out, because it’s just going to keep building muscle under your body fat.

Rather, you need the golden combination of getting in shape and losing weight: diet and exercise.

Figure out how many calories you need to be eating each day in order to lose weight, and follow those guidelines while still keeping your protein intake high. Eating less all the time isn’t nearly as important as eating smart and making sure to consume the right foods.

Work out such that you’re burning calories at a rate that is right for your goals, and make sure to monitor how many calories you’re taking in on the daily. Keep an eye on these easy things, and you’ll be on the first flight out of Dadbodville before you can say Monday Night Football.

What Causes the “Dadbod” (And How to Reverse It) | Lifehacker Photo by Kyle May

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3 Easy Ways to Be More Socially Magnetic

When it comes to talking with other people, some people are naturals and some of us have a bit more trouble. It’s not always second-nature to coax out the right behaviors when it comes time to make some conversation, especially when we don’t know the other person involved too well. We’ve all felt a little uncomfortable in a conversation with somebody new, or been in the position where we just can’t seem to vibe properly with the person on the other side of a social situation.

The good news? It’s not just you. 

Even the social butterflies out there have had trouble figuring out how to be conversationally engaging from time to time. Whether your problem is that you come on strong or that you just don’t know where to start, we’ve got a few tips that will help you have an easier time hitting it off with new people, no matter what.

Take a Two-Second Break

Know what people love even more than a whip-quick witticism? Feeling like they’re being genuinely listened to. Try giving yourself a bit of a two-second pause before you reply when you’re chatting with someone. It actually accomplishes a few handy things, not the least important of which is that it communicates a desire to listen and learn, as opposed to a need to impress or be heard. It’s also going to give you the chance to avoid jumping all up on your conversation partner’s sentence, in case they were just pausing to take a breath and not actually done with their thought.

Eye Contact Wants to Be Your Friend

Ever hear of mirror neurons? They’re basically the reason that you swear you can “feel it” when you see footage of someone hurting themselves real bad on YouTube. Mirror neurons are the biological keys that allow animals feel empathy with one another, and when you gaze directly into the looking balls of the person with whom you’re talking, you give those mirror neurons a much better chance to recalibrate with the other person’s — you literally form a sub-conscious connection.

Eye contact, when it’s made and maintained throughout conversation, also communicates a sense of confidence and openness. It shows that you’re willing to put yourself out there, and that you’re ready to make a connection with the person across from you, which requires a measure of confidence, security, and strength all on its own.

Posture Is Paramount

When you hear someone talk about how a person “exudes cool,” you can almost bet posture is part of the equation. The way that we carry ourselves is a huge part of the way that we communicate with each other, on the most basic and animal of levels. Just recently I heard someone on a podcast describe the fact that, as a child and after several repeated muggings in New York City, he took martial arts classes. He never once got in a fight, but he was never mugged again after taking those classes, and the gentlemen attributed it entirely to the fact that he learned to carry and posture himself differently. The way you move throughout the world says a lot about how you think of your place within it, and the good news is that your posture is something over which you have total control.

We all know that we’re supposed to stand up straight and keep our shoulders back, but don’t forget how important it is to be comfortable. Relax, and look like you belong wherever you are. Make sure your body language communicates a sense of openness: avoid positioning yourself in ways that close you off or lock out out from the rest of the world (ie, crossed arms, etc).

Instinct doesn’t always get us to where it is we want to be going when it comes to social situations. It takes a lot of skill to be able to function successfully in a social environment...but the skills that go into that certain kind of social magnetism certainly aren’t unknowable.

Three Easy Ways to Drastically Improve Your Charisma | Dumb Little Man Photo by Sagar

[lastnightsreading]

Hanya Yanagihara at MashableReads Book Club, 6/19/15

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The Ghost of Intrinsic Value

“What’s in the boooooooox?”

What exactly is it that makes something special? Is it rarity alone? If something is special, does that make it intrinsically valuable?

Once, I saw a video of a woman with cluster headaches. Watching her experience what she had to go through was like what I would imagine it’d be like to see someone have a pair of rusted garden clippers worked into the base of their spine. It was agony, just to watch.

Another time, I read about a guy named Chris Pratt. You’ve probably heard of him, because he’s great. A while back, Pratt moved from the Midwest to Hawaii so he could smoke herb and live in a van (literally, as far as I know; I’m repeating the story I’ve heard him tell), where he was eventually cast to be in a movie at random whilst waiting tables at a Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. Now he’s the lead in the movie with the biggest opening weekend of all-time (Jurassic World) and starred in the excellent Guardians of the Galaxy, two of the biggest blockbusters to come out in the last 12 months.

Both of those people went through some truly extraordinary circumstances. Both of those lives are at least statistically special, both having been touched by something that few other people actually have the chance to experience. Right?

Does the ability to describe something as “special” have any intrinsic value, then?

Does anything?

Of course not. Nothing has intrinsic value other than that which we assign to it.

Perspective is a powerful tool, and it’s a powerful person who equips themselves with an open-ended variety of them.

The ability to openly and equally consider a wide range of viewpoints and perspectives is the key to creating value in just about anything you experience.

So think about it: do you see something narrow, sharp, and dangerous, pointed right at you? Or can you see again, with shifted perspective, and notice a path, stretching out and guiding you towards new and undiscovered country?

Photo by Beck Gusler

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Mad Max: The Fury Road to Your Highest Self

If you’re a living, breathing human being, you’ve probably gone out and seen Mad Max: Fury Road, at some point. And if you’re like about 99% of the moviegoing public, you absolutely loved the newest installment in George Miller’s series of post-apocalyptic masterpieces. You might have even gone a second or third time; the film is rife with flourishes and subtle touches that sometimes don’t make themselves readily available to the viewer until a second or third viewing gives you time to pay attention to every detail buried amidst the deep blues, bright oranges, and fiery explosions in Fury Road’s intense palette. It might have even been on one of those second or third viewings that you noticed how Fury Road is interested in discussing some pretty interesting things — in a big way, Mad Max: Fury Road is about your journey to your highest self.

Think about this through the lens of our two main characters, Max and Furiosa. Despite having the film named for Max, Fury Road is arguably Furiosa’s story. Max is almost incidental to the plot, but a lot of this story’s brilliance comes from the way that Max’s auxiliary nature within the story becomes central to his character’s arc by the film’s end.

One of the best ways to approach the “personal development” aspect of Mad Max: Fury Road is to first look at the motivations of its two central characters. To simplify things a bit it’s safe to say that Max and Furiosa represent two different types of human needs. Max represents lower, or more basic needs (according to a Maslow-esque hierarchy). Furiosa, on the other hand, has motivations that are bit more complex. Let’s dive into each character to look at how.

Max’s Journey to Actuallization

Max, over the course of Fury Road represents a journey to the most basic parts of personal development: actualization and self-identification. Early in Fury Road, Max is essentially a grunting, feral animal. His motivation is simple (in fact, his voice-over spells it out explicitly): he wants to survive. That might include some ancillary goals, too, like drinking some water or maybe getting that thing off his face. Max isn’t concerned with too terribly much else, but by the end of the film he comes to realize that his human couterparts are just as important to him as his survival. Eventually, he goes back to help Furiosa and the Wives, turning back of his own volition, rejoining the group, and offering up his plan for success.

That plan? We need to go back to the place from where we came. (This made me think of that popular self-help adage: “Everything you could ever hope to own or become, you already have and are.”) Both Max and Furiosa realize that if they truly want to accomplish their goals, they must go back to where they started — everything they needed was there, all along.

Furiosa’s Journey to a Better Life, for Everyone

Furiosa’s goals and motivations in the movie are, interestingly enough, both as simple as Max’s and a bit more complex. On the one hand, she’s primarily interested in getting the Wives to safety. That’s her goal, at least. Her motivation for that goal? Once again, it’s explicitly stated in character dialogue, but this time it’s a bit less on-the-nose. When asked why she’s doing what she’s doing, Furiosa says, “Redemption.” This doesn’t get elaborated upon, but it only takes a bit of thought to figure out what she means: Furiosa wants redemption for being an important part of a system that subjugated the wives. Up until the events of the movie, she’s essentially complicit in a society that manipulates, controls, and abuses its constituents.

Max wants survival. He wants to actualize.

At the end of the film, Max says his name. He goes out of his way to give up some of his own blood, that Furiosa might live. And then, having self-actualized, he goes on his way.

Furosa wants redemption. She wants to be responsible for creating a better society, feeling responsible (at least in part) for the creation and propagation of such a horrifying one.

Becoming Your Highest Self

At the end of the film, Furiosa very literally ascends to become a higher version of herself. She returns to her home, having realized that instead of making a different home elsewhere, she can instead improve the one she already has. She ascends (again, literally) to a position of power within her society, and in doing so gives herself a chance at the redemption she has been after: she now has the power to re-shape society in a way that treats all its subjects as equals. She has the opportunity, in so many words, to un-kill the world.

Both lead characters in Mad Max: Fury Road are on a journey that resembles the one that all of us wind up taking at some point in our lives: the journey to our highest selves. From self-actualization to discovering and becoming the highest version of yourself, Mad Max: Fury Road is an action cinema masterpiece with some surprisingly direct personal development messages wrapped up in all that flame and octane.

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Why the Problem of Work-Life Balance Is a Myth

(If only “Because Neil deGrasse Tyson said so” were an adequate explanation.)

Plenty of us are preeminently concerned with capturing the fabled beast known as the work-life balance. Whether or not you’d consider your life simple or complex in comparison to someone else’s, finding the right balance between the stuff you have to do and the stuff you want to do can be as taxing anything else. Draining even.

We’ve all heard/seen/read the strategies for solving this problem...but did we ever stop to consider the fact that this problem (like almost all problems) is better served not by a solution, but by a response?

Maybe solving the problem of work/life balance. Maybe balance is overrated. At least, that’s what Neil deGrasse Tyson suggests.

In a recent appearance on the What’s the Point podcast by FiveThirtyEight, Tyson pointed out that he got the most out of his encounter with the work/life balance problem not by crafting a solution that made it go away, but instead by crafting a response that made the problem into something that actually worked for him.

Because converted allies are always better than slaughtered enemies, right?

As NDT puts it, “There is the psychological discomfort of knowing you should be doing something else. And we presume that balance is a good thing.”’ Tyson goes on to suggest, though, that this state of imbalance that can actually be harnessed and used to push you out of your box. In your drive to resolve your perceived imbalance, you’re a lot more likely to innovate and get creative in ways you haven’t before. Life can be bumpy sometimes, but maybe smoothing it out isn’t always the answer.

Think about it: when you go to the amusement park and line up for a roller coaster, do you spend your time thinking about how you can even out the peaks, valleys, twists, and turns in the track?

Hell no! You RIDE the thing.

And it becomes something that works for you.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson Thinks Work-Life Balance Is Overrated | TIME

Podcast: Neil DeGrasse Tyson on Big Data, Race, and Why Work-Life Balance Is Overrated | FiveThirtyEight

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