Tribe of Mentors: Short Life Advice from the Best in the World

Primed Mind, a mindset coaching app,

Today when I speak with anyone about anything, I try to hold their perspective with a “light grip”: the knowledge that they, and I, have very incomplete maps of reality.

I’m 74. Believe me, you’ve got all the time in the world. You’ve got ten lifetimes ahead of you. Don’t worry about your friends “beating” you or “getting somewhere” ahead of you. Get out into the real dirt world and start failing. Why do I say that? Because the goal is to connect with your own self, your own soul.

the most useful mental model I have found to help understand what makes people tick is the one Barondes describes in his book. The model is called the “Big Five” or OCEAN: open-minded, conscientious, extroverted, agreeable, neurotic. The academics who developed the model clumped every English adjective that could be used to describe someone into ca

Sam Barondes’ book Making Sense of People

His Wednesday column on stevenpressfield.com is one of the most popular series about writing on the web.

When you feel overwhelmed or unfocused, what do you do? What questions do you ask yourself? I step back … and slow down … and ask the five whys. And when I am done, I also ask if I am afraid of something but too afraid to admit it.

When something goes badly, I don’t automatically assume I did something wrong. Instead I ask myself, “What policy was I following that produced this bad outcome, and do I still expect that policy to give the best results overall, occasional bad outcomes notwithstanding?” If yes, then carry on! The reason this habit is so important is that even the

6. What is an unusual habit or an absurd thing that you love?