Identity

I learned how to say the right thing or show up in the right way. I became an expert fitter-in, a chameleon. And a very lonely stranger to myself.

Brené Brown • Braving the Wilderness

So many high-achieving people get trapped into obsessing about the external world and neglecting their internal world. When you’ve been suppressing things for so long, you can’t just decide to stop all at once. Learning to listen to yourself takes a long time. I used to think that I always had to justify everything to myself—that I needed to be com

Ava • Not Disappointing Myself

We are programmed as children to act and feel a certain way toward certain stimuli. Those programs keep running without interruption until what I call our moment of awakening. Before that, we’re all just asleep letting our programming run our lives

Patti Henry • The Emotionally Unavailable Man

the elevation of emotion over reason and of the senses over the intellect; an introspective orientation and fascination with the self; hypersensibility and heightened awareness of sentiments and moods; a keen interest in strangers and strangeness; the pose of a contrarian; a belief in community combined with a need for solitude; an appreciation for

Tim Leberecht • The Business Romantic

A less cynical way to think about the postmodern tech revolution is that it hasn’t completely subsumed the real, brilliant, chaotic world, but merely emphasized it as vital and precious. Artificial intelligence, in my view, continues this tradition. The only singularity it can truly achieve is one that understands humanity at its most inhuman (and ... See more

Haley Nahman • #138: Do you pass the Turing test?

But here’s the thing: When I do actually find a rare bit of “me” time, I often don’t know what to do with it. I’ve been drowning so long and so deep in my own mental labor, I don’t even know who I am when I stumble upon a life preserver.

In order to figure out what we want to do with our precious time and energy, we have to figure out who we are an... See more