Laura Pike Seeley

“Worry can become like a bad habit of the mind. The rule of neuroplasticity—that our brain keeps changing based on our repeated activity—says that whatever we do a lot we will get better at. So if we worry a lot, we will get really good at worrying.” In other words, once you start worrying about something, it can be hard to stop.

Our current definition of “productivity” is broken. It pushes us to treat busyness as a proxy for useful effort, leading to impossibly lengthy task lists and ceaseless meetings. We’re overwhelmed by all we have to do and on the edge of burnout, left to decide between giving into soul-sapping hustle culture or rejecting ambition altogether. But are... See more

Adopting a healthy scepticism towards inherited ideas means “emptying the container of the Self”, or perhaps exercising a kind of trained “forgetting” of that which is extraneous to the essential self. In this state, we become less prone to partaking in the superfluous occupations we impose upon ourselves to cope with the weight of social

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In a study published by the journal Nature in July, a team of researchers from the University of Texas at Austin, Stanford University, University of Rochester, and Google Empathy Lab found a way to do that. The researchers used a 30-minute online training session to teach participants about a mindset that sees stress as an opportunity to learn and... See more

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