Patricia Mou

Trust the gold: Humans are fundamentally good, creative, and whole. They have noble intentions. Harm is caused not by malice but rather by fear, desperation, and lack of skillfulness/choice in meeting one's needs— challenges that have been part of humankind for quite a long time. With the exception of extreme situations, I aspire to approach every... See more

Five steps on how to build a tribe:Identification: find and be foundCommunication: increase bandwidthCooperation: create valueReification: make your group “a thing”Adaptation: find the dark forces to preserve the essence of your thing

Sometimes, learning what you don’t want might be as important as discovering what you do. That’s growing, too.

It is not a coincidence that humans have developed ever more complex forms of coordination: it unlocks positive-sum dynamics that realize more and more of potential. 

A couple of months ago I pursued a new habit. Every night I pulled out a pad of paper and filled a blank page with answers to the question “What do I want in life?” (This is an exercise based on Jim O’Shaughnessy’s excellent six-part Thinker & Prover thread.) Unearthing my desires was painstaking work.

 Ignore what others may be thinking of you, because they aren’t.

A considerable body of research has suggested that religious service attendance powerfully affects health and also affects other aspects of flourishing such as meaning in life, character, and close social relationships (Koenig, King, and Carson, 2012; Li et al., 2016ab; VanderWeele et al., 2016, 2017; VanderWeele, 2017abc).