Patricia Mou

The linear approach imagines that the meaning of our lives can be reduced to a mission, like the kind that fixes saints, heroes and social reformers in the historical imagination.

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 e... See more

Acts of kindness, helping others, and going out of one’s way to be of assistance to those in need can, of course, increase the well-being of others. 

To some people, disagreements feel like conflict; they don’t have to be, and avoiding disagreements comes with a high price. It doesn’t have to feel bad to figure out where you might be wrong if you learn to disentangle your self-worth from your belief system.

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

9. Noise Cancellation. The ability to cancel out the noise - to truly focus on the task at hand - is both broadly applicable and extremely powerful.

True belonging is always the product of co-construction. This requires mechanisms that: create buy-in, ensure people are and feel heard, facilitate collective decision making and error-correction.

To bring about grand futures, we humans have to figure out how to reconcile our current needs with our lofty ambitions. Tight-knit support communities - what we call tribes in this post - seem to be a good way to preserve our well-being and values while achieving more impact. Yet, building effective tribes seems like a relatively neglected puzzle i... See more

What do you do every day, constantly strive to get better at, that improves not just your life, but the lives of others? What is that one thing that you are building above all else, trading your time - no, decades of your life - in exchange to will into existence that is good and beautiful in this world?  That is a mission, and everyone needs ... See more