Supritha S

If you haven’t stepped out of your comfort zone in a while, it might be time to try. Experiencing the unfamiliar allows us to practice being agile, because we’re not always able to default to our usual cognitive response patterns in new contexts.

Too often, we assume innovative ideas and meaningful changes require a blank slate. When business projects fail, we say things like, “Let's go back to the drawing board.” When we consider the habits we would like to change, we think, “I just need a fresh start.” However, creative progress is rarely the result of throwing out all previous ideas and... See more

On the surface, these phrases sound inspiring. What we fail to realize, however, is that any quest for rapid growth contradicts every stabilizing force in our lives. Remember, the natural tendency of life is to find stability. Anytime equilibrium is lost, the system is motivated to restore it.

At first thought it may be hard to believe that people can do terrible and self-destructive things in the name of happiness. Nearly everything we do can be attributed to a desire for feelings of either security, power, or sense gratification, all of which our bodies and minds tell us are the ingredients to happiness.

This is further anecdotal evidence in favour of the procrastination equation, because downhill work has a high expectancy for success.

But that in itself is a sort of luxury.

These stories are just a natural by-product of the human mind’s amazing ability to make connections between similar thoughts, but they reliably generate real stress. This free-association ability isn’t wholly a bad thing, and is in fact necessary for making plans and learning from our mistakes. But most of the time it is completely useless idle... See more

The words accomplishment and achievement usually signify conspicuous, outwardly-visible gains, often ones that come with status and material rewards. Do an image search for either word and it’s all grad ceremonies, sports medals, boardroom handshakes, and people standing on mountains. But there’s so much more being achieved in the human world.

Wanting to improve your life is easy. Sticking with it is a different story. If you want to stay motivated for good, then start with a challenge that is just manageable, measure your progress, and repeat the process.