Category: Expectations
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Expectations vs. support
Expectation: The prospect of the future; grounds upon which something excellent is expected to happen; prospect of anything good to come, esp. of property or rank. (Webster’s 1913) Support: That which upholds, sustains, or keeps from falling, as a prop, a pillar, or a foundation of any kind. (Webster’s 1913) While these two concepts don’t…
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Predictive processing theory
A common saying goes, “We see the world not as it is, but as we are.” Philosopher Andy Clark wrote a book on this topic. His thesis is centered on the predictive processing theory, suggesting that the brain’s main function is to make predictions. He writes in The Experience Machine: Nothing we do or experience—if…
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The subtle misery of high expectations
There’s a centuries-old train of thought that equates expectations with results. In Blessed, author Kate Bowler quotes Essek William Kenyon, writing, “Christian talk about hope had to be amended, for, as Kenyon claimed, “Hope says, ‘I will get it sometime.’ Faith says, ‘I have it now.’”” Bowler described the core of this metaphysical train of…
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Serious possibilism
People often call me an optimist, because I show them the enormous progress they didn’t know about. That makes me angry. I’m not an optimist. That makes me sound naïve. I’m a very serious “possibilist.” That’s something I made up. It means someone who neither hopes without reason, nor fears without reason, someone who constantly…
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Losing 101
You might’ve been born and bred to win. As a kid, you might’ve won awards, made the most friends, or been recognized as an excellent athlete. Many of us grow up like this, children of parents who were taught to do the same. We mostly learn to do this as individuals. In situations like this,…
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Vision, practice, and spine
At his Substack, Austin Kleon suggests an alternative to having a creative vision: And this all sounds very inspiring — it really does pump you up! — but for much of my life, [having a vision] would have been almost useless advice, because I didn’t really see any of my career coming. There was no…
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“This is not important”
This is how procrastination outsmarts you. It tells you, “[This] is not important.” So you may hear statements like, “This isn’t the right time for me to be doing this.” It may sound like, “I shouldn’t be doing my administrative work right now, because planning for the upcoming quarter is more important.” That’s fine, and…
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“Don’t do that”
I once got this piece of advice from a bestselling author after I told him I wanted to write a memoir. He told me, “Memoirs don’t sell unless you’re famous.” He wasn’t wrong, and I’m glad I listened to his advice at the time. It was also a sign to me: I didn’t really want…
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Changing your context
Everything you experience is filtered through your mind. There’s no way to remove this filter, (nor would you want to). If you want to change your behavior, or how people perceive you, you need to embrace the art of contextualization. Reading a book, writing regularly, and identifying someone you want to be more like and…
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Marketplace of truths
“Language is also clearly crucial for a special kind of abstract thinking that requires what the philosopher Daniel Dennett calls ‘scaffolding’—chains of reasoning so complex that we need external placeholders to keep us from forgetting where we are,” writes Edward Slingerland in Trying Not to Try (p. 60). Slingerland continues, “The sum total of these…