By Spencer Greenberg and Amber Dawn Ace
Image created using the A.I. DALL•E 2
This is the fifth and final part in my sequence of essays about my life philosophy, Valuism - here are the first, second, third, and fourth parts.
In previous posts, I've described Valuism - my life philosophy. I've also discussed how it could serve as a life philosophy for others. In this post, I discuss how a Valuist lens can help shed light on various fields and areas of inquiry.
Valuism and ...
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mental health
How can you help friends or family members who are struggling with a mental health challenge?
I've noticed that it's quite common for people to struggle to know what they should do to support friends or family members going through a mental health challenge, and it's also quite common to say counterproductive things in such situations.
With the aim of helping you better help those people in your life who are struggling, here's a list of five things that are usually a *bad* idea to say to someone who is dealing with a mental health challenge, along with seven things it usually is ...
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How do we predict high levels of success?
Below, I outline 13 approaches to predicting high levels of success with differing levels of complexity, including my own mega model at the bottom.
Note: here, I use the term "success" merely in terms of achievement, career success, or high levels of expertise, NOT in terms of happiness, living a good life, morality, having strong social bonds, etc. There is nothing wrong with not wanting to be successful in the way this post focuses on. But if you DO want "success" in the sense in...
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What Are All the Things That Humans Need?
Below is my attempt to list all human needs ranked according to their typical importance (from most important to least). Thanks for the idea, Maslow!
I'm defining a "need" here as something non-replaceable (i.e., you can't just substitute it for something else), which, if substantially unsatisfied, would inhibit well-being for the vast majority of people.
You might say that you "need an iced tea" on a hot day, but it could be easily replaceable with lemonade or iced coffee, s...
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Intersecting advice from highly successful people
It's popular to read interviews and books with advice from highly successful people. But is their advice good advice? Perhaps it works for their situation, but that doesn't necessarily mean it generalizes to other circumstances. Maybe they are just overfitting to their personal life experience. Perhaps they are attributing too much of their success to the actions they happened to take rather than to factors outside of their control. And what should we make of the fact that advice often contradi...
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On How to Process Your Emotions
We’ve all heard that you should take time to “process your emotions” and not “repress them.” But after a bad event occurs, what exactly does it MEAN to process your emotions? I think that, ideally, it involves a mix of these components:
(1) Noticing: paying close attention to your negative thoughts instead of pushing them away or trying to ignore the bad feelings. What are the EXACT words running through your mind? How does it feel right now to be you? What do your body and mind feel li...
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Dealing with damage before it wrecks you
Written: July 5, 2020 | Released: August 6, 2020
Many of the hard-to-replace things in life accumulate damage as time passes. It's critical to learn to detect and improve damage before these things fall apart. This requires a combination of vigilance (noticing the damage before it is really bad or even irreversible) and continually using effective strategies to repair what's broken. A car will accumulate damage over time, but even if you don't take good care of it, you can get a new one even...
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A Formula for Happiness
What does the formula for happiness look like? Here's my attempt at it:
happiness =
social-acceptance+ self-acceptance+ meaning+ hope+ pleasure+ efficacy+ resilience+ optimism
- physical-wants- pain- anxiety- loss and depression
Positives
social-acceptance = human interaction with the sort of people you want to interact with in the form of warm and trusting relationships, and the gut-level feeling that this group accepts you, likes you, and respects you
Interventions: exposure therapy if yo...
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