3MM: Identity, Connection & Stories

06-24-2024

3 MINUTE MONDAY

Hi friend,

I'm bringing my solo live show to Australia this November!

Brisbane - Wednesday 6th November at Fortitude Music Hall
Melbourne - Friday 8th November at Palais Theatre
Sydney - Saturday 9th November at Darling Harbour Theatre

Presale goes live on Tuesday June 25th at 9am AEST.

Get access to presale tickets here.

In other news I’m in Nashville for a few days recording, back to Austin for one day, then Charlotte, Gatlinburg, Nashville again for July 4th, New Orleans and Bozeman.

Fired up to see some of America without only being under studio lighting the whole time!

Anyway, onto what I’ve been thinking about this week…

“Identity lags reality by 1-2 years.
There’s a lot of psychological fallout from a rapid change in status.” — Mark Manson

If you’ve lost a ton of weight, or become single after a long relationship, or won a huge contract to play professional sport, or had amazing business success then you might resonate with this.

The person the world sees you as, and the person you see yourself as have become very different.

Your fears and doubts and inclinations have not changed much, and yet the individual that everyone else expects to turn up is this new version of you.

It will take time for your inner world to catch up to the outer one.

Ancestrally, the ladder spanning from the highest you could climb to the lowest you could fall had far fewer rungs than it does today.

In a tribe of 80 people, there’s not just all that much room for your status to rollercoaster around.

In the modern world, there are unlimited degrees of freedom for your status to ascend in one domain or fall in another.

Human minds are not prepared for our outward presentation and self-image to be ripped apart from each other so quickly.

It makes sense that they take so long to creep back together again.

Try to enjoy the rollercoaster as best you can, soon you won’t be able to remember what it was like to be at the bottom.

MODERN WISDOM

I do a podcast where I pretend to have a British accent. You should subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

This week’s upcoming episodes:

Monday.
George Mack - some of the best lessons about human nature, psychology, tribalism, UK vs US differences and more.

Thursday.
Arthur Brooks - how to actually build lasting, sustainable happiness using science. Practical, tactical, strategic. Really great episode, don’t miss it.

Saturday.
Nick Bostrom - the most cited philosopher in the world under age 50 on the future of human civilisation, technology and AI. Very fun.

THINGS I'VE LEARNED

1.
3 deep questions to connect with your partner.

1. What feelings are hard for you to communicate? How can I make it easier?

2. What is a compromise you've had to make since meeting me?

3. What was the most recent experience that made you feel closer to me?

2.
Stories don’t care about your statistics.

In controlled experiments, researchers documented a pronounced story-statistic gap in memory:

The average impact of statistics on beliefs fades by 73% over the course of a day.

The impact of a story fades by only 32%.

So in short, people's beliefs are more durably impacted by stories than by statistics.

Huge implications for how voters’ beliefs can be more easily swayed during the upcoming elections.

3.
If it makes you a worse person, it’s not success.

“If starting a business tears your relationships apart, makes you bitter or frustrated with people—then it doesn’t matter how much money it makes or external praise it receives.

That's not success.” — Ryan Holiday

LIFE HACK

Clip your curtains together in hotel rooms.

I like a dark bedroom.

That gap between curtains in hotel rooms kills me, especially if I’m running low on sleep which usually happens on the road.

Grab two of the trouser hangers with the clips on from the wardrobe and pin those suckers together.

One at the top and one at the bottom usually does it.

Total lifesaver.

Big love,
Chris x

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PS
I'm launching something new with Dr Mike Israetel. The amount of work that is going on behind the scenes to make this happen is wild. In 5 months or something we'll finally announce the launch and it'll seem like it happened overnight. I'm just taking the time right now to whine about how long and effortful it is to develop anything that's actually good.

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