Experience

Growth

On Challenge

Nathanael Garrett Novosel, March 6 2024

Everyone thinks they just want to live the easy life: being waited on hand and foot, eating junk food and playing video games all day, or living a life without work. People say they want that—no matter how much evidence you provide to the contrary: people who hit the lottery are often miserable or lose it all; animals sit around all day and eat...

Read More
Ethics

Just This One Time

Nathanael Garrett Novosel, January 10 2024

I have read hundreds of books on psychology, philosophy, self-help, and success, so it’s not often anymore that something truly surprises me. I love looking at the world or an idea in a new way, though, so I am always looking for new insights and treasure the “lightbulb moment” when it happens. One day a few years ago, I decided to try a Wayne...

Read More
Self

You Are NOT Your Experiences

Nathanael Garrett Novosel, December 6 2023

Everyone faces adversity, challenges, and trauma in life. For example, a soldier will see horrors that they wouldn’t wish upon anyone, and a star athlete will experience inevitable injuries that will prevent them from performing at their best. Many traumas are near-unavoidable, such as childhood trauma when you are under the custodianship of your...

Read More
Growth

What Sports Can Tell You about Meaning

Nathanael Garrett Novosel, November 22 2023

Sports are one of the most popular activities for human connection. Millions—or even billions—will watch the most famous games in the world, such as the Super Bowl or World Cup. Yet, when you break it down, people are literally just watching a bunch of people run around a field trying to get a ball across a line or in a net. If there were...

Read More
Growth

How Good Do You Want to Be? (How Much Do You Want to Grow?)

Nathanael Garrett Novosel, November 15 2023

One of the most important things in life is picking a direction and a destination. If growth is the point, then you need to determine what areas of your life you wish to improve and by how much. Since we all only have 24 hours per day, we have to choose how we spend that time to realize our dreams. In short, we need to determine how good we want...

Read More
Choice

You Can Find Meaning in Whatever Happens to You

Nathanael Garrett Novosel, September 6 2023

Meaning is subjective; as such, you can decide that something has significance to you or decide that everything is stupid and meaningless. While this sounds like nothing in life really matters, it’s actually more positive than that. The best takeaway for your mental health and well-being is that you can take anything your life, find its meaning...

Read More
Choice

Control Your Attention, Control Your Experience

Nathanael Garrett Novosel, June 21 2023

Magicians (also known as illusionists) are masters of manipulation of your attention. Anyone who has seen Penn and Teller’s act has been introduced to the science behind how they deceive you: they can make an object appear to have moved when it hasn’t; they can make it appear to be somewhere when it has actually moved; and they can make you focus...

Read More
Growth

Change Yourself, Change the World

Nathanael Garrett Novosel, May 31 2023

The word “activist” has become pretty popular these days as both a profession and a way to virtue signal to everyone on social media that you are a good person who cares about others. Now, the cynics of the world will point out two things: This post isn’t going to point out specific causes and judge them nor is it going to rail against hypocrisy...

Read More
Planning

Writing Your Life Résumé

Nathanael Garrett Novosel, May 10 2023

I've spoken before about how HR departments cracked the meaning of life and success by optimizing professional growth within their organizations. In there, I linked to the life résumé template for folks to create their own. Today, I'd like to talk a little bit about when, how, and why you should create your own "life résumé" to plan your own...

Read More
Meaning

How Meaning Can Change

Nathanael Garrett Novosel, May 3 2023

One silly pet peeve of mine is how people start letters to people with, "Dear _____," at the top. Why do they do that? Because that's how they were taught to start letters. To them, it denotes the beginning of a letter where this is the person you are addressing. But, when you know the definition of the word "dear" in English, you know that it is...

Read More
Next