Choice

The Universe

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...

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Happiness

It Will Always Be Something

Nathanael Garrett Novosel, July 19 2023

There’s a saying, “It’s always in the last place you look.” I believe it was Jerry Seinfeld who quickly retorted something along the lines of, “Of course it is; if you kept looking in more places after you found what you were looking for, you’d be a crazy person.” Obviously, the joke is in the double-meaning of “last place you look”—meaning both...

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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...

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Choice

You Can Get Used to Anything in Three Weeks

Nathanael Garrett Novosel, April 5 2023

When I was in college, I had a Health professor tell me that he used to like salt and then had to quit for his blood pressure. He quit it for three weeks and afterwards didn’t mind the unsalted taste and even couldn’t add salt anymore because he could taste it and didn’t really need it. He then said that if you wanted a habit to stick, you can...

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Success

Create Your Own Luck

Nathanael Garrett Novosel, March 29 2023

You have probably heard of the famous phrase, “Luck is when preparation meets opportunity.” Turning that into a formula, it would be: Luck = Preparation + Opportunity So what does that mean, and how can you actually create your own luck? Let’s take a look. Let’s start with what it means. Luck typically refers to random chance. Will it rain...

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Meaning

First, Seek to Understand

Nathanael Garrett Novosel, March 8 2023

Resolving conflicts has never been easy, but it feels like in a world where you can live in your own world that you never have to talk to someone who ever disagrees with you. Even debates are no longer really two people having a conversation to try to influence each other but rather each person talking to an audience to score points and "own" the...

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Ethics

Trade-Offs

Nathanael Garrett Novosel, February 22 2023

Note: Contentious topics are used for illustrative purposes only; I am not advocating for you to take any specific ethical position. "There are no solutions; there are only trade-offs," is a famous saying about economics and economic policy. It acknowledges the reality that there are benefits and drawbacks to anything in life. Small creatures are...

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Success

What Joe Rogan and George Carlin Bits Can Teach You About Optimal Behavior

Nathanael Garrett Novosel, January 4 2023

Are you an idiot or a maniac? I know, that's a strange way to start a blog post. But, in all seriousness, it's an interesting dichotomy that shows the ethical continuum that we all use when making decisions and then passing judgment on others for theirs. Let's take a look at this through the lens of two famous stand-up jokes from popular

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Choice

Neuroscience and Determinism

Nathanael Garrett Novosel, November 2 2022

Possibly the most surprising, amazing, and contentious finding in the last 20 years of the study of neuroscience is the idea that the brain’s decisions might be made up to 10 seconds before person is consciously aware of it. The most famous popular psychology assertion on the topic of free will comes from Sam Harris, who stated that free will is an...

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Happiness

How You Can Choose to Be Happy

Nathanael Garrett Novosel, October 26 2022

“Happiness is a choice.” If you’ve ever listened to a self-help guru or optimistic person, you’ll have heard this statement. Many respond with, “Easy for you to say…you have ______. If I had that, I’d be happy, too,” or its opposite, “But you don’t have _______. If you had that, you wouldn’t be happy, either.” To many, happiness seems to be a matte...

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