Success

Success

Consistent Experiences vs. Varied Experiences

Nathanael Garrett Novosel, November 6 2024

There are two approaches to maximizing your abilities: These differences occur in two ways: you can do the same activity consistently to master it vs. doing it in a different way to be able to perform under a variety of conditions, or you can do one activity to improve in one area or various activities to improve in multiple

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Truth

Be True to Yourself, Lie to Yourself…Be Honest to Others, Lie to Others?

Nathanael Garrett Novosel, September 4 2024

There’s an interesting conflict in recommendations from others around honesty: people will tell you to be honest or deceptive depending on what leads to the best outcome. Now, for those of you who have read The Meaning of Life: A guide to finding your life’s purpose or previous blog posts on the honesty ethic, that will not be a surprise since...

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Planning

Forming Better Habits

Nathanael Garrett Novosel, August 21 2024

Some people run four miles per day and eat salads, while others watch 5 hours of television and eat popcorn. Some people study two hours per evening, while others play two hours of video games. Some people perform chores every week, while others buy new clothes for a year straight instead of doing laundry. What is going on here, and how can you...

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Meaning

Accomplishments, Awards, and Asterisks

Nathanael Garrett Novosel, August 14 2024

What matters? It seems like a simple question. But here’s the thing: people every day ask themselves what they want in life or how they can find more meaning in life and never really face that question. They often end up looking around at what other people like and following them. With that approach, they had better hope that they like the same...

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Happiness

Ask, Believe, Receive? Or Desire, Believe, Work, Achieve?

Nathanael Garrett Novosel, July 3 2024

I presented my findings on the eight drivers of someone’s sense of meaning and purpose in life, and someone immediately said that they could summarize it all in one idea: The Law of Attraction. Although the statement was incorrect—the Law of Attraction only covers 3-5 drivers at most (desire, belief, emotions, and as a stretch support and choice...

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Planning

What Drives You?

Nathanael Garrett Novosel, April 10 2024

Understanding what motivates you is one of the most important things you can do to improve your sense of purpose in life. When you have a driving force, you will continue forward no matter what it takes. But how do you know what motivates you? There are a few ways to determine this, but let’s start with what motivation is and what things can...

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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...

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Growth

What Do You Want to Be When You Grow Up?

Nathanael Garrett Novosel, October 25 2023

“What do you want to be when you grow up?” It seems like a simple, innocent question. Asking a child this question is either just to make conversation, to get to know them, or to understand what they want to do so you can keep it in mind for where/when you can help them in the future. No matter what the reason, the result is straightforward:...

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Planning

Defining and Improving Your “Life Architecture”

Nathanael Garrett Novosel, September 20 2023

One of my first ever blog posts was about creating a “life architecture roadmap”—in other words, assessing the current state of your life and identifying your desired future state so that you could create a roadmap filled with practical next steps and milestones to get there. The idea is a play on Enterprise Architecture, a discipline in which...

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Planning

Where Do You See Yourself in Five Years?

Nathanael Garrett Novosel, August 30 2023

In the immortal words of Creed Bratton of The Office, “If I can’t SCUBA, then what has this all been about? What am I working toward?” While this is quotation is meant to be funny since a man working an office job (with plenty of references to drugs, murder, and other seedy activities during the workday) for decades was all leading up to a...

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