Whether it’s the “physiological sigh” popularized by podcaster Andrew Huberman or the New York Times advising people to “plunge your face into a bowl with ice water for 15 to 30 seconds,” quick and concrete tactics for managing stress and anxiety are all over the internet. And the truth is…

Biohacking, optimization, And the wellness industrial complex 2.0 is full of bunk; here’s what actually works. — In the self-help, biohacking, and personal improvement crowds, people often turn their entire lives into work, all in the name of getting better and living forever. …

Welcome to my annual reading list. If you are familiar with my work, you’ll know that it integrates ideas, research, and practices from diverse domains. (See my latest book, for example.) People always ask me how I do this. The answer is simple: I do my best to live in…

One in every eight deaths among people aged 20–64 results from alcohol. Narrow that age range to 20–49, and it’s one in every five. First, everyone is going to ask where the above data comes from. The answer is a new study, published in JAMA, looking at 700,000 deaths in…

We Need a Common Language to Talk About It — If you feel “off” more often than you’d like, you aren’t alone. Many people do. In my latest book, The Practice of Groundedness, I traced this general sense of dis-ease to a concept I called heroic individualism: an ongoing game of oneupmanship against yourself and others where the goalpost is…

Recently at the gas station, I was filling up my tank as a beautiful woman appeared on the high-definition screen placed on the pump. She told me when I’m feeling stressed out and overwhelmed, I need to repeat to myself a few times the phrase everything is figureoutable and then…

The only Zen on the tops of mountains is the Zen that you bring up there with you — Wherever you are, the goal post is always 10 yards down the field. If you develop a mindset “If I just accomplish ___, THEN I’ll arrive,” you are in for a rude awakening. There is no arriving. The sooner you realize this, the better. The Arrival Fallacy was first coined…

And what it will take to move beyond the frantic and frenetic energy of our modern times — It has been a year since my most recent book, The Practice of Groundedness, was first released, and well over two years since I finished writing it. Much has happened since. COVID-19 went from being a novel virus to a full-blown pandemic, dramatically altering our way of life. Democratic backslide…

The term “quiet quitting” has become a thing. It all started with a seventeen second TikTok video that went viral, in which the narrator says “it is not outright quitting your job but quitting the idea of going above and beyond at work.” Since then, quiet quitting has been covered…