Arthur Tysen

Comedian Pete Holmes shares the simplest mental health tool he's ever used: "Yes, thank you." Pete was sent advance copies of his own book to send out to reviewers. When he looked through it, he realised it was three versions old filled with notes to himself, a placeholder word ("flappy") scattered throughout, and entire chapters he'd cut. "It was just my first book deeply disappointing." "You feel this like black cloud. You're just sad. Then you're embarrassed. To me it's the feeling and then it's the embarrassment that you have the feeling. It's worse than the feeling." But instead of spiralling, Pete applied the exact tool he'd written about in that very book. He said: "Yes, thank you." And it lifted. Pete explains why this works and it's simpler than any therapy framework or spiritual practice: "It just short-circuits your brain if you say yes, thank you to it. And I mean almost instantly in my experience." Flight delayed? Yes, thank you. Embarrassed about your own book? Yes, thank you. He breaks down the psychology behind it: "Everything [is] attraction and aversion. Aversion is just charging it with all of this push. Like a basketball underwater. So you're giving it all the energy." When you resist a bad feeling, you compress it. You give it power. "Yes, thank you" does the opposite, it stops the fight. And you don't need to make it profound: "It can just be a clean breath and a recognition that you're alive. And maybe you see the sun coming through the window." Most of our suffering is the layer of resistance we pile on top of it. The embarrassment about the embarrassment. The frustration about the frustration. "Yes, thank you" collapses that second layer instantly by simply not fighting it. "Really not debating with the bad feeling. Just saying yes, thank you to it. That's been one of the most powerful things in my life for sure."

The Buddha and the Angry Man One day, while the Buddha was walking with his disciples, a furious man rushed toward him. His face was burning with anger. His words were harsh and full of bitterness. He shouted, insulted, and tried again and again to provoke him. The disciples became upset. Some stepped forward and asked Buddha for permission to send the man away. But the Buddha remained calm… silent… unmoved — like a deep lake that stays still even when the wind blows across its surface. The man kept shouting until he had no strength left. And when silence finally fell, the Buddha gently asked him: “My friend, if someone offers you a gift, and you do not accept it… who does the gift belong to?” The man, surprised by the question, replied, “It belongs to the one who offered it.” The Buddha smiled and said: “In the same way, you came here to offer me anger, insults, and hatred. But I do not accept them. So they remain with you… not with me.” The man stood speechless. For the first time, he saw the truth clearly: Anger has no power… unless someone chooses to receive it. Takeaway Not every insult deserves a response. Not every argument deserves your energy. Sometimes the strongest thing you can do is remain calm… and walk away with your peace. Let others keep their anger. You keep your peace. ✨🙌🏾💫

Your walk is physically growing your brain. That’s not a metaphor. Every year after 50, your brain’s memory region shrinks by about 1-2%. Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh put 120 older adults into two groups. One walked 40 minutes a day, three days a week, for a full year. The other just stretched. Brain scans showed the walkers’ memory region grew by 2%, undoing one to two years of shrinkage. The stretching group shrank by another 1.4%. It changes how you think too. Stanford tested 176 people on creative tasks while sitting and then while walking. Creative output jumped 60%. Even on a treadmill facing a blank wall. Every single person who walked outside produced at least one strong original idea, while only half the seated group managed it. The boost stuck around even after they sat back down. A 2024 review in the British Medical Journal looked at 218 studies and found that walking and jogging worked about as well as antidepressants for depression. For people already dealing with clinical depression, a separate analysis of 75 studies found the benefit was about 4x what it was for everyone else. You don’t even need 10,000 steps. That number came from a 1960s Japanese marketing campaign for a pedometer, not from any medical study. When researchers tracked over 226,000 people, every extra 1,000 steps per day lowered the risk of early death. Around 9,000 steps a day is enough to cut that risk by 39%. A pair of shoes and a door. No prescription needed.

“You can get addicted to peace and you can also get addicted to chaos”. - Denzel Washington on creating healthier habits and your improving lifestyle. “Anything you practice, you get good at. Positively or negatively. Spend a half an hour every morning in quiet time first. Don't go *sighs and grabs your phone*, we're all guilty of it. It's very hard to do. You do it. Start with five minutes. Don't turn on any lights. Put your feet on the floor. Take some deep breaths and say thank you. And then just be quiet. You'll find it very hard to do. When you get quiet, you start to hear things. Don't even worry about a half hour. Try 10 minutes. Whether you pray, whether you meditate, no music, no nothing, just sound. Just try to be quiet first because what you're reacting to is peace. Once you get up and grab the things or whatever, what you're reacting to is chaos. You can get addicted to peace and you can also get addicted to chaos”. 🔗 instagram.com/reel/DUQTcxDkR…

Great story from Coach K on running into a former camper and the lesson this man carried with him. Coach K asked all the kids at the camp... "Who do you talk to the most?" “Yourself… so when you talk to yourself, why not be yourself's best friend?” A lot of performers are entertaining an internal voice that’s critical, impatient, and unforgiving. We say things to ourselves we’d never say to a teammate and then we expect confidence, consistency, and composure to follow. You're in a lifelong conversation with yourself. Make it one worth having. 📹: Sons and Daughters Podcast

Natural Dopamine; Being bored, Chasing goals, Reading books, Turning off phone, Showering cold, Home cleaning, Lifting weights, Eating protein Natural Oxytocin; Cuddling pets, Hugging people, Saying thank you, Deep conversations, Listening carefully, Making eye contact, Saying I love you, Helping others Natural Serotonin; Eating fruits, Morning sun, Forest bathing, Breathing slowly, Headphone-free walks, Drinking herbal tea, Sleeping deeply, Taking naps Natural Endorphins; Car singing, Warm baths, Nature hiking, Daily stretching, Running fast, Kitchen dancing, Lifting weights, Hot saunas

You come home exhausted after a long day at your desk… so you collapse on the couch to “relax.” Big mistake. Guy Winch: “Relaxation is only 50% of the story. Your brain confuses physical and mental exhaustion. Most of us are mentally drained, not physically. Relaxation won’t recharge you — it just won’t drain you further. What actually fills the battery? Active recharging — painting if you’re creative, organizing if you’re structured, socializing if you’re an extrovert. Force yourself to do the thing that energizes you, even when you feel wiped out. You’ll sleep better and wake up less drained.” The biggest burnout trap: “I’m tired, so I’ll just relax.” Mental fatigue requires mental replenishment. Passive scrolling or zoning out doesn’t restore cognitive resources the way purposeful, engaging activity does. Do you default to passive relaxation when burned out — or do you force an active recharge? What actually leaves you feeling more energized afterward? Your experience 👇

Jordan Peterson: "You're underestimating how much you can improve" "If the gap between you and your ideal is so great that it paralyzes you, you've created a dragon you don't have the tools to master. So you have to scale the dragon down to size. You want to scale it down until it's a size you're willing to move toward, however small that is." Jordan explains the math behind growth: "There's a gospel principle called the Matthew Principle: to those who have everything, more will be given. It implies that reality works like this: when you're moving up, it's exponential. When you're going down, it's downhill, then cliff. So it doesn't matter how small your first steps are, even if they're shameful in their size. Because if you're disciplined, you'll speed up extraordinarily rapidly. The ball doesn't roll in a linear fashion. It rolls in a geometric fashion." He shares his own story: "When I first started going to the gym, I was 23. I weighed 135 pounds at 6'1". Very thin. I smoked like mad, drank too much. I wasn't in good shape. I went to this swim class, it was me, a really overweight young guy, and seven women over 70. They could outswim me. It was pretty damn humiliating." Jordan continues: "Then I started lifting weights. I'd be underneath the bench press trying to lift 75 pounds, and some muscle-headed bastard would come over and tell me how to do it. It's embarrassing. Lots of people won't go to the gym because they're embarrassed about how they look. But you start at the bottom where you're weak. If you want to rectify what's weak, you have to accept that the first steps are going to be painful." The result: "It took me about 3 years, but I stopped smoking, stopped drinking, and gained 40 pounds of muscle. I got a lot more physically confident. A lot more coordinated. Then I could dance, so that was better when I was going out in graduate school." He explains why self-reflection matters: "If your plans didn't work out, sit down and say: 'Even if the world was conspiring against me and my failure was 95% the fault of external circumstances, what did I do that wasn't as good as it could have been? Where did I fail to look?' To ask that question, you have to want the answer. That's what it means to knock, to ask, to seek. You have to want to know." Jordan concludes: "One of the reasons you confess your sins is because you want to discover where you're insufficient. It's painful, but the advantage is you can rectify the error. And then as you move forward, you're stronger."

- African Proverb

The secret of life is to approach it playfully. Everything can be approached with a sense of lightness, joy, and ease. Doesn't matter what you're doing. Working at a cafe. Meeting someone new. Going out to dinner. Taking a work call. Writing a tweet. Going on a crazy travel adventure. The illusion is that things are meant to be taken seriously. This morning, I caught myself racing against time. I had a friend arriving in Thailand. I wanted to work out, jump in the ocean, and get coffee before he got here. I was stressed and tense — battling against reality instead of flowing with it. But everything changed with one mindset shift. It's what I have tattooed on my arm: "It's all play." I decided to see the entire situation as a scene out of a movie to experience — rather than something to control and fight. Ripping my motorbike through town, jumping in the ocean, and grabbing a cappuccino became an electric experience to enjoy rather than something to rush through. My friend arrived, and the rest of the day flowed magically because my vibrational state shifted from tension to flow. So whenever you're rushing, tense, or way too serious — a red flag should go up in your mind. Life is not meant to be taken so seriously. Reality is not meant to be controlled and fought against. This is meant to be a game, a movie, an exploration in consciousness, and a journey your soul chose to experience through the character of you. Sink into that state of awareness and watch your life play out more magically than you could have ever controlled from a tense, rigid mind. It's all play.

19 LIFE HACKS DOCTORS RARELY SHARE. 1. Never take medicine with cold water. It slows absorption. 2. Avoid heavy meals after 5 PM. Your gut needs rest too. 3. Hydrate more in the morning, ease up at night. 4. Sleep between 10 PM–4 AM. That's your body's repair window. 5. Don't lie down after meals. Walk a little instead. 6. Take calls on your left ear. It's safer for your brain. 7. Avoid calls below 10% battery. Radiation spikes. 8. Breakfast = Fuel. Don't skip it. 9. Say no to tea/coffee right after eating. It blocks nutrients. 10. Catch 30 minutes of sunlight daily. Your natural vitamin D. 11. Stop endless scrolling in the dark. Your eyes will thank you. 12. Stretch every hour if you sit too long. 13. Earphones at full blast? Goodbye hearing. 14. Don't chug water during meals. Sip slowly. 15. Keep your phone away from your pillow. Sleep safer. 16. Eat fruits on an empty stomach. Better absorption. 17. Chew food slowly. Digestion starts in the month. 18. Never reuse cooking oil. It turns toxic. 19. Drink water throughout the day, especially in heat.

THINGS TO DO WHEN THE MIND FEELS HEAVY 1. STRESS: DEEP BREATHING 2. OVERTHINKING: TAKE A WALK 3. ANGER: STAY SILENT FOR A WHILE 4. SADNESS: WRITE THOUGHTS DOWN 5. CONFUSION: SIT IN A QUIET PLACE 6. MENTAL FATIGUE: SHORT NAP 7. NEGATIVE THOUGHTS: GRATITUDE LIST 8. LOW MOTIVATION: START WITH A SMALL TASK 9. RESTLESSNESS: MEDITATION 10. LONELINESS: CALL A CLOSE FRIEND 11. ANXIETY: SLOW BREATHING 12. BURNOUT: COMPLETE REST 13. FRUSTRATION: EXERCISE 14. DISTRACTION: KEEP PHONE AWAY 15. DOUBT: REVIEW GOALS 16. PRESSURE: STEP AWAY FOR A MOMENT A CALM MIND OFTEN BEGINS WITH SMALL SIMPLE ACTIONS.

1. Drink a glass of water immediately when you wake up. You’ve been dehydrated for 8 hours and it kickstarts your metabolism. 2. When you’re procrastinating, commit to just 5 minutes. You’ll almost always keep going. 3. When someone is venting, ask “do you want advice or do you just need to vent?” It saves a lot of friction asking these questions. 4. Screenshot important confirmations (flight bookings, receipts, order numbers) the moment you see them.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ 5. Use the 2-minute rule: If a task takes less than 2 minutes to do, do it immediately instead of adding it to your to-do list.

There are two types of athletes: 1) 😡“I have to lift weights” 🥱“I have to wake up early” 🙄“I have to go to practice” 2) 💪“I GET TO lift weights” 😤“I GET TO wake up early” 🤩“I GET TO go to practice” The 2nd will always outperform the 1st!

Better days are coming even though it is hard to believe when you are going through adverse times. Keep believing that your blessings are round the corner and keep working hard to upgrade yourself. When you are ready your miracles will unfold.

Sometimes life doesn't give you what you want, not because you don't deserve it, but because you deserve more.

Naval Ravikant: "You're going to die. It's all going to zero. What's there to stress about?" "Stress is when your mind has two conflicting desires at once. You want to be liked, but you want to do something selfish. You don't want to go to work, but you want to make money. You have two conflicting desires, and that's stress." Naval explains the difference between stress and anxiety: "Anxiety is this pervasive, unidentifiable stress where you're stressed out all the time and you're not even sure why. The reason is you have so many unresolved problems that have piled up in your life, you can no longer identify what the problems are. There's this mountain of garbage in your mind. A little bit is poking out the top like an iceberg; that's anxiety. But underneath, there's a lot of unresolved things." He shares his personal anxiety resolver: "One big anxiety resolver for me is just ruminating on death. You're going to die. It's all going to zero. You cannot take anything with you. If you can keep that idea in front of you at all times, what's there to stress about?" Naval reframes what "wasted time" really means: "What is wasted time? Everything is wasted time in a sense because nothing matters in the ultimate. But in each moment, it's the only thing that matters. So if you're doing something you want to do and you're fully there for it it's not wasted time. If your mind is running away, wishing you were somewhere else, anticipating the future, regretting the past, that's wasted time. That's time you're not present for." He concludes: "People get worried about dying and no longer being here. But they don't realize that so much of their life is spent not being here in any case."

Aprendí a jugar a tenis mientras caían bombas. Tenía seis años y vivía en Belgrado. Afuera, los aviones de la OTAN cruzaban el cielo. Mi madre nos bajaba al sótano cuando sonaban las sirenas. Olía a humedad y a miedo. Pero entre alarma y alarma, yo salía. Había una piscina vacía, abandonada, cerca de casa. Sin agua. Solo hormigón agrietado y un eco perfecto. Agarraba mi raqueta y golpeaba pelotas contra esa pared, una y otra vez, mientras el mundo que me rodeaba se desmoronaba. Nadie me enseñó. No había academia. No había entrenador con metodología ni planificación anual. Solo había ese sonido: toc, toc, toc, que era lo único sobre lo que yo tenía control absoluto. Mi familia no tenía dinero para mandarme a entrenar en el extranjero como los niños que después serían mis rivales. Mis padres convirtieron su restaurante en un hogar para que yo pudiera seguir jugando. Lo apostaron todo. Todo. Hubo noches en las que escuché a mi padre hablar en voz baja, preocupado, pensando que yo dormía. No dormía. Escuché todo. Y decidí que su sacrificio no podía terminar en nada. Hoy tengo más Grand Slams que cualquier ser humano en la historia de este deporte. Pero cuando alguien me pregunta de dónde saco la mentalidad para no rendirme nunca en una final, no pienso en tácticas ni en psicología deportiva. Pienso en esa piscina vacía. Pienso en el olor a sótano. Pienso en el sonido de los aviones. Las mejores fortalezas mentales no se construyen en academias de élite, se construyen en los lugares donde no te quedó otra opción que seguir golpeando la pared. Novak Djokovic 🇷🇸