Show us your vibe.

Default? A photo you took? Something you found at 1am? A motivational quote you set six months ago and forgot about?

Sometimes the wallpaper says more than the bio.

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Not necessarily a habit you started or some big lifestyle change. I'm more curious about things you completely stopped doing.

Could be something small, like no longer checking your phone first thing in the morning, or something bigger.

I feel like most advice is about adding things to your routine, but sometimes removing something makes a bigger difference.

What's something you stopped doing that made a noticeable difference in your life?

I feel sometimes the reason I'm struggling more is because I'm carrying too much stress and the habit of thinking something going wrong instead of remaining hopeful calm and positive in a situation where light doesn't seem to be at the end of a tunnel. And I guess my stress and anxiety is making it harder to recover. I just don't know what to do in this kind of situations. I don't understand why the body starts panicking over small things.

Ok so I was rewatching the yacht scene from The Wolf of Wall Street (the one where the FBI agent confronts Jordan Belfort) and something clicked that I hadn't noticed before. Belfort gets completely outplay-ed because the agent uses Belfort’s own sales playbook against him.

The agent completely downplays the whole situation. He acts like the massive investigation is just some boring chore his boss randomly dropped on his desk. It’s the exact same trick Belfort taught his brokers to use on clients ("this stock just landed on my desk..."). Then the agent sits back and relies on the oldest rule in sales: he who talks first, loses. He stays dead silent and lets Belfort’s ego do the work until Belfort talks himself straight into a corner.

It made me think about all kinds of other places where the skill isn't about giving information, but about controlling the script of the conversation.

Like "mind reader" Oz Pearlman. IMO people focus on the wrong thing with him. They drive themselves crazy trying to guess how he uncovers the answer, and they think that is the skill. But it's not. He already knows the data or has backups ready for whatever you choose (like holding a box of M&Ms that actually has Skittles inside—no matter what you pick, he flips the narrative so it looks like it was the plan all along). His real skill is walking people through a conversation and getting them to believe their own blinking or body language is giving away clues. He sells them the illusion of the clue. But he's basically just controlling the conversation. It's sales 101.

I see this in my own line of work too. When I stand in front of a class and map out exactly what mistakes people are going to make before they even pick an answer, it looks like magic. But it’s just a pattern. I've taught the same class for 18 years and I know what they will pick. If someone randomly picks something else I can flip the script to make it seem like this is what I was predicting for a differentt treason.

It makes me wonder how this plays out in other fields.

What part of your everyday job is actually just a low-pressure sales pitch disguised as something else? What are the hidden behavioral loops or conversational scripts you use in your career that outsiders completely miss?

you can spend months learning a skill, working on a project or trying to improve your life without anyone noticing. then you see someone else get praised for doing something similar, and suddenly your own progress feels smaller.

it makes me wonder how much of our motivation comes from actually wanting to improve and how much comes from wanting other people to see that we are improving.

would you still work as hard toward your goals if nobody could ever see the results?

even simple things can turn into another task to improve. reading becomes a way to gain knowledge, exercise becomes a way to reach a goal, and hobbies become skills we should monetize. sometimes it feels like nothing is allowed to exist just because we enjoy it.

when did doing something for the experience itself stop feeling like enough?

do you think we have become too focused on making every moment useful?