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A Meditation on the Art of Not Trying
The New York Times: Just be yourself. The advice is as maddening as it is inescapable. It’s the default prescription for any tense situation: a blind date, a speech, a job interview, the first dinner
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How the Brain Uses Glucose to Fuel Self-Control
The Wall Street Journal: Steam power sets massive, clunky turbines into motion. Horsepower involves explosions of work, with engines hurtling cars down a freeway. Solar power taps the awesome might of the sun itself and
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What if Age Is Nothing but a Mind-Set?
The New York Times: One day in the fall of 1981, eight men in their 70s stepped out of a van in front of a converted monastery in New Hampshire. They shuffled forward, a few
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What the Marshmallow Test Really Teaches About Self-Control
The Atlantic: The image is iconic: A little kid sits at a table, his face contorted in concentration, staring down a marshmallow. Over the last 50 years, the “Marshmallow Test” has become synonymous with temptation
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A Feeling of Control: How America Can Finally Learn to Deal With Its Impulses
Pacific Standard: The children’s television show Sesame Street has always had a way of reflecting the zeitgeist in shades of Muppet fur. Consider, for instance, the evolution of Cookie Monster. For his first few decades on air
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Bad Habits? My Future Self Will Deal With That
The New York Times: I’VE been wanting to change some of my longstanding habits that I’m not so fond of. But I think I’ve discovered why this can be so difficult. It’s how we think