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TL;DR is a monthly digest summarizing the vital bits from the previous month's "How to Live" newsletter so you don't miss a thing.
MARCH 2024
On March 4th, 2024, My Brother Eddie Stern and I Launched a Light-Hearted Monthly Series Called One Day I Will Never Read This.
It’s a Special Treat For Paid Subscribers.
This Piece from March 6th, 2024, Revealed the Best Therapy Advice From 43 Veteran Patients.
Last week, I saw a post on Instagram and decided to share it on my feed.
The response was overwhelming.
And every offering serves as a timely reminder for you and me that our challenges are shared experiences.
Today, I'm sharing the responses and inviting you to contribute your insight gained from therapy in the comments.
This Piece From March 13th, 2024 Was About Albert Bandura and His Theory of Self-Efficacy.
Albert Bandura, one of the world’s most influential social psychologists, who revolutionized Behaviorism and gave rise to Social Cognitive Theory, would have turned 99 in December.
He had a theory about fear.
The problem wasn’t the fear itself; instead, it was our (mistaken) belief that we were helpless to overcome our fear.
To prove his theory, he developed the "Guided Mastery" technique. He had snake-phobic participants observe non-phobic individuals model a desired behavior (interacting with snakes) and then had them imitate the behavior.
The interactions were broken down into steps, beginning with looking at photographs of snakes and leading up toward live physical interactions with the snakes.
Patients with higher self-efficacy were more likely to approach and interact with snakes, while those with lower self-efficacy tended to avoid them.
For those with higher self-efficacy, the experience cured their phobias in hours and empowered them to face other fears with greater confidence – the essence of self-efficacy in action.
People with high self-efficacy, he posited, were likelier to look at complex tasks and situations as challenges to master and not as threats to avoid.
By recognizing our capacity for observation, self-reflection, and self-regulation, we can harness the power of self-efficacy to achieve our goals, overcome obstacles, and reach our full potential across various life domains.
On March 16th I Launched a New Feature: ASK ME ANY QUESTION.
At any time, I want you to feel free to send me a question, about anything. I will answer your questions in upcoming emails. It can be anonymous. Otherwise, I will just use your first name.
This piece from March 17th, 2024, Was A Bonus Post: Are You Haunted By Epistemic Insecurity?
The last themed bonus Q&A on Ontological Insecurity was a big hit, so I’ve made another one on the topic of Epistemic Insecurity.
Epistemic means “Of or relating to knowledge” and also “Of or relating to belief.”
Insecurity, is securely known to all; and, taken together, the phrase “Epistemic Insecurity” refers to a lack of confidence in one's knowledge, beliefs, or ability to understand and navigate the world.
This sense of self-doubt and uncertainty about one's judgment, expertise, and capacity for knowledge, stems from various factors, including early experiences of intellectual shame or criticism, societal biases, and stereotypes, or a lack of exposure to diverse perspectives and ways of knowing.
Today’s bonus post answers four questions addressing different facets of epistemic insecurity.
QUESTION
I constantly feel intellectually inferior to my colleagues and peers. They seem to grasp complex concepts effortlessly while I struggle to keep up. I'm afraid to contribute to meetings or even socially in conversations for fear of saying something stupid. How do I stop comparing my intelligence to others?
The March 20th Piece (My Birthday!) Was About Lady Gaga’s Global Kindness Initiative and The Born This Way Foundation.
As a business woman and an artist, Lady Gaga has been consistently ahead of her time, so it’s no surprise that 13 years ago, in 2011, she and her mother Cynthia Bissett Germanotta, launched the Born This Way Foundation whose audacious mission was to inspire youth to channel compassion and kindness on a massive scale.
Geared toward Gen Z, the foundation prides itself on being a youth-led movement, with its executive team made up of activists in their 20s. Its progressive spirit aligns with Lady Gaga's brand of provocative empowerment for her young "little monster" fanbase, many of whom struggled with mental health or identity issues as teenagers.
Their programs include youth-driven research, strategic partnerships, free courses, and various channels focusing on their core mission to make kindness cool. Through kindness and acts of personal bravery through story-telling, Born This Way works hard to destigmatize mental health.
The March 27th Piece Was About The Tricky State That Lives in the Gap Between Lust and Crush—Limerence.
It was a fall afternoon in the mid-1960s when the psychologist and professor, Dr. Dorothy Tennov walked into her office from class to discover her student Marilyn Weber waiting for her. Ms. Weber was particularly impressive and bright, but that day, her posture was sloped, and her eyes were time-stamped red, marking hours of crying.
Without detailing her distress, Ms. Weber said she couldn’t pull herself together, that she wasn’t sure why she was behaving the way she was, but wondered aloud whether life was just too hard for her.
Dr. Tennov flashed to a conversation about romantic love she’d had with two graduate students, a few weeks earlier. Both students described the pain of past breakups, and how it rendered them utterly useless.
The emotions they expressed were ones Dr. Tennov had herself experienced, and she wondered if there was a universally shared progression to the stages of romantic love.
As Ms. Weber headed out of the door, Dr. Tennov couldn’t help but ask whether her distress had “anything to do with a disappointment with love?”
Indeed, it had.
Dr. Tennov was curious about this distress caused by love that Ms. Weber was experiencing—indeed, her students had been describing something similar. She turned to her textbooks, journals, psychology papers, and other writing on romantic love, but she found nothing about the agonizing pain of loving another.
Learn what she discovered…
EXTRAS…
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Amanda
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