Tools for Change – February 2023

Give People a Reason to Find You Interesting…

Welcome to the latest edition the monthly newsletter, Tools for Change – A Convenient Digest and Curated Collection of Information, Tools and Resources to Help You in Your Life and Work

New This Month on The Living a Life in Full Podcast

February’s guest on my podcast is Brad Stulberg, discussing the Paradox of Achievement and Sustainable Success

In this episode, Brad Stulberg shares a healthier, more sustainable model for success. At the heart of this model is?groundedness--a practice that values?presence over rote productivity, accepts that?progress is nonlinear, and prioritizes?long-term values and fulfillment over short-term gain. To be grounded is to possess a firm and unwavering foundation, a resolute sense of self from which deep and enduring, not shallow and superficial, success can be found. Groundedness does not eliminate ambition and striving; rather, it situates these qualities and channels them in more meaningful ways.

Achievement often comes at a cost. Angst, restlessness, frayed relationships, exhaustion, burnout, and even substance abuse can be the unwanted side effects of an obsession with outward performance. While the high of occasional wins can keep you going for a while, playing into the always-on, never enough hustle culture—what I call heroic individualism—ultimately takes a serious toll, both on individuals and communities.

In his newest book, The Practice of Groundedness , Brad offers a healthier and more sustainable model for success. At the heart of this model is groundedness: it values presence over rote productivity, accepts that progress is nonlinear, and prioritizes long-term values and fulfillment over short-term gain. To be grounded is to possess a firm and unwavering foundation, a resolute sense of self from which deep and enduring, not shallow and superficial, success can be found. Groundedness does not eliminate ambition and striving; rather, it situates these qualities and channels them in more meaningful ways.

We wrapped up with discovering what Brad’s learned in the year since Groundedness has been out, and I must say it was as deep and reflective as you may expect from such a unique person. Brad’s work helps us all to live our lives in full, and with authentic meaning. This is a rich conversation with an amazing guy, be sure to tune in on your favorite platform , or if you’re not into podcasts, read all about it on my LinkedIn Top Voice post.

Well Said

“A year from now, you will wish you had started today.” - Karen Lamb

“You can’t really focus without looking back and forward at the same time.” -?Bill Laswell

“I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, ‘If this isn't nice, I don't know what is.’” -?Kurt Vonnegut?

"Success isn't determined by how many times you win, but by how you play the week after you lose." – Pele

“Nobody survives open heart surgery better than the guy who didn't need the procedure in the first place.” - Charlie Munger

Tools for Productivity

Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals ?- This book isn’t going to give you magical “time hacks” or ways to get more things done in a day. Instead, it tells you to optimize the scarce time you have by pursuing things in the present for their own sake and offers ideas around how to frame your life’s work.

Tools for Living Your Life in Full

Advice for curious people - “There is no certain way of telling in advance if the daydreams of a life dedicated to the pursuit of truth will carry a novice through the frustration of seeing experiments fail and of making the dismaying discovery that some of one’s favorite ideas are groundless.”

103 Bits of Advice I Wish I Had Known - This might be the best thing I read all year. It’s written by Kevin Kelly, the founding editor of?Wired?magazine, who upon turning 70 years old, shared 103 nuggets of wisdom that he’s picked up over the years. It’s hard to choose a favorite, but here’s a good one: “When you lead, your real job is to create more leaders, not more followers.”

Follow Your Blister, Not Your Passion - Success in any discipline requires a level of resilience that can’t be sustained by fleeting emotions. That’s why this article encourages you to follow your blisters, not your passion. In other words, as you weigh long-term opportunities, pay special attention to the tasks and goals that keep drawing you in, despite their difficulty.

Listen to Your Own Advice - There’s a fascinating disconnect between the advice we give to others and the choices we make for ourselves. Research suggests we tend to be harder on ourselves and kinder toward others. Want to narrow the gap? When facing a difficult choice, imagine that you are advising a friend and then take your own advice.

You’ve Been Choosing Your Goals All Wrong - If you’re about to set your resolutions for 2023, stop. According to experts, this is how to pick the right ones, build good habits, and stay motivated.

2022 Personal Annual Report Framework - by Shane Parrish

David Epstein on Where Does Greatness Come From??Why persistent effort and fierce determination are important (but so is talent), why self-actualizing is a better goal than general greatness, and why the 10,000 hour rule doesn't always apply. - The Psychology Podcast

Tools for Wealth Management

Charlie Munger turned 99. There were a couple of good, related links: 1)?A Story of Courage and Hope from the Life of Charlie Munger ; and 2)?Book Review: Damn Right! — Behind the Scenes with Berkshire Hathaway Billionaire Charlie Munger .

The Art and Science of Spending Money - To someone who grew up in an old-money affluent family, a Lamborghini might be a symbol of gaudy egotism; to those who grew up with nothing, the car might serve as the ultimate symbol that you’ve made it. But also consider Frugality Inertia - a lifetime of good savings habits can’t be transitioned to a spending phase. Those whose ultimate goal is to stop thinking about money are stuck. Refusing to recognize that you’ve met your goal can be as bad as never meeting the goal to begin with.

SECURE Act 2.0 – 16 Key Tax and Retirement Provisions

Tools for Fitness and Performance

Is It Better to Exercise in the Morning or Evening? - The same exercise routine may produce different health benefits depending on the time of day. A new study suggests it’s possible that morning exercise has a greater impact on fat loss, while late-day workouts have a greater impact on blood-sugar control.

The Power of Cold Showers - A fascinating new line of research suggests that simply taking a cold shower a few times per week might boost your immune system. Though more study is needed, early results are promising.

Here's a?full body HIIT workout ?you can do anywhere — no equipment needed.

Could gut health be behind a person's motivation, or lack thereof, to exercise? - Science Reveals Link Between Gut Health and Exercise Motivation

Here's a mobility flow ?to stay mobile and flexible.

Tools for your Career

What if Working in Sweatpants Unleashed Your Superpowers? - Does dressing up for work make us more effective? Perhaps not. In a recent study, wearing comfortable clothes increased remote workers' sense of engagement and authenticity.

Tools for Investing

Four Wishes for 2023 - by Jason Zweig

Mohnish Pabrai and Guy Spier with the Helvetian Investment Club (video ) (This video is Guy answering additional questions after the?initial Q&A ?that he and Mohnish did.)

Gene Hoots wrote down some of?his thoughts on investing , gathered over a long career in the business.

Revisiting I Bonds

Tools Just for Fun

Nick Sleep has reappeared with a short piece:?Thinking about how to think: Short-term vs long-term .

Tools for Leadership

To Keep People from Procrastinating, Don’t Give Them a Deadline - New research suggests that people will complete tasks faster if you tell them time is limited but don’t offer a specific deadline. The reason? When a deadline is provided, people tend to procrastinate until it draws near.

Tools for Founders

LSI Emerging Medtech Summit 2023 - The LSI Emerging Medtech Summit uniquely combines all of the key stakeholders and facilitates substantive interactions - whether formally in talks, panels and fireside chats or spontaneously in the hallways. This is the must-attend event for investors and innovators. Could this be the new JPM? I hope to see you there!

Tools for Web3

My First Impressions of Web3 ?- Amidst a historic run up in crypto, Moxie breaks down the technical details of NFTs before it all came crashing down a few months later. This is a great read for those looking to better understand what an NFT actually is, the technology behind it, and how centralization occurs in a supposedly decentralized world. As they say, old habits die hard.

Tools for Health and Wellness

How Old Are You Really? Meet Your ‘Biological Age’ - When thinking about health, we often look at a person’s chronological age. But some scientists are advocating for the use of “biological age,” in which a person’s individual health attributes are used to measure and predict their quality of life. Discover how this “credit score for your body” might help you live longer.?

A Drug to Treat Aging May Not Be a Pipe Dream - New approaches to the biology of senescence can make lives longer and healthier.

How to (Finally) Break That Bad Habit - Neuroscientists and psychologists explain how to keep yourself on track—for good this time.

The Person You Used to Be Still Tells You What to Do ?- Is an old version of you guiding your decisions today? An idea worth considering as we head into the new year.

Justifying Optimism - All optimistic beliefs can be dangerous – potentially appealing fictions – because they’re so comforting, so easy to accept without asking further questions.?Pessimism seduces?in its own way. But those who accept optimism can be just as blind to reality. Hope often masquerades as optimism when you think things will improve only because the alternative is too scary to contemplate.?

How food affects the mind, as well as the body ?- There's a whole new world of nutritional psychiatry emerging! Fascinating stuff. Also, the statistic quoted in the article that only 10% of adults eat their daily recommended vegetable serving is terrifying. Eat your veggies, people!

Tools for Public Health

The Public Health National Center for Innovations

Program for Appropriate Technology in Health

Public Health Foundation

Tools for Global Work and Policy

Center for Strategic and International Studies

APA’s Global Insights Newsletter

Tools for Finding Conferences

Conal Conference Alerts

Neurology and Psychiatry

Tools for Healthcare Career Insights

Curated from Medpage Today

Tools for a New Gig

Here’s Behavioral Health Tech’s jobs board ?to see?all of the current?opportunities?from the leading companies in behavioral health. If you are looking for a new job and want BHT’s community of hiring companies to seek you out, then join their talent collective as a candidate for free here.

Or, if you want access to the central place for job candidates of all levels and roles focused on mental health and substance use tech, then enroll as a hiring company here.

See?who’s hiring ?in health and fitness here .

From 80,000 Hours - There are a variety of ways to contribute to?global priorities research , including?academic research ,?working as a?grantmaker , and?doing charity evaluation.

To browse or search hundreds of recent job postings, visit the?job board ?in PND, it includes foundation, public charity, education, and nonprofit jobs in Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Washington, the District of Columbia, and elsewhere.

Positions from BioSpace

• Academic ?
• Biotechnology ?
• Diagnostics ?
• Government
• Healthcare ?
• Medical Device ?
• Non-Profit ?
• Pharmaceutical ?
• Research Institute ?

DiversityMD is a Career Job Board and Information Resource for Physicians regardless of age, race, gender, religion, education, national origin, sexual orientation, disability or physical characteristics.

They are a “niche” website for Physicians of all levels of practice from Medical Students, Residents, Fellows on up to Medical Directors and CMO’s.

Tools to Travel the World

How Do You Fight Jet Lag? Formula 1 Teams Have Their Ways

Grosvenor Teacher Fellowships From National Geographic

National Geographic professional development grants ?

Earth Expedition ?

Ford Foundation Global Travel & Learning Fund ?

Institute of International Education ?

Google conference and study scholarship ?

Omprakash Ethical global engagement grants ?

Tata Trust Travel grants

A Gym Membership for Your Brain

If you enjoy this newsletter, I suspect you’d enjoy our monthly podcast. Listen on your favorite platform https://www.alifeinfull.org/podcast.html and for a free subscription: https://tinyurl.com/ALifeInFullSubscription

Likewise, if you are not already following my LinkedIn Influencer/Top Voices posts in a group with almost a half-million followers, you may enjoy reading the posts there as well: https://www.dhirubhai.net/in/drchrisstout/detail/recent-activity/posts/

Tools for Humanitarian Intervention

Please visit our website: https://www.centerforglobalinitiatives.org/ . We’re proud to be a top ranked Great Nonprofit (since 2013!) and to have achieved Platinum Level from GuideStar .

Tools for Connecting

If you would like to see more frequent updates and engage with others, please join the open Facebook groups at: https://www.facebook.com/groups/ALifeInFull and?https://www.facebook.com/groups/CenterForGlobalInitiatives

In Closing

And even though I know our readers are very smart, I nevertheless have to say that this newsletter does not provide medical, psychological, legal, financial, healthcare, or any other form of advice. As I have said elsewhere, don’t be a knucklehead.

Big thank you to meta-sourcing sites and folks: BioSpace , Ron Friedman, PhD , Inc. , Farnum Street’s Brain Food , McKinsey & Co. , Medpage , MedScape, Joe Koster from Value Investing World , FirstRound , Get Rich Slowly , Ramit Sethi , Forbes InnovationRx , The Knowledge Project - organized by theme , 80,000 Hours , The Collaborative Fund , Colossus , Sonny Patel , Unmistakable Media , Top Tier ,?NeuroFlow , Five-Bullet Friday , O’Shaughnessy Asset Management , Health Data Management Group , Fitt , PodcastNotes , SparkType , Budgets Are Sexy , Behavioral Health Tech , Next Big Idea Club – Heleo , Section 4 , Wired , - be sure to check them out. And as always, I have no financial, marketing or affiliate relationship with any of the sources noted herein.

To subscribe to “Tools for Change ”?and get notifications of editions, click the blue button at the top right corner of?this page.? Please don’t be shy about sharing, leaving comments or dropping me a private note with your own reactions and requests for other tools.

Cheers, and keep in touch,

Chris

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