Catherine retweeted
The Texas locker room at halftime, Strength and Conditioning Coach Torre Becton has been preparing them for a moment like last Saturday all offseason 🤘
🎥: @TexasFootball
Catherine retweeted
Whenever someone tells me they're expecting their first baby and they're nervous, I tell them the following: 'Oh my goodness, that's wonderful. I am so happy for you. Listen, of course you're nervous but here's the deal: you're ready for all the bad stuff. You've been very tired before. You've been in pain before. You've been worried about money before. You've felt like an incapable moron before. So you'll be fine with the difficult parts! You're already a pro. What you're NOT ready for is the wonderful parts. NOTHING can prepare you for how amazing this will be. There is no practice for that.
(via Rob Delaney, A Heart That Works)
Catherine retweeted
I’m a retired brain surgeon and I wanna tell you why you feel like life is passing by. I just need one minute to explain this to you so hang in there.
Repetitive daily routines stop the brain from recording clear detailed memories. When every day looks the same, your brain does not track time the same as a clock does. It tracks change. If nothing new happens then days, months, and years start to blur together.
This is know as Time compression. When life lacks variety, your brain compresses past days together, making it feel like time is sped up.
To stop feeling like life is passing you by, add new experiences to your life. Break routine habits, like changing your daily home routine, taking a different route to work, or trying a new hobby.
Schedule small trips or plan new adventures so your days do not blend together.
Practice mindfulness by staying fully focused on what you are doing right now and not trying to race off to the next task.
Keep a journal and write down happy memories or memorable parts of the day before you go to sleep.
Take deep, calm breaths when you feel anxious or rushed to return your focus to the moment.
You can and you will retrain your brain to not feel like life is passing you by by following these few simple measures.
Catherine retweeted
In March of 1973, a man wrote to E. B. White, the author of Charlotte’s Web, confessing that he had lost all faith in humanity. Here was E. B. White’s reply
Catherine retweeted
Norwegian Air just changed their logo to BA's after losing to England in the World Cup. Bet honored in full
Catherine retweeted
WARNING: Longer post (but worth reading or bookmarking for later).
Your life has seasons.
Each one is unique. Characterized by its own distinct desires, struggles, opportunities, and identity.
But one reflection I've had recently is just how easy it is to completely disassociate with the present season.
To give all your time and energy toward a longing for some nostalgic memory of a prior season or an anticipation for some beautiful state of a future season.
You look back at the past and all you see is sunshine. Because it all worked out. You forget (or glaze over) the struggle you endured. You're here today. You made it. You're alive. You're doing fine.
You look forward at the future and dream on what could be. You'll have so much more. More freedom. More purpose. More health. More deep connection. More everything.
The past is beautiful and the future feels limitless. So, logically, you slowly start to treat everything about the present as the bridge. A dash connecting your past and your future. A gap to be crossed as quickly as possible.
Everything you do today is in anticipation of some eventual end state.
I'm doing this now, so that I can have that later.
Unfortunately, the danger of that dissociation with the present is significant. You may spend your entire life living for a future that has a decidedly mirage-like property. You inch closer, but when it's right in front of you, it disappears and reappears on the horizon.
You may spend your entire life skipping through the present, deferring your presence, your joy, and your very humanity to a future that never comes.
In a classic French fable, a young boy is gifted with a magic ball of golden thread. He's told that if he simply pulls on the thread, time will leap forward. The catch, of course, is that once it's pulled, it can never be put back.
The young boy takes advantage of the newfound powers. Each time he's faced with a boring day at school, a frustrating set of chores, or a scolding from his parents, he pulls the thread, skipping through to the good parts.
As an adult, he continues, leaping through mundane struggles in his marriage, the friction of having a newborn, and the boredom at work. He finds himself pulling on the thread more and more, avoiding even the most minor inconveniences of his life.
But when he wakes up one day and sees an old man looking back at him in the mirror, he's filled with regret. He realizes in that moment that as he chose to skip through the boredom, struggles, and friction, so too did he miss the real texture of being alive.
How often do we all do the same? How easily do we default into this disassociation? Disconnecting from the present in anticipation of some future.
A mentor recently asked me this:
"Where are you going and why are you in such a rush?"
It hit me hard.
And to be honest, I haven't stopped replaying those words since he said them.
Why are you in such a rush?
The world wants you to rush into everything. Rushed decisions. Rushed conversations. Rushed relationships. Rushed timelines.
In doing so, you slowly relinquish your agency. You give up your claim on your own life. Surrender authorship to a pen that was never even yours.
In a world that wants you to rush, the ultimate act of rebellion is presence.
Be in the season you're in. Don't romanticize the past, don't fantasize the future. Be here. Be now. Be in this. All of its texture, depth, and struggle. All of its joy, tension, and pain. Sit with the uncertainty. Become friends with it. Fall in love with it.
Because every single thing you do today is something your younger self dreamed of and something your older self will wish they could go back and do.
The good old days are happening, right now.
And the next time you find yourself skipping through the present, remember these words:
Where are you going and why are you in such a rush?
Catherine retweeted
Ben Affleck spent about a year and a half trying to stay sober on willpower alone, and it kept failing. By the time he talked it through with Howard Stern, he had a blunter way of putting it. The drinking was a tool. It made a constant low-grade discomfort go away for a while, the same itch that for other people shows up as gambling, shopping, or refreshing a feed. The brain science says he is describing it accurately.
George Koob, who runs the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, has spent decades on a finding that changes the picture. Addiction mostly runs on relief. The brain's stress system ramps up, and the substance becomes the quickest way to shut that stress off. He coined a word for the state it creates, hyperkatifeia: the dread and irritability that come rushing back once the drink is gone. The brain learns that one thing reliably kills the discomfort, and it starts reaching for that off-switch on its own.
It also explains why pure willpower is a losing bet. Willpower lives in the prefrontal cortex, the part right behind your forehead that handles planning and self-control. Years of heavy drinking quietly weaken that part while the automatic pull to use gets stronger, so the front of the brain ends up trying to hold back a reward system that has been taken over. Even with treatment, 40 to 60% of people relapse, a rate that sits right next to diabetes or asthma.
Kent Berridge and Terry Robinson at the University of Michigan found something stranger still. The brain runs wanting and liking on separate wiring. Addiction trains the wanting circuit to fire harder, so the craving keeps growing, even as the actual enjoyment fades. People end up stuck wanting something they no longer even enjoy, and that wanting spikes on any cue or stress. You can string together a thousand sober days and still get ambushed by one.
Affleck says the turning point came through pain, specifically watching what his drinking was doing to his kids, until something in him hit done. He says the urge has been gone since. That fits what Koob's research predicts and what a lot of people in long recovery report. Take away the thing the brain was drinking to fix, give the stress system long enough to settle, and the craving can quiet down on its own. What finally worked was dealing with why he was drinking, long after gritting his teeth had stopped working.
Ben Affleck opens up to Howard Stern about sobriety in a way that feels genuinely honest.
He says early recovery is a “10 out of 10” in difficulty because addiction often isn’t really about the substance, it’s a habitual response to pain. He points out this shows up for people through gambling, relationships, or even social media just as easily.
For about 18 months, he tried pure willpower. His own words capture why that doesn’t work: you can win a thousand times, but you only need to lose once.
The real turning point came through pain, specifically realizing the impact his addiction had on his relationship with his kids. That’s when he says he truly hit “done.”
Since then, he says the urge itself has been gone. Not white knuckling it, genuine peace, with the obsession fully lifted.
A rare amount of honesty about what recovery actually looks like
Catherine retweeted
Major cheat code for life: Become difficult to rush. The world will pressure you to rush into everything. Rushed decisions. Rushed conversations. Rushed relationships. Rushed timelines. There's immense power in rejecting that trend. Slow down. Create space to think clearly.
Catherine retweeted
We are at a point in history—not nearing it, but here—where everyone is going to have to decide if they are content to numb themselves with an endless stream of fentanyl-like digital slop or if they are going to fight for their humanity and touch grass and challenge themselves and create and contribute and love.
Decades of research shows people are most fulfilled when they care deeply about meaningful projects. When they have mastery and mattering. When they do good work and love good people. Nobody feels or performs their best when they are mindlessly scrolling.
The antidote to algorithmic mass distraction is deep focus and enduring effort on meaningful pursuits.
Making music. Writing. Running. Gardening. Coaching. Dancing. Building tables.
When you work with deep focus on an activity or craft—when you throw yourself into something you care about and give it your all—you experience of the opposite of existential longing. You experience presence, depth, and aliveness.
Perhaps the greatest risk of the modern world is that we go wherever the current takes us, like automatons floating along a pixelated conveyor belt to nowhere. The only thing that separates us from this dystopia is ourselves. Our agency—our attention, our capacity to think, create, and love—must be fought for.