3OT: Cringe, Relationship Success, & The Muse

Hey friends,

Happy Thursday!

Quote of the week:

“When art critics get together they talk about form and structure and meaning. When artists get together they talk about where you can buy cheap turpentine.”

— Pablo Picasso

p.s. If you’re like me and didn’t know what turpentine is, it’s a solvent used to create paint ;)

3 Things:

1. Be more cringe.

    

   Ok, not exactly. But I’ve been thinking about how many beneficial things are viewed as “cringe”, especially when they’re starting out. E.g. therapy, assertiveness training, creating content for the first time, listening to motivational speakers like Tony Robbins, etc.

    

   Usually it’s not even others who tell us it’s cringe, but ourselves. We don’t start because we don’t want to look cringey to others. But if you lower your bar of what’s “too cringey”, it unlocks tons of opportunities. Give yourself permission to be more cringey. Even if it is indeed cringey, everyone will forget in a few months. But the upside is limitless.

    

2. The 5:1 ratio.

   A researcher into relationships found that one of the best predictors of long term success in a marriage is the ratio of good interactions to bad interactions. He found that a ratio of 5:1 (good:bad) was highly correlated with long term success, whereas once you drop below that, things start to get dicey.

    

   You might not be able to lower the # of bad interactions (everyone has fights at some point), but the cool thing is you can easily raise the number of good interactions.

    

   I’ve been thinking about this with friendships as well as romantic relationships. Where could I add in more positive interactions with my friends? How could I bring a little more fun to the situation?

    

3. For each of the past few weeks, I’ve been struggling to come up with ideas for the newsletter when I initially sat down. At first it stressed me out a lot. I was worried I was doing something wrong. Why couldn’t I come up with any ideas?

    

   But as I sat down and gave it time, I invariably came up with idea after idea, and these past few weeks have been some of my favorite newsletters I’ve come out with ever.

    

   Just another reminder that your job is to sit down and do the work, and if you do that, the muse will come.

    

Tweet I Enjoyed:

Cheers,

Ben

P.S. You get to decide whether or not something bothers you.