Make Your Damn Bed

Did you know you can "hack your brain" for things beyond your productivity? You can become more resilient, more conscious, more in control, through a few simple practices. It's not about avoiding anything that makes us feel sad, but it's about becoming conscious of the process of engaging with it. It's not about the content, but the process. Empowering vs. Disempowering yourself. INSPIRED BY: http...

Feeling disconnected or unsure? Dr. Pat suggests: Body Check-In:  When you consume news about social or political issues, what sensations do you notice in your body? Do you feel tense, numb, energized? Triggers and Ancestry:  Think about a recent moment you felt fear or shut down in response to authority or conflict. How might this reaction connect to your community’s historical or ances...

Did you know you can "hack your brain" for things beyond your productivity? You can become more resilient, more conscious, more in control, through a few simple practices. It's not about avoiding anything that makes us feel sad, but it's about becoming conscious of the process of engaging with it. It's not about the content, but the process. Empowering vs. Disempowering yourself. INSPIRED BY: http...

Our brains are malleable, and we can actually enrich our experiences to encourage more "plasticity" or adaptability in our own heads - if we know what to look for. Very Well Mind on Brain plasticity: https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-brain-plasticity-2794886#:~:text=Strengthening%20existing%20pathways:%20Neurons%20that,adapt%20to%20the%20changing%20environment. Resources for Resisting a Coup: h...

Think about a good joke. If you knew the punchline right away? It's less funny. If you had to have the punchline explained? Less funny. But if you understood the punchline within a few moments, and got the satisfaction of "realization" in real time? That makes a BANGER of a joke. It's all about the appropriate level of challenge and thinking. According to Daniel Willingham's book, "Why Students Do...

It's not about spinning all the plates, it's about setting most of them down so you can actually focus on the spinning process. THE SOURCES: Reducing cognitive load to learn: https://theelearningcoach.com/learning/reduce-cognitive-load/ Getting into flow state: https://rts-1988.medium.com/getting-to-flow-state-while-studying-simulating-mental-effort-while-reading-543eecdee6ca Resources for Resisti...

When I’m having a rough time, trying to treat myself like I liked to treat my students, with empathy, compassion, patience, kindness, attention, care, time, etc. and in an effort to build muscles that can provide them with that empathy, compassion, patience, kindness, attention, time, care, etc. for themselves? I feel like the everyday things that I sometimes struggle with, are more doable. More a...

Instead of trying to control others, become a consultant. "Children need thoughtful guidance and firm, enforceable limits. We set those limits based on the safety of the child and how the child’s behavior affects others. Then we must maintain those limits to help children understand that they are responsible for their actions and will suffer reasonable consequences for actions that are inappropria...

"Effective parenting centers around love: love that is not permissive, love that doesn’t tolerate disrespect, but also love that is powerful enough to allow kids to make mistakes and permit them to live with the consequences of those mistakes. Most mistakes do have logical consequences. And those consequences, when accompanied by empathy — our compassionate understanding of the child’s disappointm...

Enjoy this throwback episode (from day 872) before the new series drops on Monday! "There's a sucker born every minute." - P.T. Barnum Carl Sagan shares guidelines with us for how to critically think. Today, I share them with you! Critical thinking never goes out of style. especially when we consider how MUCH information we are forced to take in on a daily basis. Historically speaking, Never have...

ENJOY THIS THROWBACK EPISODE FROM DAY 751, BEFORE THE NEW SERIES DROPS ON MONDAY - Make a list of all the shit you're good at + a list of all the good shit in your life + all the shit that bothers you about your life. Using the first two lists, attempt to solve the last list and bingo-bango you've got yourself a lil action plan template. WATCH: www.youtube.com/juliemerica GET A MONTHLY NOTE FROM M...

Curiosity is fragile. Learning is difficult as hell. Our brains are built for efficiency, not thinking. We can trick our brains into motivation by worrying about the difficulty of the challenge, rather than the topic or the content. We rely on our memories more than our thinking brain. According to Daniel Willingham's book, "Why Students Don’t Like School?" "Thinking occurs when you combine inform...

Some of the lessons I prioritize, still: Stop being so hard on yourself when you’re struggling to learn or master or understand something new. You’re actually doing a great job as a learner. You’re exactly where you’re supposed to be, trying, messing up, learning. If you knew already, you wouldn’t be learning anymore. Learning is impossible to mess up, unless you give up. It’s supposed to be chall...

And that’s the beauty of math, right? There are many ways to get there, but there is one answer. It’s tidy, if you’re tidy.  It’s also why I hate math - because I am not the tidiest worker.  I try to be, and am training myself to be so I can enjoy the process of things more, and actually invest in the process as much as the outcome, but when I was younger and sometimes still, I really do...

Dirt in a cog is a way to embody resistance. It focuses on slowing down, jamming up, creating little bits of friction that make it difficult to keep attacking our citizens effectively. We need all types of resistance, don't think there are limits to your modes of resistance. Make fascism hard. Don't normalize the violence we're seeing. Keep showing your community + your country that you aren't goi...

Joy is part of the practice. When you can't find it and don't know where to start? Start small. Start by reminding yourself that joy still exists, and it's a frequency vibrating right above our heads, and if we can just poke our heads out of this damned hole, we can find it - tap into it, and use it like the resource it is.  Pay attention to the glimmers that make you feel seen. The goal is t...

Tactical frivolity is what happens when you use humor, whimsy, and joy to make those in power look ridiculous. It flips the script and reclaims agency. The optics matter, the message matters, and how the message arrives matters. So get involved, stop leaning into despair, and flip that damned script. Get some joy in your resistance. It's exactly what the world needs right now. Threads: https:...

Beliefs require faith, rationality requires flexibility. Unless your belief is rooted in rationality, these things can conflict. Refusing to acknowledge or label something doesn’t make it go away, but it does take your power away from being able to confront or address it. Resources for Resisting a Coup: https://makeyourdamnbed.medium.com/practical-guides-to-resisting-a-coup-b44571b9ad66 SUPPORT JU...

Our brains have a tendency to over-value the effect of TINY inconsequential differences when comparing options. Distinction bias is a cognitive bias that causes people to overestimate how different their options are when they compare them to each other rather than evaluating them independently, against some absolute standard. This bias often leads to an exaggerated perception of the differences be...

The contrast effect is a bias where the perception of something is distorted by being compared to something else, making the differences between them seem greater than they are.  SOURCES: BUSTER BENSON'S MEDIUM POST: https://medium.com/@buster/cognitive-bias-cheat-sheet-55a472476b18 Contrast effect: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contrast_effect#:~:text=%5Bclarification%20needed%5D-,Dom...

The  omission bias  refers to our tendency to judge harmful  actions  as worse than harmful  inactions , even if they result in similar consequences. SOURCES: BUSTER BENSON'S MEDIUM POST: https://medium.com/@buster/cognitive-bias-cheat-sheet-55a472476b18 OMISSION BIAS: https://thedecisionlab.com/biases/omission-bias and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omission_bias More bias...

Our brains are designed to notice interesting (or negative) events. This can lead us to make decisions based on the negative experiences in our lives, and forget to consider the positive. SOURCES: BUSTER BENSON'S MEDIUM POST: https://medium.com/@buster/cognitive-bias-cheat-sheet-55a472476b18 More biases here: Bizarreness effect, Humor effect ,  Von Restorff effect ,  Negativity bias ,&nb...

Too much information means our brain needs to take some shortcuts. Let's discuss how they work so we can know what to watch out for. SOURCES: BUSTER BENSON'S MEDIUM POST: https://medium.com/@buster/cognitive-bias-cheat-sheet-55a472476b18 Read more about the biases here: Availability heuristic ,  Attentional bias ,  Illusory truth effect ,  Mere exposure effect ,  Context effect...

Friction is a type of resistance that leads to consideration, growth, and unique solutions. Without friction, we all flatten into the same, boring, identity. Also, friction doesn't "go away" it shifts. So, where you find a frictionless experience, it means that someone else had to take that on. Most importantly: Friction isn't the enemy. It is a valuable communicator, if we're willing to listen. T...

Loneliness isn’t just personal. It’s institutional. It’s fiscal. It’s a bit engineered. It’s purposeful. - Kyla Scanlon The Sources: Kyla Scanlon's Substack Post: https://kyla.substack.com/p/the-most-valuable-commodity-in-the Resources for Resisting a Coup: https://makeyourdamnbed.medium.com/practical-guides-to-resisting-a-coup-b44571b9ad66 SUPPORT JULIE (and the show!): https://supporter.acast.co...