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Wee Bit Wiser: Lessons from 1000+ podcasts

In Wee Bit Wiser, every Wednesday I'll deliver the most valuable insights from the most fascinating people in the world straight to your inbox and help you get slightly smarter every week.

long to do list worried guy
Featured Post

This is why you’re procrastinating

Wee Bit Wiser by Jordan Harbinger Get wiser You’re not avoiding the thing you’re avoiding. You’re avoiding the feelings that the thing will bring up. You’re not avoiding the responsibility you have. You’re avoiding the parts of yourself that the responsibility will reveal. You’re not avoiding life. You’re avoiding yourself. Procrastination, avoidance, denial — these are all ultimately ways to flee the “problem” of having to be you, in a specific moment, doing something you don’t want to do....

Messy drawer

Wee Bit Wiser by Jordan Harbinger Something wise(-ish) There’s a lot of wisdom out there about the art of starting things. Landing a job. Launching a company. Starting a family. Initiating a project. Even cleaning out that one drawer where all your tools and post-its and USB cables end up in a tangled mess. Which is somehow harder than launching a company. (Just me?) But when it comes to the art of ending things… Well, there isn’t really a playbook for that. If you want to find a partner,...

arrow pointing up inside head silhouette

Wee Bit Wiser by Jordan Harbinger Something wise(-ish) You’re not here to be happy. You’re here to evolve. You’re not here to be satisfied. You’re here to grow. You’re not here to be successful. You’re here to learn. I genuinely believe this to be true. And I forget it all the time. Sometimes I feel like Guy Pierce in the movie Memento, except the things I keep forgetting are basic psychospiritual truths. I should get “learning > happiness, you idiot” tattooed on my forearm. Then I’d remember...

worried looking person

Wee Bit Wiser by Jordan Harbinger Something wise(-ish) We all know that feeling like an impostor is pretty awful. It’s stressful. It’s anxiety-provoking. And the fear of being “found out” — which is the hallmark of all fraudulence — can eat you up inside. But not all impostorism is created equal. In fact, if you don’t feel like an impostor sometimes, you’re doing something wrong. Because feeling like an imposter isn’t always a symptom of fraudulence. It’s also a sign that you’re growing. Here...

doctor smoking

Wee Bit Wiser by Jordan Harbinger Something wise(-ish) Years ago, at a conference, I met a borderline obese doctor who smoked a pack a day. I couldn’t wrap my head around it. But there he was, hitting the buffet hard and puffing on Camels between talks. Since then, I’ve met unstable therapists, undisciplined coaches and uncreative copywriters. People who, in a variety of ways, didn’t live up to the substance or spirit of their professions. And it always bugs me. Whatever field you’re in,...

Melting clock

Wee Bit Wiser by Jordan Harbinger Something wise(-ish) Out of all the reasons people come up with to not pursue their goals, I think my favorite is “I’m too late.” I’m too late to go back to school. I’m too late to change careers. I’m too late to start exercising. I’m too late to build relationships. I’m too late to work on my marriage. And look — I get this line of thinking to some degree. Time is finite. We’re all getting older. History can be crushing. Also, in some cases, it really is too...

Blinders

Wee Bit Wiser by Jordan Harbinger Something wise(-ish) Whenever I catch myself saying, “Okay, this is how this situation needs to go,” I already know I’m in trouble. The mind loves to do this. It loves to imagine the ideal version of events to satisfy our desires, needs, fantasies. Or our fears. “As long as things go exactly the way I want, I’ll be satisfied.” And how often does that happen? I’ll speak for myself: never. That never happens for me. What always ends up happening is something...

Victim blaming

Wee Bit Wiser by Jordan Harbinger Get wiser Holding people accountable for their role in a toxic situation is not “victim blaming.” There. I said it. You can forgive and empathize with people who have experienced awful things and help them appreciate the ways they participated in a situation. Maybe they overlooked red flags. Maybe they justified bad behavior. Maybe they stuck around longer than they should have. Maybe they struggled to ask for help. Maybe they avoided doing the self-work...

Laptop with someone typing

Wee Bit Wiser by Jordan Harbinger Something wise(-ish) We’ve been talking a lot about scams on Feedback Friday lately. Romance scams. Job-hunting scams. Multi-level marketing scams. Those letters are always entertaining, because from the outside it’s so obvious that the person in question is being taken advantage of. We hear them and we go, “Come on, do you really believe this charming British architect stuck in a hospital in Indonesia needs you to send him $500 in Bitcoin urgently? How dumb...

motorcycle trip

Wee Bit Wiser by Jordan Harbinger Wise up I met this Danish guy at a party recently. Passionate. Curious. A real zest for life. Let’s call him Mik. (I can’t actually remember his name, but man, this guy looked like SUCH a Mik, so let’s go with that.) Mik had just come back from India, where he was attending some lectures by a well-known spiritual guru, whose name I won’t mention because I don’t want his followers dragging me online. Long story short, he walked away disappointed. Not so much...