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,...
7 days ago • 3 min read
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...
14 days ago • 4 min read
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...
21 days ago • 4 min read
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...
28 days ago • 3 min read
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...
about 1 month ago • 3 min read
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...
about 1 month ago • 4 min read
Wee Bit Wiser by Jordan Harbinger Get wiser A few weeks ago, I talked to Michael Easter about how important it is to get deliberately uncomfortable in this modern world. He’s absolutely right: We’ve engineered challenges out of our lives, and we’re suffering massively from a modern comfort crisis as a result. Discomfort as medicine — physical, emotional, spiritual — is real. Our conversation also got me thinking about when creating discomfort goes too far — when the impulse to be challenged...
about 2 months ago • 2 min read
Wee Bit Wiser by Jordan Harbinger Something wise(-ish) There’s a difference between self-interest and self-orientation. There’s a difference between attention-seeking and attention-enjoying. There’s a difference between being cut off and being boundaried. Every quality exists on a spectrum. A lot of self-help experts will tell you to avoid a vice at one end of the spectrum by radically embracing its opposite on the other. But that often ends up missing the subtle distinctions that turn a vice...
about 2 months ago • 2 min read
Wee Bit Wiser by Jordan Harbinger Something wise(-ish) For all our talk about radical candor, let’s be real: Being honest is risky business. Speaking your mind — while important and admirable — often comes at a cost. Hurt feelings. Compromised relationships. A reputation for being confrontational. The judgments of other people. Straight-up retaliation. And honesty is especially tricky at work, where complicated politics can make the cost of speaking your mind — even if you’re 100% right —...
2 months ago • 3 min read