#023 – The Rubber Band Model & Wish People To Be Happy

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read time 2 minutes 

#023 at a Glance:

• Quote that will get you thinking: The key to failure.

• Podcast you should listen to: The rise of a master content creator.

• Framework: The Rubber Band Model.

• Hack you should try: Wish people to be happy.

• Tweet I liked: The version of you that best serves them.

Quote that will get you thinking:

Got sent another awesome quote this week (thanks Juli!) which I also wanted to share:

Podcast you should listen to:

The Rise of a Master Content Creator with Sahil Bloom

If you’ve used Instagram, Twitter, or LinkedIn, you’ve almost certainly seen his content before.

Sahil Bloom is an entrepreneur, investor, and writer from New York who has taken the content creation game by storm in recent years. To put this into perspective, in May 2020 he posted his first twitter thread. As of August 2023, he has 1 million followers.

Sahil opens up about everything from content creation, investing, vulnerabilities, relationships, mediating your ego, and (what I found most valuable), a discussion around what we need to be prioritising in our 20s.

The pod is hosted by Sachin and Adam, two young guys from Sydney. I’m really inspired by what they do and I’m a big fan of their podcast in general.

Listen on Spotify here. Listen on Apple Podcasts here. Watch on YouTube here.

Framework:

The Rubber Band Model 

When faced with a dilemma, The Rubber Band Model is designed to help us choose between two options.

The model consists of envisioning being stuck between two rubber bands, both stretched to their limits from either side of the dilemma. One rubber band is holding you from moving away, while the other is trying to pull you closer.

Within The Rubber Band Model, the introspective questions to ask ourselves when faced with difficult decisions are:

‘What is holding me?’ and ‘What is pulling me?’

At first glance, this seems to be simply another way of asking ‘What are the pros and cons?’ However, the difference is that ‘What is holding me?’ and ‘What is pulling me?’ are positive questions and reflect a situation with two attractive alternatives.

Hack you should try:

Wish People to be Happy

Meng Tan is a Google pioneer, award-winning engineer, and best-selling author. Meng was Google employee #107 and led the creation of a ground-breaking mindfulness-based emotional intelligence course for employees called Search Inside Yourself, which regularly had a waitlist of 6 months.

One of his favourite informal practices he loved recommending to employees was this (in his own words):

“During working hours or school hours, randomly identify two people who walk past you or who are standing or sitting around you. Secretly wish for them to be happy. Just think to yourself, “I wish for this person to be happy, and I wish for that person to be happy.” That is the entire practice. Don’t do anything, don’t say anything, just think. This is entirely a thinking exercise.”

When probed as to why we should do this, he replies:

“All other things equal, to increase your happiness, all you have to do is randomly wish for somebody else to be happy. That is all. It basically takes no time and no effort.”

Something to try…

(Side Note – I came across this hack in Tools of Titans by Tim Ferriss which remains one of my favourite books of all time. Highly recommend everyone to check it out.)

Tweet I liked:

That’s all for this week, thanks for reading!

Grateful for your support.

Stay hungry, stay humble, & stay curious. ⚡

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