Hello beautiful readers 👋
Here’s your weekly injection of Steroids For Your Brain 🧠
(Working on a BIG article for next week that will probably get me falsely sued so nothing long-form this week!)
Something To Make You Think 🤔
What are you lying about? I promise there’s something.
For many years I thought I was a “very honest person”.
I felt I spoke my mind and regularly called out any bullsh*t in the world.
And yet, when it came to things that might hurt others, my honesty just disappeared.
Instead of telling someone they weren’t a good fit for the job, I’d default to the classic “we’d love to work with you, but had a very high number of applications and blablabla”
Instead of telling annoying friends to f*ck off or stop being a tw*t, I’d say I’d gotten too busy and couldn’t hang out (for the next 5 years…)
When the waiter came round to ask how my burnt meatballs were, I would say “Oh, scrumdiddlyumptious! I love a good spot of char!”
Instead of telling my friends their podcast sucks, I would listen to a bit and then offer some platitudinous comment: “I love the way you guys stuttered throughout - very natural and authentic!”
And I almost pretended to be gay when breaking up with ex, because I was so terrified of hurting her.
This all sounds very admirable. Very polite. Very dishonest.
Firstly, the other party never gets the feedback they need to stop burning their meatballs or improve their skillset or be a nicer person.
Secondly, all your anger/resentment builds up inside you.
Emotions are exponential: if you let them out early on, no big deal; but the longer you hold them in, the bigger the explosion.
If you tell your girlfriend it annoys you when she makes frog noises (this is not a true story), she’ll stop, and you’ll find peace.
If instead, you don’t tell her, you suppress your anger, one day you will snap at her and tear her down.
What finally helped me start telling the truth, the true truth, not the polite truth, was precision.
There is a big difference between:
Imprecise: I don’t wanna continue seeing you
Precise: I’m not sure I want to continue seeing you and I’m scared to lead you on, in case your feelings get hurt. The things I’m not sure about are, from my perspecitve you don’t seem as ambitious as I am, I don’t seem to get on with your friends and I don’t know if you’d be up to go on adventures with me.
Ironically, by specifying this is your personal perspective and explaining it, you open up the opportunity to have a conversation about it and actually resolve things.
It might turn out the other person feels exactly the same! Or that you’ve missed something completely but never gave the other person the opportunity to fill in the gaps, because you made an assumption.
And once you stop lying to others, you’ll finally stop lying to yourself too.
All the excuses to keep living with your parents, keep working a job you hate, keep trudging on in a relationship that just isn’t right…they’ll all just disappear.
(Unless they’re not excuses and they’re valid reasons)
So, what are you lying about? I promise there’s something.
Hit reply with your answer! 👇
Extremely Interesting Fact 🤓
On the topic of honesty, have you ever wondered why Black women seem to have bigger butts?
There are many, many reasons.
Diet, squatting, lack of squatting, genetics, selection bias (i.e. we ignore Black women with smaller arses because there’s nothing “novel” there), etc.
In Nicki’s case it’s a lot of surgery, too.
But here are some other interesting theories (not well-evidenced) as to why some Black women seem to have bigger butts:
Heat loss: imagine you’re wearing a wooly hoody in Sub-Sahara.
Obviously you’re boiling hot and want to cool down.
You’d likely take the hoody off and wrap it around your waist. You’re still wearing the hoody but it’s taking up less surface area, allowing you to cool down better.
Same with butts!
Instead of having fat spread out all across your body —> wrap all the fat round your butt —> big butt —> rest of your body can easily expel heat!
Meanwhile, Scandinavians etc. need to stay warm, so their fat is more evenly distributed across their bodies. Which is (possibly) why my girlfriend has abs without ever having done a situp!Pregnancy: a baby in the womb creates imbalance and can easily tip you fatally forward, big butt balances out that forward momentum, keeps you stable so you don’t fall forward and squash your kid.
^just theories, but quite interesting.
Ask Me For Advice 👋
As always, would love to hear any feedback you have for the newsletter so far - content ideas, things you like/dislike, etc.
Andrew ✌️
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