Author: David Cain
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About half the emails I get are people asking if I’ve written any posts about Topic X. Gratitude. Procrastination. Depression. God. Kettlebells.
I can usually direct them to a few articles on their requested topic, because I’ve written so many, and I have a vague mental record of what they’re about and the silly titles I’ve given them.
The next most common type of email I get are people telling me that a particular post made a huge difference in their life. It was just the thing they needed to hear in that moment, and they’re so glad they found it.
Recently it occurred to me that each of these people were more likely to have missed the post in question. The only categorized index of Raptitude’s 500+ entries is my vague mental record of what I’ve written. There’s only one copy of it, and it resides in my head, which is not a very useful location for it. There must have been many more instances of readers not haphazardly finding the thing they needed to hear in that moment, even though it was just a click away.
Time to fix that. I would like this site to be a repository of skills and perspectives that help human beings navigate the strange experience of being human. And it is, but it’s about as organized as a card catalogue dumped on the library floor.
Below are 65 of Raptitude’s most helpful posts – according to me, and you — grouped by topic, with short descriptions when necessary.
I want readers to be able to come to this page any time and find something helpful on whatever they’re dealing with or thinking about. I will expand the list as additional categories and posts come to mind.
These aren’t necessarily my most popular posts, although many are. They aren’t necessarily examples of my best writing either. Rather, they are posts containing the golden wheat kernels of truth that have changed my life, and the lives of the people who write to me about them, in significant and lasting ways.
This is the good stuff. The stuff that makes a difference, the best I can tell.
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On becoming calmer and wiser
How to Take a Break from Your Mind – A simple way to free yourself from rumination, whenever you need to.
How to Let Go – What it actually means to let something go, and how to do it.
The Only Dependable Source of Happiness – On finding happiness in using each experience to strengthen your good qualities, Stoic-style.
Where There’s Stress, There’s a Story – On seeing through stress by identifying exactly when it first appeared.
Getting What We Want Isn’t What We Really Want – Discovering the difference between happiness and the next thrill.
On getting yourself to do things
You Never Have Time, Only Intentions – Time is never possessed, only used as it comes.
How to Get Yourself to Do Things – Fun, graphical examination of the inner world of a procrastinator, and practical advice.
Four Things Procrastinators Need to Learn
How to Do It Tomorrow Instead of Never – A foolproof way to fool the part of you that puts things off.
The Only Thing You Need to Get Good At – A Stoic angle on living under a colossal to-do list.
On dealing with tough emotions
How to Feel Better When You Don’t Know What’s Wrong – A way to get to a better place in virtually any circumstance.
How to Keep Emotions From Running Your Life – On feeling your unpleasant emotions on purpose so that they lose their power over you.
A Basic Skill We Should Have Learned as Kids – On the life-changing skill of emotional literacy.
The Best Response to Criticism – A nearly miraculous way to soothe the sting and of criticism, and get over your fear of it.
On dealing with hard times
6 Helpful Reminders for the Overwhelmed Person
How to Make Bad Days Okay – On dispelling an illusion that makes bad days seem unsurvivable.
You Can Get There from Here – On accepting that the road to somewhere good always goes through here, even if here sucks.
You Must Go Do the Next Thing – On the paradox of moving forward from life-stopping events.
On connecting with other people
How to Make Friends as an Adult
A Common Habit That Costs Us Friends – Friendships need maintenance and usually one person does it all.
When in Doubt, Make Soup – How to have regular, deeply therapeutic get-togethers over soup.
A Small Habit that Could Save the World – Cultivating a better-than-indifferent sentiment towards strangers can change your life, and the whole world.
On connecting to the world around you
A Million Nameless Joys Await – On the rich galaxy of hyper-specific pleasant experiences, such as Stepping Into Your Old Familiar Boots After Taking Off Skates, and many more.
The Alternative to Thinking All the Time – Most moments give us two choices: appreciate your sensory experience, or slip into more dull, repetitive thinking.
How to Improve Your Quality of Life by 90 Percent – The third-ever Raptitude post. 2300 words on exactly how I enjoy the details that make up an ordinary day.
On staying sane in modern society
One Way to Stay Centered in a Divided World – The life-changing practice of reading opinion pieces that make you uncomfortable.
Five Things You Notice When You Quit the News
Go Deeper, Not Wider – A counter-philosophy to our culture of excess.
Most Problems Never Have to be Solved – A more graceful way to field the many “oh no” moments that occur during a modern workday.
On learning serious mindfulness skills
Note: We’re not just talking about “trying to be more present” here. We’re talking industrial-strength, life-altering attentional skills one can learn with daily practice.
A Complete Guide to Actually Getting Somewhere with Meditation – A roadmap to truly “getting” meditation.
How to Make Meditation Ten Times Easier – I believe this simple shift in approach can precipitate a breakthrough for most beginners.
How Mindfulness Creates Freedom – A graphical explanation of precisely how mindfulness meditation changes your life.
On cultivating gratitude
How to Create Gratitude – By far the most potent gratitude exercise I’ve ever come across. It will make you cry.
Gratitude Comes From Noticing Your Life, Not From Thinking About It – Awkward title, but a crucial concept for graduating from “I should feel grateful because I have a lot of great things.”
How to Become a Luckier Person Overnight – Radical gratitude experiments for exploding disappointment and self-pity completely.
Your Whole Life is Borrowed Time – See life as a bonus round, and it becomes magical.
On making ordinary experience enjoyable
How to Enjoy Life – There is a way to attend to mundane tasks that makes them go from tedious to interesting.
How to Walk Across a Parking Lot – The “highest of arts” as Thoreau put it, is to affect the quality of an ordinary day. Here’s one example.
How to Sit in a Chair and Drink Tea – Another example.
On self-control
The Gentle Art of Self-Control – Using the elegant “velvet rope” strategy for guiding yourself away from unhelpful habits.
Mindfulness is the Opposite of Neediness – On one particularly underappreciated benefit of mindfulness practice: it makes temptations less magnetic.
Wise People Have Rules For Themselves – Wise personal rules make you free.
On self-esteem
Don’t Worry, Everybody Else is Crazy Too – On the folly of trying to appear normal.
Where Self-Esteem Comes From – Certain activities make us like ourselves. Do them.
The Art of Looking Like a Fool – Our own stupidity grows when we try to hide it. Embrace your inner fool.
On staying sane around modern technology
The Life-Changing Magic of Unfollowing Almost Everybody – When you follow people on social media, choose the content you want, not the people you like.
The Simple Joy of “No Phones Allowed” – On rediscovering a nearly-extinct experience: being in a crowd whose attention stays in the room.
It’s Time to Put the Internet Back into a Box in the Basement – A bit of a rant, but it contains a clear vision for a healthy relationship to the online world.
On dealing with lifelong issues
With Lifelong Struggles, Effort isn’t What’s Missing – You’ve tried the bootstraps thing. It’s something else.
It’s Okay to Feel Bad for No Reason
How to Handle the Beast – On surviving visits from the Beast, whatever form it takes for you.
On dealing with other people’s bullshit (and your own)
How to Lose Your Mind Responsibly – On knowing your push-buttons and taking responsibility for them, if only for your sake.
Why The Other Side Won’t Listen to Reason – Understanding why good people disagree so strongly on moral issues.
How to Be a Good Stranger – How to defuse our reflexive judgments towards slow sidewalk-walkers and other accidental enemies.
On being a good person
Are You Good Enough? — On our unmeetable criteria for “good person,” and how to live with our own moral shortcomings.
On Getting Good at Being Good — A parable that follows trying to be as good as possible to its logical conclusion.
On getting at the Great Truth of Existence
How to See Things As They Are — A simple practice that gives you a glimpse at what the sages call emptiness.
Life is Looking Out a Window — An obscure and powerful insight: where others see your face, you have a clear, unperturbable window. Live from it.
Time is Something We Do, Not Something We Experience – How time is an invented human habit that makes the present moment into a problem.
This Will Never Happen Again – On appreciating the quality of impermanence, and the peril of overlooking it.
On reflecting on the cosmic significance of your weird little life
Where the Wealth Was All Along – On looking at your life from the day after you die.
Don’t Forget How Strange This All Is — Looked at objectively, life reveals itself to be curious and absurd, which is very liberating.
You Are the Greatest Story Ever Told – An early post on the fascinating practice of viewing your life as a mysterious and beautiful film.
A Brief Guide to Recreational Time Travel — Quintessential Raptitude stuff. Explore the fourth dimension in your mind, and watch your world explode with meaning.
Your Life is Always Just Beginning – How any moment of your life can be viewed as its very beginning.
I invite suggestions. If there are posts, or entire categories that you think should be here, let me know in the comments. I’ll update this resource as I publish new posts and rediscover old ones.
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Photo by Jess Bailey