Brad Stulberg Profile picture
Sep 23, 2020 9 tweets 2 min read Read on X
8 Principles to Navigate Periods of Disorder.

1. Stop Resisting What's Happening.
2. Focus On What You Can Control
3. Nail Daily Habits
4. Use Routines
5. Stay Connected
6. Think Adaptation
7. Respond Not React
8. Show Up, Get Through, And Make Meaning On Other Side

(Thread.)
1. Stop Resisting What Is Happening

Resisting change and disorder may feel good in the short-term, but invariably leads to distress in the long-term. You’ve got to engage with what is in front of you, and wisely—which is what the following principles emphasize.
2. Focus On What You Can Control, Do Not Worry About What You Cannot

There is a difference between worrying about a situation one the one hand and taking productive action on the other. Whenever you catch yourself doing the former, use it as a cue to do the latter.
3. Nail Daily Habits

Move your body regularly. Sleep. Do what you can to eat nutritious foods. Nailing these basics supports underlying physiological and psychological strength. If you feel guilty or indulgent for doing these things, don’t.
4. Use Routines

When it feels like the ground underneath you is shaking, having tried and true routines provides a source of stability and predictability. This can be as simple as your daily walk, morning cup of coffee, meditation practice, or evening book-reading time.
5. Stay Connected

Study after study of resilience points to benefits of community. During periods of disorder there can be an urge to shut down and isolate. Do what you can to resist this urge. Odds are many other people are feeling the same way as you. We are stronger together.
6. Think Adaptation Instead of Change

Change is something that happens to you. Adaptation is something that you are in conversation with. Get the former out of your vocabulary and focus on the latter. All successful systems, from individual cells to entire species, adapt well.
7. Respond Not React

Holocaust survivor and philosopher Viktor Frankl wrote, “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

Think 4 P's to help: pause; process; plan; proceed.
8. Show Up, Get Through, and Worry About Meaning on the Other Side.

Research shows that we look back on challenging periods in a much more connected and meaningful light than we experience them. Sometimes nothing makes sense until you get to the other side, and that’s okay.

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More from @BStulberg

Mar 17
Anyone can be consistent for a few days. It’s harder to be consistent for years upon years, through ups, downs, everything in between.

Here are 7 ideas from Master of Change that resonate with readers most.

On what it takes to stay steady amidst challenge and grow from change:
1. View life as a continuous cycle of order, disorder, reorder.

You may crave order and stability, but that stability is a moving target—it's always somewhere new. It doesn't come from resisting change. It comes from working with it.
You are always somewhere in the cycle of order, disorder, reorder.
Read 11 tweets
Feb 1
The average person undergoes more than 30 significant life changes.

Marriage. Divorce. Kids. School. Graduation. Moving. Illness. Recovery. Starting jobs. Leaving jobs. Promotions. The list goes on and on.

Yet our models for change are old and outdated. Here's a better way:
Old models represent change as a cycle of order, disorder, order.

Change is something that happens to you. The goal is to get back to where you were.

But this is neither accurate nor how change, which is to say life, actually works.
Change and disorder are not the exceptions. They are the rules.

Look closely and you'll see that everything is always changing, including you.

Life is flux. The only time something is static is when it's dead.
Read 9 tweets
Dec 26, 2023
As we round out this year and head into the next, here are some of the most powerful ideas on performance, excellence, and mastery to keep in mind:
1. Outcomes matter, but if you are to have any meaningful longevity you’ve got to learn to enjoy the process.

2. Community is key. Nobody reaches the top alone.

3. Consistency—the dull and mundane act of showing up every day—is way more important than intensity.
4. It’s easy when everything is clicking, but how you perform on your average and bad day is probably more important.

5. Work and craft can be a big part of your identity, but when they are the whole of it you become fragile.
Read 11 tweets
Nov 26, 2023
I've got a new piece out today.

It confronts the self-help trap of needing to find meaning and grow from everything always.

Sometimes simply showing up and getting through is plenty. Perhaps the real growth is learning to let it be enough.

Highlights are below: Image
In 2017, I was blindsided by the sudden onset of obsessive compulsive disorder and secondary depression.

For the better of a year, my days were consumed by intrusive thoughts and feelings of angst, dread and despair.

It was a terrifying and disorienting ordeal.
Normally, I process whatever I’m going through via my work, writing — suddenly, I could hardly muster enough focus to string together a sentence.

My favorite foods tasted like cardboard. I couldn’t find peace, let alone joy, anywhere, not even in my newborn son.
Read 12 tweets
Oct 24, 2023
In finite games the point is to win.

In infinite games the point is to keep playing.

Life is an infinite game.

Here are 7 mindset shifts for playing well:
1. You don't think yourself into the person you want to be. You act yourself into it.

Know your core values. Know how to practice them. And do it.

When you fall off the path—which inevitably you will, because everyone does—simply get back on.

This is your life's work.
2. Nobody wakes up feeling great and ready to get after it every day.

The work is accepting your feelings and taking them along for the ride.

Motivation follows action.

Become a master of showing up.
Read 9 tweets
Sep 20, 2023
A psychological construct called self-complexity says that the key to a strong and enduring identity—one that is equal parts rugged and flexible, that can navigate the inevitable changes we all face—is to diversify your sense of self.

Important thread 👇👇
The more you define yourself by any one activity, the more fragile you become. If that activity doesn’t go well or something changes unexpectedly, you lose a sense of who you are.

But with self-complexity, you have develop multiple components to your identity.
We all can wear many hats. Examples include:

•Writer
•Spouse
•Artist
•Parent
•Employee
•Neighbor
•Entrepreneur
•Baker
•Creative

Take an inventory of your own identities.

Are there any upon which you are over-reliant for meaning and self-worth?
Read 15 tweets

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