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There’s something I miss about the days when most people I knew thought meditation was nonsense. In the early 2000s, I was a hardline skeptical type, but I did this one woo-woo-ish thing, because its benefits were obvious enough to me.

My fellow skeptic-heads couldn’t imagine how it might work, therefore were certain it didn’t. Sitting on the floor, watching your thoughts drift like clouds can’t possibly have meaningful effects on your health and well-being. How could it?

I liked the feeling of being on the other side of the woo-woo line for once. It helped me understand that it’s not a dependable boundary for determining what works. It just marks the place where we start dismissing instead of inquiring.

The other day I read an article that brought back that feeling, entitled, Reiki Can’t Possibly Work. So Why Does It?

It’s a read worth every minute of your time, but the gist is that some therapies long deemed pure woo-woo by Western science are starting to seem like they might not be.  

The article didn’t convince me (or its author) one way or the other about Reiki –- a kind of “energy healing” — but it did get me thinking about the idea of woo-woo, and the flippant and unscientific way we often assume we already know what is woo-woo and what isn’t.

NOTE: This post is a very personal one, even for this blog. It describes a major revelation I recently experienced (a positive one) and what it means for Raptitude readers. It’s the longest post I’ve written in years. There is also a small chance it will lead to a similar bombshell discovery in your own life.

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In the Truman Show, Jim Carrey’s character is a reality TV star but doesn’t know it. Every person he interacts with is an actor. His hometown is a set.

Truman nearly reaches middle age without finding out, despite many indications that something is going on. A stage light falls from the sky onto the street beside him. His wife excitedly recommends certain household products, even when there’s no one around to hear her. His plans to leave town are always thwarted by sudden storms or road construction.

His life has been characterized by such missed hints. To Truman, however, they’re just unexplained quirks of normal life, which other people presumably experience too.

Ideally, you wouldn’t know any of this before you watch The Truman Show, so that you could experience some part of Truman’s paradigm shift along with him as he finally realizes what’s been going on.

Although I didn’t make the connection at the time I saw the movie, I’ve frequently had a similar sense that I’m experiencing life differently than almost everyone I know.

Tasks you’re avoiding never leave your consciousness for long. They hang there like clouds, some distance away, watching you.

They’re big and looming, but they don’t move very quickly, so you can always just move a bit further away. You still feel their presence though, and it feels bad.

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.

One advantage to having stark checkerboard floor tiles in your bathroom is that it makes the floor much easier to clean.

I pondered this midway though a home-based silent retreat, as I attempted to clean my bathroom like a monk would – intentionally, without the aid of podcasts, or even daydreams.

I was lying on my side, getting to the trickier tiles beneath the clawfoot tub and its small maze of exposed pipes. Gently contorting myself to get my arm in there, I was surprised at how the task wasn’t even a fraction as unpleasant as I had imagined.  

All I ever had to do was choose a tile and wipe it down, which is always easy. Then do the same with an adjacent tile.

As long as zeroed in on the current tile, rather than think about the dozens of tiles I had yet to clean, there was minimal discomfort and no tedium. Whenever my mind started to drift that way, I remembered my elegant strategy: look at a tile, and clean that tile. As far as I could tell, nothing more was required.

I have two aims for this post: to dispel one of our most harmful cultural myths, and to help make you at least one lifelong friend.

It’s worth saying again that good friends are the best thing in the world. They make the good times great and the bad times not so bad. They make you wiser, kinder, smarter, and more interesting. They help you develop your strengths and survive your weaknesses. Nothing else I know of does all of those things.  

Friendship is precious, but it doesn’t have to be rare or elusive. You may have been told, like I was, that it is “very difficult” or even “virtually impossible” to make friends once you’re done school. After a few decades of heeding this warning, I now recognize it as a self-fulfilling nonsense belief we should all ignore. Since abandoning this myth, I’ve had a steady stream of new friends and friend circles, and it is probably the most fulfilled area of my life.

Before we continue, a crucial point: I am not especially talented at friend-making. I have a history of social anxiety and general awkwardness, and I possess correspondingly underdeveloped small-talk skills. I miss obvious cues and say things at the wrong moment. I’m definitely in a lower bracket of the natural friend-making ability scale.

And that’s a very good reason to listen to my advice, rather than that of a networking expert who worked in real estate for thirty years. If I’m able to make friends as an adult, chances are excellent that you can too.  

When I need to look up a word, most of the time I do it in a paper dictionary. 

I’m pretty quick at flipping to the right place, and I try to get quicker each time. However, it will never be as quick as typing the word into Google.

My switch back to paper wasn’t motivated by cantankerousness. It wasn’t a romantic thing or a hipster thing, or an “I love the smell of books” thing. I just found that after years of relying on online dictionaries, a real one offers a better experience in every way except the speed.

The whole experience is cleaner and more purposeful. A paper dictionary contains complete answers for almost any conceivable “What does this word mean” problem — and nothing else. No matter which word has you puzzled, the real dictionary has inside it a small patch of print that will perfectly solve your issue. It exists only to deliver this solution, and has no ulterior motives.

While using this tool, you will not accidentally start responding to political hot takes, or adjusting your fantasy football lineup. The paper dictionary, like a decent pen or an oven mitt, was designed to deliver only what you need in the moment you access it – knowledge of what “obtuse” or “dysphoria” mean — so that you can carry on with your work.

Forget about 2020 and its particular themes for a moment.

Imagine you lived in a small, relatively peaceful town somewhere, a thousand years ago. For the vast majority of each day, you’re focused on your immediate surroundings: your work and the people around you.

However, you do sometimes hear about events that happened elsewhere. The local butcher was reportedly robbed by thugs last night. A boy in another town fell into a well and drowned. Far to the east, fighting has broken out between two neighboring kingdoms.

You didn’t experience any these events, but you understand that they happened. It is unpleasant to hear such accounts, but you’re glad to know a bit more of what’s happening out there. You now watch for robbers when you visit the market. You tell your kids not to play near open wells. When you go to the tavern, you ask for updates on the foreign conflict, in case it worsens.

The Beast showed up around Christmas last year, and stayed till April.

During those months it was difficult to get anything done, or believe getting things done was a thing I could still do.

You might know the Beast too. It has many forms. The Doom-Anxiety Beast. The Regret Beast. The Despair Beast. The Shame Beast. Psychologists have names for some of them.

Whatever the form, the Beast has certain characteristics. It saps your sense of agency and forward motion. It robs you of what might feel like your birthright: the basic ability to function to society’s standards. You lose the sense that you can steer the boat.

The Beast may stay away for weeks or months or years. Then one Thursday afternoon, when one too many things goes wrong, it darkens your doorway again and you know that life might be different for a while.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, that’s a good thing. Many of you do though. For what it’s worth, I’ll share what I’ve learned about tangling with the Beast.