Welcome to the second edition of Airplane Mode, where less is more and the WiFi is always off.

Every week, we curate 3 impactful ideas for you to stop and ponder, taking you away from the algorithm and putting you back in control of your most valuable resource: your attention.

Use this newsletter as a signal to pause, breathe, and think, helping you realign with your purpose and clear out the ‘scroll pollution’ that clouds our brains every day.

Thank you for flying with 99 Lives 🐆✈️

We often think of curiosity as a thing that someone has or doesn’t have, but newer research on this topic has discovered many more layers than previously thought.

In fact, curiosity isn’t a single trait, it’s made up of five distinct dimensions, each one a different element of overall curiosity an individual can possess.*

The dimensions act like light switches for curiosity: the more dimensions that are turned on, the more curious a person becomes.

With this new 5D lens, this research out of George Mason University also determined that there are four different stereotypes of ‘curious people’.

Those stereotypes, in order of most curious to least, are:

The Fascinated Person, The Problem Solver, The Empath, and the Avoidant

The Fascinated Person scores high on all five dimensions, making them the most curious, while the Avoidant scores low on all dimensions.

For now, this is just something to chew on. Think about these five dimensions to better understand your own curiosity.

A little taste for a much bigger deep dive on curiosity in a long-form blog later 🐆_{*Previously, research on curiosity was limited to 1-2 more generalized traits}

Narcissism has been one of the biggest buzzwords on social media in the last few years, yet many posts lack the nuance about the different types of narcissism that exist.

The truth is, narcissism is not a singular concept. It is more of a spectrum than an absolute definition, and narcissism can be learned just as much as it can be inherited.

On one end, there are full-blown narcissists, the type that have “narcissistic personality disorder” or NPD. According to research, this makes up about 1% of the global population.

But on the other end of the narcissism spectrum is something we don’t usually associate with narcissism at all: healthy self-esteem & self-confidence.

So much of the current discourse around narcissism focuses on the negative end of the spectrum, but as Dr. Craig Malkin of Harvard points out, a touch of ‘healthy’ narcissism helps people to take risks, believe in their vision, and persist through challenges.

Use this spectrum to reflect not only on where others might fall on the spectrum, but where you fall too.

We will also come back to this topic in long-form very soon 🐆

All of us know from experience the power of close connections and relationships. We can feel it every time we spend quality time with people we care about deeply.

But a new reframe of this idea has stuck with me. Close, intimate relationships don’t just make us feel good, they double as powerful ‘stress insurance’, buffers against the pressures of human life.

This reframe comes from behavioral investigator Vanessa Van Edwards, in a recent episode from Diary of a CEO, and four decades of studies and meta-analysis back her claims up.

Hundreds of studies now confirm that when a big stressor strikes, people who feel supported show smaller spikes in cortisol, heart rate and negative affect. Simply knowing support is available quiets threat-circuits in the brain, effectively off-loading self-regulation to the relationship.

Close is italicized above for an important reason: close doesn’t just mean physically close, or the people you see most frequently. Close here means intimate, just another example of how openness and vulnerability are strengths, not weaknesses, that enhance our human experience 🐆

You can count on Airplane Mode arriving in your inbox every week, just in time for you to switch off & reconnect with the topics that matter most.