Welcome to the fourth 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 🐆✈️

A few weeks back, we wrote a two-part blog called “What are you here for?”, discussing the deep lack of meaning experienced right now by so many people across the globe.

In Part 1, we looked specifically at why the meaning of life is falling apart. For past generations, meaning then came from more institutional sources, like family, religion, and community. As all these sources become increasingly fragmented in our modern world, they’ve been replaced by more focus on individualism, happiness, and professional success/productivity.

Now we have research that takes this a step further, identifying one key element underpinning all of the things that have provided meaning for centuries: hope.

According to research out of the University of Missouri, which did a meta-analysis combining 6 different studies on the topic, researchers found that out of all possible choices, hope consistently predicted a stronger sense of meaning.

Considering we currently live in the most hopeless era in modern history since pre-WWII, these findings are even more important than ever. And to the surprise of absolutely nobody, finding meaning in life enhances literally everything, from self-care to relationships, daily routines, mental and physical health.

Finally, the researchers outlined ways we can all cultivate more hope in our daily lives, in an effort to bring more meaning to life for all of us:

If you don’t know or haven’t heard of Rick Rubin, you’ve probably at least heard of his book The Creative Act. This is by far one of the most impactful books I’ve read so far, and I’m reading this book differently than others, more like a bible.

Every morning after I wake up and meditate, I pop open my 99 Lives journal, write down my thoughts for the five key areas of intention every day, and then I finish by reading one chapter from The Creative Act. In the case of this book, a chapter is never more than a handful of pages, making each chapter feel extremely impactful and actionable.

Last week, one of those chapters punched me in the face, a chapter titled Patience (something I have not mastered whatsoever) where Rubin said “Impatience is an argument with reality”.

So many of us feel like we’re on the hamster wheel with a fire behind us, always forcing us to do more and run faster, a feeling that strips us of the depth and patience required to truly improve at anything or hone our creative abilities. (Of course, social media makes this worse because comparison is the thief of joy but I’ll save you 1,000 more words for now…)

Impatience is the opposite of presence, it’s our desire for something to be different from our present experience. Whether we want to go back or speed forward, it’s all an illusion, we have no control over time and shortcuts don’t really exist in life. All of this is simply a human’s way of avoiding discomfort or challenging our belief system, but we call it things like ‘efficiency’ and ‘optimization’.

I’ll leave you with one final knockout punch of quote from the music industry Jesus:

What was that I said above about 1,000 more words? I don’t remember, anyway…

As we’ve already written about in multiple blogs and editions of Airplane Mode, SOCIAL MEDIA IS MAKING US ALL ZOMBIES. No seriously, it’s shrinking our brain.

Another thing it’s doing is making modern dating and relationships so much harder than ever before, and now a new study published in Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, has brought into focus a disorder that social media is making much worse.

Relationship Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (ROCD) is a form of OCD found in romantic connections, where people with ROCD experience repeated doubts and concerns about their relationships, when they struggle with accepting uncertainty or have deep-seated fears about making the wrong choice.

Again to the surprise of absolutely nobody, social media is making the prevalence of ROCD thoughts much bigger now, and the problem is three-fold.

Finally, the research found an additional element that made ROCD worse, focusing on something called maximization style, which is a mentality where people (almost obsessively) seek out the best possible choice in any decision. Those who tried to maximize every decision in their lives were more prone to ROCD, and excessive social media use made all of this worse.

So here’s the verdict: Everybody just needs to throw their phones in the nearest body of water and go work on a farm, to save humanity.

Thanks for reading the fourth edition!

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