Teammate Jimmy Piersall once asked him why he was so mad all the time. Williams responded, “You know why? Because I’ve got to be good every day. You … - Eric Barker

There are three categories: “right,” “wrong,” and “everybody does it.” Once we see others getting away with something, we assume it’s okay. Nobody wants to be the sucker who plays by the rules when no one else does.

Cal Newport recommends a “shutdown ritual” in which you take the time to close out the day’s business and prepare for tomorrow. Research shows that writing down the things you need to take care of tomorrow can settle your brain and help you relax. As neuroscientist Daniel J. Levitin explains, when you’re concerned about something and your grey matter is afraid you may forget, it engages a cluster of brain regions referred to as the “rehearsal loop.” And you keep worrying and worrying. Writing your thoughts down and making a plan for tomorrow switches this off.

Edith Wharton in the 1800s? “There is one friend in the life of each of us who seems not as a separate person, however dear and beloved, but an expansion, an interpretation, of one’s self.”

… In psychology it’s called “self-expansion theory” — that we expand our notion of our self to include those we’re close to.

… When women heard the names of their close friends, their gray matter responded the same way it did when they heard their own name.