The Liberation of Not Knowing

A
reader recently emailed me about how to deal with negative self-talk — you know, those awful conversations you have with yourself late at night about how you’ll never be star of the football team, how everyone is secretly laughing at you when you’re not looking, and how mom and dad never told you that you’re secretly adopted.

We all deal with this sort of negative self-talk. Even those of us who score A+ on our happy tests, we still engage in the ol’ “beat yourself up brain” from time to ti...