You're aware, I'm sure, of the idea of the "law of attraction?" It's a a new age-y idea that people's negative or positive thoughts are responsible for bringing negative or positive experiences into their lives.

Personally, I believe in the power of positive thinking, and I've seen the power of prayer. But, I can feel my skeptical face form when we start talking about the idea that people who have rough lives have simply brought it on themselves with their negativity.

That's probably why I was drawn to what Jess Stillman has to share with us today, which is about the "law of subtraction." It's a little bit easier to believe and embrace, in my estimation. In keeping with the theme, I think I'll strip out the rest of this introduction and get right to it. Here's Jess:

Subtraction bias

Scientists did an experiment not too long ago where they asked volunteers to solve problems like stabilizing a shaky Lego tower or figuring out geometric puzzles.

Almost always, they observed, the study subjects tried to add something to find a solution. This was true even when taking away bricks or shapes was objectively the faster, easier way to solve the problem. The scientists called this phenomenon "subtraction bias" and declared it a shared feature of the human mind -- sort of a bias against subtraction; people just tend to try to solve problems by addition rather than subtraction.

What holds true of engineering challenges and brainteasers also holds true of happiness (and intelligence), too. If you're someone who would like to be happier in your work and life, chances are excellent your first impulse will be to add something.

Maybe you could exercise or meditate more? Perhaps a new career direction would solve your woes? Yes, we can improve well-being by adding joy to our lives. But we can also achieve the same aim by subtracting misery, and to review the idea, we can look to the work of the great philosopher and Nobel laureate Bertrand Russell (1872-1970), as channeled by Harvard happiness researcher Arthur Brooks recently in The Atlantic.

What practices or habits should be on the chopping block if you want to stop overlooking the subtractive approach to greater happiness? Here are a few of them. For thematic reasons, I think we should count them down backward.

8. Fashionable pessimism

Melancholy was all the rage in Victorian times, and there are plenty of circles today in which acting grumpy and cynical is taken as a sign of depth and intelligence. Choosing moodiness to look cool was dumb then, continued to be dumb in Russell's time, when he mocked it mercilessly, and is dumb now.

7. Social comparison

Russell believed that "what most people fear is not falling into destitution but 'that they will fail to outshine their neighbors,'" Brooks explains. Keeping up with the Jones is a never-ending game that can lead to lifelong discontent. And if you don't believe the Nobel laureate, there's modern science to prove it. The solution to social comparison, according to Russell, is to "focus on what you have and feel grateful."

6. Envy

Closely linked to the above mistake, envy is the condition of feeling bad because someone else has more than you. Russell's proposed this cure for envy: "Whoever wishes to increase human happiness must wish to increase admiration." Rather than suffer because of other people's excellence, celebrate and learn from it.

5. Evading boredom

"We are less bored than our ancestors were," Russell wrote in 1930, "but we are more afraid of boredom." Imagine what he would have made of the smartphone era! But the truth is, no gadget or streaming service can fully save you from boredom. They can, however, distract you from essential but uncomfortable reflection and creative growth. The solution is to fight to regain your capacity to just sit quietly and notice the world around you.

4. Coping with fear

Anxiety has only increased since Russell's day, and it remains a thief of joy. "Russell believed that anxiety is rooted in fear of 'some danger which we are unwilling to face,'" Brooks notes before highlighting modern science on the biological basis of anxiety disorders. But whatever the cause of your free-floating fear, not going to the effort of finding ways to tame it will make you miserable. Russell -- and Tim Ferriss -- suggests the best cure is forcing yourself to mentally face your fears until they lose some of their terror.

3. Senseless guilt

Should you feel guilty and make amends if you did something wrong and hurt someone? Of course, but Russell argued against a baseless sense of sin or feeling guilty just because you are doing well and others are doing less well.

2. Virtuous victimhood

Russell again feels ahead of his time with his warnings against playing the victim. "Russell was critical of what he called 'persecution mania,' in which one is 'perpetually the victim of ingratitude, unkindness, and treachery.' One version of this is what some researchers have called 'virtuous victimhood,'" explains Brooks. Of course, sometimes people really are victims of injustice, but putting unending victimhood at the heart of your identity is a recipe for unhappiness.

1. Fear of public opinion

According to hospice nurses and others who work with the dying, among the most common deathbed regrets is living a life you thought others expected of you rather than one that was true to you. Russell apparently would not have been surprised.

"One should as a rule respect public opinion in so far as is necessary to avoid starvation and to keep out of prison," he wrote, "but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny."

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7 other things worth knowing today

• Writer-producer-developer Norman Lear, who revolutionized American comedy with such daring, immensely popular early-‘70s sitcoms as “All in the Family” and “Sanford and Son,” died on Tuesday. He was 101. (Variety)
• Former House Speaker Rep. Kevin McCarthy wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal in which he says he will leave Congress at the end of this year. McCarthy faced a tumultuous eight-month tenure as speaker: He is the first to ever be removed from power. That campaign was led, in part, by Rep. Matt Gaetz, who simply wrote “McLeavin’” on X after McCarthy’s announcement. (Semafor)​
• The Taylor Swift era continues. The superstar singer-songwriter has been named Time‘s 2023 Person of the Year, the first time that an entertainer has received the honor from the long-running publication. Time announced the Person of the Year on Wednesday morning. (Time)
• Universal Pictures' "Oppenheimer" will screen in Japan next year, a local distributor said on Thursday - a launch that had been in doubt amid criticism that the film largely ignores the devastation of the atomic bombings of the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Christopher Nolan-directed biopic about atomic bomb pioneer J. Robert Oppenheimer has grossed over $950 million globally since its July opening. (Reuters)
• The BBC on Tuesday relaunched its North American website as a part broader push to grow its business and audiences in the U.S. and abroad, BBC Studios' CEO of global distribution Rebecca Glashow tells Axios. Why it matters: The move comes as the storied public broadcaster faces increased pressure from U.K. regulators over public funding. (Axios)
• The military announced late Wednesday it was grounding all of its Osprey V-22 helicopters, one week after eight Air Force Special Operations Command service members died in a crash off the coast of Japan. The Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps took the extraordinary step of grounding hundreds of aircraft after a preliminary investigation of last week’s crash indicated that a materiel failure — that something went wrong with the aircraft — and not a mistake by the crew led to the deaths. (AP)​
• William P. Murphy Jr., the medical innovator of vinyl blood bags, died at 100. Talk about an invention we take for granted; bulky and fragile glass blood containers were state of the art until Dr. Murphy tested out the idea of vinyl bags near the front lines of the Korean War. I never knew about my near-namesake before reading this obituary, but I'm glad to share this. Rest in peace, Murph. (The Washington Post)

Thanks for reading, and a special welcome to the new readers who subscribed to Understandably since the last edition of this newsletter! Jess wrote about some of this before at Inc.com. See you bright and early tomorrow.