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Below, Kati Morton shares five key insights from her new book, Why Do I Keep Doing This?: Unlearn the Habits Keeping You Stuck and Unhappy. Kati is a licensed therapist, author, and content creator. For over 14 years, she has been helping people better understand their mental health through therapy and YouTube videos. Whats the big idea? Why do we fall into the same patternswhether thats people-pleasing, perfectionism, or emotional numbingeven when we know theyre not good for us? These strategies help us feel safe, but replacing that armor with inner strength lets us move with freedom instead of fear. Listen to the audio version of this Book Biteread by Kati herselfin the Next Big Idea App. 1. Control is a survival strategy. We often think of control as a personality trait or state of being. We say things like, Im just a control freak, or Dont worry, Ive got everything under control. But control isnt a state of being; its how we learned to survive. Its the way our nervous system tries to protect us when life feels unpredictable. As children, many of us learned that being good, quiet, or perfect helped us stay safe or loved. Those patterns became invisible armor. So as adults, we micromanage, overthink, or self-criticizenot because we enjoy it, but because deep down, it still feels like the way to stay safe. For me, when things at home felt out of my control, I would focus on what I could control: my grades, how clean my room was, how well I performed. That false sense of control helped me self-soothe when everything else felt uncertain. Understanding this changes everything. Instead of shaming ourselves for needing control, we can get curious: What is this control trying to protect me from? What feels unpredictable in my life right now? That curiosity opens the door to deeper understanding. We cant change what we dont first understand. When we stop fighting our patterns and start understanding them, we realize nothing is wrong with us. Were just trying to stay connected and safe. Control was never the problemit was our bodys best attempt at protection. 2. People-pleasing isnt about being nice. People-pleasing often gets labeled as kindnesssomething we wear as a badge of honor. But its really fear in disguise: fear of rejection, abandonment, or conflict. Many of us learned early on that meeting everyone elses needs was the safest way to belong. When we spend all our energy anticipating what others want, we lose touch with what we want. I used to think being a people-pleaser made me a good personthat putting others first was selfless and admirable. But during one therapy session, my therapist told me something that completely stopped me in my tracks. She said, People-pleasing is actually a form of manipulation. I was shocked. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized she was right. I wasnt trying to make others happy because I cared so deeply about how they felt. I was doing it because I couldnt tolerate any discomfort. Pleasing them was how I managed my own anxiety. People-pleasing doesnt bring us closer to others; it disconnects us from ourselves. When we spend all our energy anticipating what others want, we lose touch with what we want. Over time, that can lead to resentment, exhaustion, and even depression, because were living a life that looks good to others but doesnt feel true to us. The first step toward change isnt suddenly saying no to everything. Its to pause before saying yes. Ask yourself: Am I doing this out of genuine care and desire, or out of fear? That small question helps separate your worth from your usefulness. Healthy relationships dont require you to disappear to stay loved. Honoring your own needs isnt selfishits how you build real connection. 3. Perfectionism is a moving target. Perfectionism often feels like the motivating factor that keeps us striving. But beneath it is a deep sense of not enough. We chase flawless performance because we believe that if we can finally get it right, well earn the attention or approval weve been craving. The problem is that perfection is a moving target. Each achievement gives a brief hit of relief before the next should appears. Thats because perfectionism isnt about successits about safety. No mistakes mean no criticism. Doing everything right prevents rejection. Instead of asking Was it perfect?, ask Did I feel connected?’ For me, perfectionism started early. My dad worked away from home for long stretches of time, and I remember believing that if I just did everything perfectlyif I was first chair in band or made the varsity teamhed want to come home more often. I thought my achievements could somehow earn his presence. It took me a long time to realize that his work schedule had nothing to do with how well I was doing, and that my worth wasnt something I had to prove. The antidote to perfectionism isnt lowering your standards, but rather shifting your focus from performance to connection. Instead of asking Was it perfect?, ask Did I feel connected? Growth doesnt come from flawless execution; it comes from the willingness to show up, try, fail, and learn. When we allow ourselves to be human, we stop hustling to earn our worth and start realizing that weve always been enough. 4. Suppression isnt strength. Many of us (myself included) grew up believing that staying calm, composed, and fine was the mature thing to do. But emotional suppression isnt strengthits self-abandonment. When we push feelings down, they dont disappear; they just get buried in our bodies, showing up later as anxiety, irritability, or burnout. Emotions arent bad things. Theyre signals that tell us when something matters, hurts, or needs attention. At times when Ive been holding everything together for too longpushing through stress, ignoring frustration, pretending Im fineit always finds a way out. Usually, its when Im watching TV and a commercial about an aging dog comes on, and suddenly Im sobbing on the couch. Its not really about the commercial, of course; its all the unspoken, unfelt emotions finally asking to be felt. Learning to feel doesnt mean losing control. It means expanding your capacity to stay with discomfort without letting it consume you. Thats real resilience. Naming emotions helps regulate the nervous system and makes them feel less overwhelming. A simple practice is to name what you feel out loud: I feel sad, I feel angry, I feel scared. Naming emotions helps regulate the nervous system and makes them feel less overwhelming. Over time, this builds a sense of internal trust: I can handle my feelings instead of running from them. True strength isnt about being unshakeable. Its about being able to bend without breaking. 5. Healing is about letting go, not losing control. Letting go is hard because it can feel like free-falling. For people (like myself) whove relied on control to survive, loosening that grip can feel unsafe, even when its what we need to grow. For a long time, I thought letting go meant not caringthat if I wasnt worrying or trying to manage everything, it meant I was being irresponsible or indifferent. But I eventually realized that letting go isnt about giving up; its about redefining what safety looks like. Its about trusting that I can care deeply without trying to control every outcome. That shift from control to trust has been one of the most freeing lessons of my life. Letting go isnt about chaos or indifference. Its about trusttrusting that you can handle life as it unfolds, without needing to manage every detail. Its about moving from hypervigilance to faith. I see this so often, both in my patients and in myself. Theres control that keeps us grounded, like setting boundaries or creating structure. And then theres control that keeps us stuck and stops us from reaching out, trying new things, or letting people in. Healing means noticing when control is helping you feel safe . . . and when its keeping you from living your life. That shift from control to trust has been one of the most freeing lessons of my life. When we let go of the illusion of control, we make space for authenticity. The goal isnt to stop caring or planning; its to stop living out of fear. Because real freedom isnt about having control over everythingits about no longer needing to. Enjoy our full library of Book Bitesread by the authors!in the Next Big Idea app. This article originally appeared in Next Big Idea Club magazine and is reprinted with permission.
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Back in October, Google ended software support for the original and second-generation Nest Learning Thermostats. On the surface, that doesnt seem totally unreasonable, considering those original devices are roughly 14 years old at this point. If you have one, you can still use it as a thermostat, but it will no longer connect to the internet. As a result, you cant connect to it using the Nest or Google Home apps. That may not seem like a big deal, except that the single greatest thing about using a Nest Thermostat wasnt the fact that it would learn your habits and create routines, or that it would detect when youre not home and adjust accordingly. No, the best thing about using a Nest Thermostat was that you could open the app and turn on the furnace before you headed home from the company Christmas party. The best thing about Nest was that it took the single most boring thing in your home and made it smart. The problem is, those devices are still working just fine. In many homes, the hardware works exactly as well as it did the day it was installed. I know this to be true because ours is one of them. We have a second-generation Nest Learning Thermostat and the only thing wrong with it is that Google decided to kill its absolute best feature. The smart-home dream Nest was started in 2011 by Tony Fadell, whose primary design accomplishment before that was inventing the iPod. The idea was simpletake the most boring household hardware device and turn it into magic. The original Nest Learning Thermostat was both incredibly well designed and also magically smart. It learned user behavior, saved energy, and looked good doing it. Nest quickly became the most recognizable name in the beginning days of the smart-home market. Google bought Nest in 2014 for $3.2 billion, signaling how important the company believed the connected home would become. For a while, Nest operated semi-independently, expanding into products such as smoke detectors, cameras, and doorbells. Eventually, Google folded Nest back into its hardware division. That shift brought tighter integration with Google Assistant and a unified smart-home platform, but it also marked the end of Nest as a standalone brand with its own roadmap. Google changes direction Over the past decade, Google has reworked the Nest lineup into a broader Home ecosystem. Some early devices aged out as the company consolidated platforms, rewrote its smart-home APIs, and shifted from Works With Nest to Works With Google Home. Support challenges for aging hardware, combined with Googles push for Matter-compatible, Assistant-driven devices, led to a gradual pruning of Nests earliest products. Today, Nest is no longer the flagship brand for smart homes. Instead, its more of a subbrand within Googles hardware portfolio. Because technology is apparently obligated to continue to march on, Google says that the oldest Nest Thermostats are basically obsolete. Sure, theyll continue to worksort of. You can manually control the temperature on the thermostat, whichby the wayis also something you can do on much older thermostats. With the Nest, however, you just have to overlook the part about not connecting to the internet, which is pretty much the main reason you bought it in the first place. Just dont break things that work fine Look, I dont know what the lifespan should be for a smart thermostat, but I do know that for as long as it continues to operate, it should do the thing you were promised when you bought it. I get that there are reasons that companies end support for older devices. At some point, you cant continue to develop software for devices that dont have the hardware to run it. According to Google, It has become increasingly challenging to continue to update these products given the early hardware. The thing is, a thermostat doesnt really need updates. It doesnt need new software. It literally just needs to do the thing it did the day you bought it. Whichin this caseis to control your heat and air conditioning in the app. Thats the promise Nest sold from the beginning, and breaking that promise comes at a high cost. In fact, Id argue the cost is so high that breaking it is the one thing no company should ever do. Jason Aten This article originally appeared on Fast Companys sister publication, Inc. Inc. is the voice of the American entrepreneur. We inspire, inform, and document the most fascinating people in business: the risk-takers, the innovators, and the ultra-driven go-getters that represent the most dynamic force in the American economy.
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Ads already follow you wherever you go. Theyre on your TV, your phone, your train careven on your airline tray table and escalator. Now, theyll soon be in your chatbot, too. OpenAI announced last week that it will begin selling ads in ChatGPT. The move opens up a potentially massive revenue source for OpenAIand is a huge threat to Googles world-dominating ad empire. Heres why. ChatGPT, Sell Me a Toaster For years, OpenAI has resisted the siren song of advertising and has kept its chatbot largely open to the world. Thats gone well for the company. Offering a massively valuable product for free has been, unsurprisingly, popular. ChatGPT now has a reported 900 million monthly users. Of those, 95% are on the companys Free or Go tiers, which means they either pay $8 per month for the service or nothing at all. Providing cutting-edge AI to a tenth of humanity, though, is exquisitely expensive: OpenAI expects to burn through $115 billion in the next few years. To raise that kind of money, OpenAI needs to prove that it can monetize its vast trove of free users. Advertising, traditionally, has been the way to make money from nonpaying eyeballs. Indeed, in its announcement, OpenAI confirmed that its ads will initially be limited to Free and Go users. They will appear below organic answers and be specifically identified as advertising. The company says that the content of ads wont determine the answers that ChatGPT givesif you ask it for a toaster recommendation, for example, it wont write glowingly about a toaster brand that happens to be an ad partner. But if you ask the bot how to fix your broken toasterand it turns out your current appliance is a lost causeChatGPT might present you with paid ads for a replacement. A Better Mailbox Showing contextual ads beside organic search results is hardly new: Thats been Googles business model for decades, and it makes the tech giant hundreds of billions per year. Whats different, though, is how OpenAI can target its ads. Matching ads to a specific user is hard. Google has traditionally done it by gathering vast troves of data about all of us, and then mining that data for insights on what we might buy. In some cases, its obvious what ad Google should show. If you search flights to Aruba, youre probably traveling to Aruba, and the company can profitably show you a bazillion ads for Aruba hotels, Aruba rental cars, and the like for the next several months. But more than half of Google queries are navigational. These are purely transactional phrases that people type into the search engine in order to find something else. Many more queries are short and ambiguous. Looking at my own recent Google search history, for example, I typed in queries including Sonicare skip slow start, Rancho San Ramon Community Park, and what minor American celebrities are big in Japan. Good luck figuring out what ads to serve me based on that. In contrast, when people chat with ChatGPT, they tend to do so for a long time. The average session with the chatbot reportedly lasts 12 minutes and 24 seconds. Thats long enough to exchange a lot of information. And all that information gives the bot a strong sense of what the user wantsor might want to buy. In a recent session with ChatGPT, for example, I had a detailed conversation about whether a specific piece of lumber was pressure-treated, and how this might affect my ability to use it in my laser cutter. From our long chat, the bot now knows the exact project Im working on (replacing a mailbox). If ads were live, it could use that context to try to sell me all manner of related things: better lumber, metal mailbox bases, construction adhesive, and the like. And it gets even better. ChatGPT knows Im building a mailbox. But with its Memory function, it remembers from our previous chats the exact model of laser cutter I have, where I live, and much else about me. That would potentially allow the bot to serve me ads not just for lumber, but also for lumber that works in my laser cutter, would hold up well to the climate in California where I live, and would be easy for me to work with, given my exceedingly limited patience and skill for woodworking. A Shot Across the Bow OpenAIs exquisite knowledge of its users needs means it can likely sell ChatGPT ads for a premium. And because so many people use the bot, its potential ad market is massive. That makes OpenAI a huge threat to Google, the dominant player in the digital advertising market. The search engine processes about 8.5 billion queries per day. Since the average person searches Google about four times per day, that means Google Search likely has around 2.5 billion active users. Thats roughly triple OpenAIs user base. But OpenAI is still growing aggressively. And again, the companys users spend far longer with ChatGPT than Googles users spend on its search engine: 12 minutes versus as little as five seconds for a Google search. The combination of a gigantic audience and lots of engagement timeplus a huge amount of targeting datameans OpenAI has all the tools it needs to threaten Googles ad dominance in very short order. And theres precedent for a new entrant to the ad world gaining ground quickly. In 2019, Amazon had only $12.63 billion in ad revenue. But 2024, that number swelled to $56.21 billion and is still growing. And thats with far fewer users than OpenAI. Make no mistake, then. OpenAIs announcement is a shot across Googles bow. The company says its ad program is still in a testing phase. But so was ChatGPT when the company launched it. That OpenAI product completely changed the fabric of the digital world, altering how artificial intelligence is built and sold. OpenAIs ads could soon do the same for the way its monetized.
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