“A volume for those who don’t just read — they contemplate.”

“Not just a book — an experience for the elegantly attuned mind.”

Get you copy today! Part 1 is out.

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Your offer isn’t the problem; your angle might be.

You’re not selling what you think you’re selling -

You’re selling the next version of who your buyer wants to be.

People don’t buy products; they buy their future self.

So how do you sell? By asking the right questions.

DON’T ask: “How can we sell this product?”

Ask, “Who does this help become their next, better self — and how do we speak to that transformation?”

That’s how you build a brand that resonates — by meeting people where they’re going, not just where they are.

You’re not selling a product — you’re selling a transformation — the future version of your buyer. People don’t buy things; they buy who they believe they’ll become because of what they buy.

So shift your focus. Look at the customer, not at your products. Your product is a bridge to someone’s future.

My offer: Tell me what you’re selling, and I’ll craft the perfect tagline to position your product and personal brand for maximum impact and relevance in the market you’re aiming to capture.

[email protected] or book a call here →

Best,

Esther Fink
Writer — Organizational Psychology Consultant

follow me on 

i wanna sing to you

‘i wanna sing to you,’
i say
but deep down -
who am i kidding,
not deep down at all.
i know
he doesn’t even
like me

i wanna sing to you
i say
i kind of know
ok i know for sure
that he loves me
ok fine he loves
some things about me
you know you could
love some things
about a person
when you don’t
really like them
that much
not that you don’t like
them
but you don’t
really care
if they come or go
cz there are others
you like more

‘i wanna sing to you,’
i say

he’s quiet.

‘i would like that’
he says

and we chuckle
a little
yet here is the
dilemma
why would a person
want to sing to
another person
they know won’t
be
their ride or die
ok so not their ride or
die
just, well, their ride?

‘i wanna sing to you,’
i say
maybe it’s
because
i want someone to sing
to me
ok i want someone
to want
to sing
to
me.
and to want to be
my ride
and my die
not that i want him to die
for me
but you know what
i mean.

so let’s see
who sings for who.
or is it whom.

follow my blog on self mastery at

i wanna sing to him was originally published in Loose Words on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Sharing an amazing source for writers:

Daniel Roth, formerly with Simon & Schuster publishing is offering a 15 minute call to review your first 5 pages of your book to see it’s viability for an agent/publishing.

GRAB this!

Here’s his  — book a call today.

for the free 8-part series on what makes a good story and more publishing tips.

i wanna be sad
but the sun
decided to
stream through my
window
at the precise
moment
that i finished work,
did my carpool run
threw supper in
and take my coffee
up up the stairs
to a planned meltdown

i wanna be sad
but the sun
decided to
stream in the exact
room
on the exact side of
the house
at the exact moment
i had my first sip of
afternoon coffee
that would fuel my
sad cry

i wanna be sad
but the sun decided to
set its gaze
upon my tired
brain and body
and last fucking
fucking nerve
that someone
got on

all turned to
a warm fuzzy
annoying hug by
the universe
and i’m not the
hugging type
i’m just not
but once the sun
setting in the afternoon
over your bedroom
decides
to enter and embrace
whoever’s there
it’s too bad on you

like it or not
you’re trapped
in calm
peace
warmth
kindness
and you forget
that you planned
out your cry and sullenness
and you just stay
there
stuck in a warm sunny
moment

cup of coffee
rays and rays of gold
blinding
you
and you remember to
breathe
and remember
that you have a name
and a plan
and a reason
to be alive
and it doesn’t involve
hard work
hard thoughts
annoying people
with opinions you didn’t
ask for
and there you are
you’re ok
you’re just ok.
and ok is good.

has been submitted for publication today!

I Wanna be sad was originally published in Loose Words on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

“Life is inherently dangerous — we are perched above the abyss.
In LA, we are literally above an abyss in terms of living
on an earthquake faultline.” -Dr. Noah Laracy

A lot of people described the past few weeks as “apocalyptic” but that’s not quite accurate. In an apocalypse, everyone dies.

I interviewed Dr. Noah Laracy, a Los Angeles-based clinical psychologist, specializing in anxiety and courage-building. He has dedicated his career to helping individuals face life’s uncertainties with strength and resilience.

As wildfires continue to ravage the region, Dr. Laracy shares his unique insights on the psychological impact of these disasters and how cultivating courage can empower individuals and communities to navigate the aftermath.

Esther Fink: As a clinical psychologist in California, how do you recommend people cope after the wildfires, both those directly impacted in your neighborhood and your clients, as well as others observing from afar? Could you also tie your insights into your upcoming book?

NL: A lot of people described the past weeks as “apocalyptic” yet it’s not quite accurate. In an apocalypse, everyone dies. In this case, almost everyone is still alive but our vulnerability to sudden death and destruction has been revealed.

We use either control strategies or denial to manage the fear and anxiety that this reality provokes, until events like the LA fires overwhelm them and they break down.

In his book Civilization and its Discontents, Freud talks about the three sources of our suffering:

1) the superior power of nature

2) the frailty of our bodies, and

3) the inadequacies of institutions to protect us.

The fires really accentuated one and three, and two also, to an extent, but thankfully there were not that many deaths compared to the event itself. Yet it revealed how fragile existence really is.

We all read about earthquakes and tsunamis in places across the world, but we create rules that explain why we won’t be affected — i.e., we are in the U.S., they are a third-world country, etc. but these fires affected two communities — one upper class and one middle class, and that could have been anyone’s.

It’s hard to explain this one away through the usual defense mechanisms which is why everyone here is on edge. Many are leaving town, and those that remain are hyper focusing on the air quality.

A significant part of what I discuss in my upcoming book The Iron Path is that a lot of people struggle with confronting reality. To cope, many use one of two strategies: controlling or denial. But neither really works. The key, as I see it, is learning to face reality head-on. That’s what I call “The Iron Path” — a way of moving through challenges instead of avoiding them.

This insight came to me during COVID, when I realized that people didn’t have consistent strategies for dealing with these big moments in which civilization broke down, and the usual ways of handling things just didn’t work. And now, with the wildfires, we’re facing another such moment; a breakdown that forces us to confront our vulnerability.

I do feel like these moments give you an opportunity to reorient yourselves to reality.

Life is finite, and there are limits. There are limits to what we can do, and life is dangerous, but that’s okay, it’s an opportunity to reorient ourselves, to acknowledge life’s dangers while still choosing to move forward.

EF: That really resonates.

NL: Now there are a lot of people that are controllers, and what they do is they focus on one particular aspect of reality that they can control, which gives them a felt sense of security in other aspects of their life. In LA the past week, there’s been this hyperfocus on air quality, and while air quality matters, it’s a way of distracting from the deeper fear: ‘I can focus on air quality, I can get a sense of control and order back in my life.’

This comes to distract from the deeper fear: a fire could destroy your home tomorrow.

These same people have been living in a city with polluted air for twenty or thirty years — and now they are obsessed with air quality.

The wildfires have people panicking on a level I haven’t seen since COVID — maybe even worse.

I watched a recent community meeting about the Palisades online, and comments full of fear, blame, and anger were palpable. People tend to project their frustrations onto the government or civilization, but the truth is, nature is beyond our control, and that’s terrifying.

Freud talked about this a lot; humanity’s vulnerability to nature.

In the end, it’s terrifying, but these events happen all the time, all over the globe; earthquakes, floods and things like that, and this just happened to happen to us. It’s very scary.

EL: That’s such an important perspective. How do we accept the limits of control?

NL: What I can say is to go build, it’s worth it to build your house in the Palisades. That’s fine.

But we also need to accept the limits of control. If you choose to build a house in the Palisades, you have to understand that it could burn down someday. That’s the risk you take, and it’s part of life. Now you’ve got to be willing to accept it if it burns down, that’s the deal. It takes courage to face reality without retreating into distractions.

But go do it, take the risk!

Get your insurance, but take your risk. And that’s part of the fact that life is dangerous, that’s part of the deal, instead of just living a rule-based life of safety.

Unfortunately, much of our system gives the illusion of control without addressing the bigger picture. For example, the Palisades/Malibu area is one of the strictest in terms of zoning and regulations in the U.S. It takes years to get a permit to build anything. It was a controller’s paradise — highly regulated. Yet there was something dishonest about the way these rules were enforced — there was a lack of humility on the part of the government. They took on a position of mastery over reality and this event just made a mockery of that.

Similarly, some safety measures, like taking off your shoes at airport security are more about creating a sense of safety than addressing actual threats.

Yet all the control strategies weren’t enough here. This event really accentuated the limits of human control over nature, and over the terror of existence itself.

And while it’s important to have a degree of control, we can’t let that overwhelm our ability to face reality as it is. Does that make sense?

EL: It makes so much sense. That’s such a powerful message, especially when people feel so lost and anxious. Something you said stood out, which is that I saw someone on social media yesterday walking in California, and she was saying very confidently, that people need to know that California is doing fine, look, the air quality is fine. I thought that was an odd thing to say while much of the fires were still burning, yet she was so adamant that ‘we’re fine, the air quality is tested and it’s fine’.

NL: My thoughts are about the possibility of another fire burning. Yet controllers will say “If I can wear a mask and protect against cancer, the unseen cancer threat, then I’m going to be okay, right? When you work with people with anxiety disorders every day, and then these big events come in, and now everyone gets an anxiety disorder, you just see the same logic, right?

But again, this is what we’re focusing on — the air quality. A town like Altadena is not on the beach, not in a high-risk area. That’s just a random community that just got obliterated one day. And it could happen to you, and it happens all the time in places all over the world, right?

And we just don’t like to think about it, and we make excuses, and we say, oh, that could never happen to us. Well, it just did.

EF: That unpredictability really shakes people.

NL: It does. The idea is that if you learn to just face this and habituate to it, you can become a lot freer, so that you’re not avoiding reality, and it takes courage to face reality on its own terms, rather than create too many distractions. You have to make your life bearable, but, you know, not to have them overwhelm your life.

A shift in perspective is needed.

Life is dangerous, and nobody wants to say that. People like to assign patterns to these things. Maybe it’s just completely random, and that’s what a lot of it is and that’s what makes it so terrifying. People don’t know what to do.

The Iron Path is about building the courage to face life’s uncertainties without being consumed by distractions and self-deception. For me, it’s the best choice available.

EL: That’s exactly what people need to hear right now. Thank you for sharing this, it’s so timely and relevant.

NL: Thank you. I hope this perspective can help people feel freer and more grounded, even in the face of uncertainty.

Dr. Laracy delves deeper into these themes in his upcoming book, The Iron Path, which explores practical strategies for overcoming fear and building inner strength in challenging times. Stay informed on the publishing date and to receive his articles 

The Fragile Ground Beneath Us: Life, Loss, and Resilience in California was originally published in Write A Catalyst on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.