Matthew "Matt" Lindgren, LMFT

Scientific ways your childhood influences your success as an adult. 

(via Your Brain On Coffee vs. Your Brain On Beer | Mental Floss)

forbes:

“When the best things are not possible, the best may be made of those that are.” - Richard Hooker

“When the best things are not possible, the best may be made of those that are.” - Richard Hooker

The Greatest Feats of the Awkward-Social-Situations Escape Artist

newyorker:

The Escape Artist was locked in a bank vault with a friend he secretly had a crush on. As the two-thousand-pound door was swung into place, he asked if she had ever thought about being more than just friends. She said no. He broke out of the vault in the time it took him to say, “Never mind. I was kidding; forget I said anything jk jk jk.”

Read more daring feats on newyorker.com.

Photograph by Time Life Pictures / Mansell / The Life Picture Collection / Getty

The Escape Artist was bound in a straitjacket and locked in a safe. The safe was brought to a housewarming party—one that the Escape Artist didn’t really want to attend—and was placed in the living room, right in the middle of where everyone was hanging out. After two hours had elapsed, partygoers thought for certain that he’d been unable to escape, and decided to let him out so that he could play Never Have I Ever with them. They entered the combination and pulled back the door—only to find that the safe was empty! He had escaped! And no one was offended or thought it was lame that he had left early! The Escape Artist, back at his own apartment, triumphantly sprang forth from his bedroom, astonishing his roommates, who thought he was out for the night. He had removed the uncomfortable straitjacket and put on a nice pair of sweatpants, and he made it to his front door just in time to pay for the Thai food that he had ordered while still inside the safe.

*

He was buried under six feet of dirt in a coffin so small that it could only hold him and a guy he used to work with, but never really talked to, but saw enough that they would nod to each other when they passed in the hall. The Escape Artist clawed his way to freedom moments before he would have run out of oxygen, and also moments before he would have run out of patience with his former co-worker’s stories about “all the crazy stuff that’s been going on at the office lately.”

*

Trapped at his high-school reunion, the Escape Artist was able to make small talk the entire time using nothing more than a few scraps of information from half-remembered Facebook posts. He did this without being manacled, or chained to a rocket, or set on fire, or encased in a glass sphere filled with bees, which actually made this stunt more difficult, since all of those things would have been interesting conversation starters.

*

The Escape Artist was locked in a bank vault with a friend he secretly had a crush on. As the two-thousand-pound door was swung into place, he asked if she had ever thought about being more than just friends. She said no. He broke out of the vault in the time it took him to say, “Never mind. I was kidding; forget I said anything jk jk jk.”

*

The Escape Artist was chained to a platform at the top of the Empire State Building, and his parents were brought up to the platform to have dinner with him. It took him a mere fifty-seven seconds to free himself from the chains, and only an additional hour and fifteen minutes to convince his mom and dad that being an escape artist is a viable career plan and that they should stop nagging him about getting a real job.

*

He was handcuffed, put in a straitjacket, and locked in a steamer trunk that was then frozen in a block of ice and thrown into the East River. It took him almost seventy-two hours to escape, and the audience had nearly given up hope when he finally broke the surface of the water. It was then that he revealed to the crowd the most extraordinary part of the stunt: The entire thing had been arranged so that he would have an excuse not to go to a friend’s wedding! While he was underwater, he’d called his friend and said, “Oh, sorry, I can’t make it to your wedding this weekend. I’m handcuffed, and in a straitjacket, and locked in a steamer trunk that was frozen in a block of ice and thrown into the East River. It’s gonna take me, like, seventy-two hours to escape. Darn! I really wish I could make it, though.” And the friend was definitely disappointed but was, over all, very understanding about the whole situation.

*

There is one stunt that the Escape Artist refuses to discuss, except to say that it was the most difficult and dangerous he ever attempted. One night, he decided to go to bed without listening to music, or watching Netflix, or randomly clicking around the Internet to help him fall asleep. He locked his bedroom door, leaving two assistants outside, ready to rush to his aid in case something went wrong. No one knows exactly what happened, but one assistant claims that, around 1 A.M., she heard the Escape Artist muttering, “If I keep replaying these moments over and over in my head, have I really escaped? And if I haven’t really escaped, then am I a fraud?” However, it was only when the Escape Artist started shouting over and over again, “There is no escape! There is no escape!” that the assistants felt compelled to intervene. They kicked down the door and pulled the Escape Artist clear of the bed. He was shaken, but had sustained no physical injuries. He never attempted the stunt again.