Well-being

A coffee spill, an ancient monk, and the question that could change your whole day

Getting bumped is one thing. Finding out what spills out of you after is the real plot twist.

A lesson shared on The Mindset Mentor Podcast starts with a very ordinary disaster: a cup of coffee, a sudden jolt, and a mess. But the monk at the center of the story takes that annoying little moment and turns it into something much more revealing.

The idea is deceptively simple. Life is going to shake you. The question is not whether that happens. It is what you’re already carrying when it does. Anger? Fear? Judgment? Or something a little softer, a little steadier?

That’s where the story by Mark Wales lands its quiet punch: one small question to ask yourself in the morning before emails, traffic, group chats, and general human chaos enter the arena.

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Science | From the Vault

Neuroscientists say this might be the most relaxing song ever recorded

Enya’s got nothing on this song.

If you’ve been feeling like your blood pressure has its own theme song, here’s some good news from the vault: back in 2011, neuroscientists crowned one ambient track the most relaxing song ever recorded… and in the years since, no challenger has knocked it off the throne.

In a UK study, volunteers tackled stressful puzzles while hooked up to brain monitors. Then researchers hit play on “Weightless” by Marconi Union and saw stress levels drop by a jaw-slacking 65%.

The votes that showered in

Yesterday, we shared the controversial opinion of experts that you may be showering for too long.

How long do GOOD readers spend in the shower? More than half of you clock in at a reasonable 5 to 10 minutes.

• I'm barely in long enough to get wet. (12.5%)

• 5 to 10 minutes, unless it's a special occasion. (52.9%)

• 10 to 20, I have a whole routine to get done. (17.6%)

• The shower is my happy place, I'll get out when I get out. (16.9%)

GOOD reader Reverie One spoke up for the Happy Place minority. They stay in “Until I run out of hot water.”

Culture

One big tip for solving bad small talk

Being more likable might just mean learning to riff.

“So… how about that weather, huh? That rain? Boy, we need that.” You can feel your soul withering and your mind begging you to get out of this conversation. And you were the one talking! Small talk can be the worst. As Erik Barnes explains, the secret to small talk that doesn’t die mid-sentence is something called collaborative riffing.

Think of it as conversational jazz. Instead of asking questions that invite one-word answers, you build a shared moment together. You react, add a little playfulness, and roll with whatever comes up.

Collaborative riffing works because it’s fun, vulnerable, and spontaneous. It creates a quick bond that feels real, not rehearsed. Even if your joke bombs, you’ve already won by being present, human, and a little brave, and Erik teaches you how to do it. You’ll never ask ‘So, what do you do?’ the same way again.

On March 27, 196 BC, a council of Egyptian priests gathered at Memphis and issued a decree honoring the young king Ptolemy V, praising him for tax relief, gifts to temples, and support for the priesthood. The text was carved onto stelae in three scripts: hieroglyphs, Demotic, and Greek, so it could speak to different audiences in a multicultural Egypt ruled by a Greek dynasty. At the time, it was basically official state messaging. In hindsight, it became something much bigger: a time capsule from a world where politics, religion, and language were all tightly braided together.

The Stone itself was rediscovered in 1799 by French soldiers near Rosetta during Napoleon’s Egyptian campaign, after apparently having been reused as building material in a fort. Scholars quickly realized the Greek text might unlock the other two.

Over the next two decades, Thomas Young and then Jean-François Champollion cracked the code, showing that hieroglyphs could represent sounds as well as symbols. One less-known twist: the “hieroglyphic” portion uses an intentionally archaic literary form, already old-fashioned when it was carved. That breakthrough reopened ancient Egyptian history, literature, and religion to the modern world, which is why “Rosetta Stone” still means the key to deciphering something

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💬 From the group text…

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