Health

The confidence trick hiding in your lunch order, Netflix pick, and inbox

Confidence is a daily habit, not a personality trait.

Have you been to a Raising Cane’s? It’s a chicken-finger place that, I kid you not, only serves chicken fingers. All you have to decide at the drive-thru speaker is how many you want and what to drink. This simplicity is the chain’s real secret sauce. No decisions to make. Something about ordering a three-finger combo and a Coke Zero with total confidence feels amazing.

As Erik Barnes reports, we’re all drowning in decision fatigue. Life constantly demands little choices. Where most of us feel irritation, business coach Natalie Ellis sees an opportunity to build confidence. She argues that confidence doesn’t magically appear when big life decisions show up. It’s trained through micro-decisions. What should you watch on Netflix? Feel the surge of power from just picking something in the first 90 seconds. And if the show stinks, you still walk away trusting your own decision-making a little more.

Yesterday’s Results

All the way back on Tuesday, we asked which classic Christmas film features the line “It's a one-year membership to the Jelly of the Month Club,“ and 70% of you knew that it was one of my family’s favorites, National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation.

• Elf (11.8%)

• Miracle on 34th Street (5.9%)

• National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation (70.6%) ✅

• A Muppet Christmas Carol (11.8%)

And you know what, Clark? That's the gift that keeps on giving the whole year.

Culture [From the GOOD Vault]

Wiping with trees, drilling teeth, and other "normal" things the future will roast us for

Looking ahead to 2026 is too easy, let’s talk about 2075.

Predicting the future is a dangerous game. We recently covered how badly it went for one poor writer at GQ in the 90s. That didn’t stop Reddit from taking a whack at it. So what did they guess we’d catch flak for in the future?

Some of the top predictions hit hard (drilling teeth, for-profit healthcare, child influencers), others are just brutally accurate (still wiping with toilet paper?!).

As one commenter put it, “They cut down trees just to wipe themselves?” Future folks might need therapy just learning about us.

Others that got dragged: factory farming, fast fashion, chemo, and working 40-hour weeks just to afford rent.

Curious what else made the list in this piece by Adam Albright Hanna?

Culture

A fire alarm, a hoodie, and a 9-year-old’s last dollar

A rough start to the day led to a moment that quietly restored one man’s faith in people.

Matt Busbice wasn’t having a good morning. He’d been dragged from bed by a fire alarm and had to go into the world without the normal morning routine. He was so disheveled, apparently, that 9-year-old Kelvin Ellis (no relation to the Natalie Ellis from our first story) mistook him for a homeless man.

What could have been an insult added to injury, however, turned into a moment that reaffirmed Busbice’s faith in humanity. Instead of staring or whispering, young Kelvin Ellis reached into his pocket, pulled out his only dollar, and offered it without hesitation.

As Adam Albright Hanna reports, Busbice is actually a Baton Rouge entrepreneur and millionaire. But what stuck with him was not the misunderstanding. It was the instinct. The generosity. And the reminder that kindness does not wait for perfect information.

Read the whole story to see how Busbice rewarded the young man’s good deed.

If you’re planning to catch a movie this weekend, you’ll be partaking in a ritual that began on this day, December 26, 1906, with the premiere of the world’s first feature-length film. 119 years ago, The Story of the Kelly Gang opened in Melbourne, Australia. Directed by Charles Tait, a theater director of the stage variety, Kelly Gang premiered when audiences were only just getting used to one-reel short films.

The film was a critical success, reportedly recouping its budget in just a few screenings and eventually grossing “in excess of $25,000.” That’s just shy of one million in modern dollars. Not bad for a film that debuted in a world before mass marketing, trailers, and home theater deals.

What’s left of the film has been restored and preserved, and you can watch it now.

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We’re always on the lookout for uplifting, enlightening, and engaging content to share with readers like you. If you have something you think should be featured in the Daily GOOD, let me know!

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