Welcome to One Thing Better. Each week, the editor in chief of Entrepreneur magazine (that’s me) shares one way to achieve a breakthrough at work — and build a career or company you love.
Today’s edition is sponsored by Riverside, the leading podcast creation platform. Learn more below.
I recently caught up with a friend who’s going through a lot of personal and family turmoil.
“I feel completely broken,” she told me. “And I don’t know how to come back.”
That image — of her being broken — reminded me of one of the most fascinating things I’ve ever learned, about how our memories work, and how we understand ourselves.
Today, I want to share that with you, just as I shared it with her. So in the times when you feel crushed under the weight of something, or that something has fundamentally changed you — well, maybe you can find your way back a little easier.
How memory actually works
A while back, I got curious about how our memories work. So I called a Duke professor named Felipe De Brigard, who studies it. He told me something I’ve thought about ever since.
Our brains, he explained, are not built to remember things perfectly.
To appreciate this, first consider how a camera works. It captures exactly what it sees in one complete file. Whenever you open the file, you get a perfect rendition of the photograph every time.
Our brains do not work like this. When we experience something worth remembering, our brains split that memory into lots of small fragments. Then, whenever we recall that memory, our brains reassemble those little fragments — literally reconstructing the memory in our minds.
And each time we do this, the memory changes a little.
Felipe described it like a paleontologist reconstructing a dinosaur skeleton. If you have a collection of bone fragments, you’ll try to assemble them as best you can — but some of the pieces will be lost. So there are gaps in the bone. You must fill in the gaps with your most educated guesses.
We do something similar: When our brains reassemble our memories, we don’t have all the fragments. Some are gone, forgotten. So we fill in the missing pieces — and here’s the fascinating part — with our imagination. The parts of our brain associated with memory and imagination are closely related. So we imagine the parts that are missing, then experience them as if they’re the real memory.
This is what we’re all doing, all the time.
Our brains are not built to reconstruct perfect memories, because we are not meant to be anchored to the past. Instead, our brains enable us to become a somewhat different person over time, in the same way a memory becomes somewhat different whenever we recall it.
Our understanding of ourselves, and of the world, is always in fragments. It’s always a little broken. We are always broken, constantly reassembling ourselves — filling in the gaps as we choose, sometimes consciously, sometimes not.
A more poetic way of saying it
I shared everything above with my wife, Jen, who in turn showed me a poem she recently read and loved. It’s called “Lead,” by Mary Oliver.
It begins:
Here is a story to break your heart. Are you willing?
Then it tells the story of dying birds. It’s sad. And at the end, Mary Oliver writes:
I tell you this to break your heart, by which I mean only that it break open and never close again to the rest of the world.
That ending really touched Jen. She told me why:
“It’s basically saying that, in order to experience the fullness of life and open yourself up to the world, there’s pain involved in that,” Jen said. “You have to break your heart open. And what I love about that is: It takes this idea of a broken heart, which is this fully negative thing where you’re left bereft and have nowhere to go and nothing else to do, and it turns it into an action. Actually, you have to break open your heart in order to grow.”
Two ideas, one truth
Memory science and this poem seem to be saying the same thing.
When we feel broken, we feel like we’ve departed from the version of ourselves we want to be. And we have, in a way. That’s hard. I’m not saying it’s not, or trying to diminish that.
But what if it’s also okay? What if it’s an opportunity — to take the pieces of ourselves apart, keep the best ones, mix them with some new pieces, and reassemble ourselves into something bigger, something growing, something never fully put together?
Our memories don’t survive intact. Neither do we. We are always reconstituting, always filling gaps, always becoming a slightly different version of who we were.
So if you feel broken right now — if something has cracked open in your life, your relationships, your sense of self — you don’t have to see that only as loss.
You can see it as what it also is: a newly open heart. A chance to gather the fragments, keep what still serves you, and let something new fill in the rest.
That’s how to do one thing better.
Here’s how I make all my podcasts…
I’ve recorded thousands of podcast episodes on Riverside, and here’s the three-part formula that actually keeps people listening.
- PROMISE: Most shows start by introducing the guest. But that’s not relevant to listeners! Instead, start episodes by promising exactly what listeners will learn. Because that’s worth sticking around for.
- DIVE: Too many hosts stick to a list of pre-written questions. That makes the conversation stilted. Instead, listen close and ask follow-ups. Your goal should be to dive deep and gain nuance.
- TIGHTEN: So many podcasts record for 60 minutes and release everything. Boring! Instead, edit it down to just the best stuff (probably 30-40 minutes). That’s respecting your audience’s time.
And here’s the best way to do that end-to-end: Riverside.
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Riverside makes podcasting easy, so you can focus on being an engaging host (which is the harder part!).
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