James Clear · August 7, 2025

3-2-1: On true wealth, the antidote to anxiety, and how to love someone as they change

Glance

In a 3-2-1 newsletter, James Clear shares three ideas on luck, anxiety, and time, two quotes from others, and one reflective question.

Meaning

James Clear offers three ideas: that luck can be attracted by telling people what you are working on, that working on a problem reduces the fear of it because action relieves anxiety, and that having today makes a person richer in time than the 93 percent of all people who have ever lived and died. He then shares a quote from Heidi Priebe on loving someone long-term as attending the funerals of who they used to be and honoring each version they become, and a quote from James Joyce calling mistakes the portals of discovery. He closes by asking which belief once protected you but now confines you.

The author, in their own words

3 IDEAS FROM ME

“You can attract luck simply by telling people what you are working on.”

II.

“Working on a problem reduces the fear of it.

It’s hard to fear a problem when you are making progress on it—even if progress is imperfect and slow.

Action relieves anxiety.”

III.

“You are richer than 93 percent of people. Not in money, but in time.

Over 108 billion people have lived throughout history. 93 percent of them are dead.

You have what every king and queen, every pharaoh and ruler, every CEO and celebrity of the past would give all their wealth and power for:

Today.”

2 Quotes From Others

Author Heidi Priebe on loving someone as they change:

Source: This Is Me Letting You Go

II.

Novelist and poet James Joyce on the value of our errors and blunders:

Source: Ulysses

1 Question For You

Which belief once protected you, but now confines you?

Key Passages

“To love someone long-term is to attend a thousand funerals of the people they used to be. The people they're too exhausted to be any longer. The people they don't recognize inside themselves anymore. The people they grew out of, the people they never ended up growing into. We so badly want the people we love to get their spark back when it burns out; to become speedily found when they are lost. But it is not our job to hold anyone accountable to the people they used to be. It is our job to travel with them between each version and to honor what emerges along the way.”