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AUGUST 2025
This newsletter is my life and my livelihood. If How to Live matters to you, please help me keep making it. Become a paid subscriber—or make a recurring or one-time donation—to say: this work matters, keep going. 🙏
On August 6th, 2025, I Wrote About The Con Artist Convincing Millions to Hack Reality
They know his last name —Grabovoi — but not his full name, and not his story.
Millions of TikTok users trace his number sequences onto their wrists like charm bracelets, believing 5207418 will drop an unexpected influx of cash money their way and 318798 will conjure a superfluity of affluence and plenty.
They call them “Grabovoi codes” with reverence, as if invoking an ancient all-knowing wisdom whispered from a single tree rooted deep within the Peruvian Amazon.
What they don’t know is that their prophet, Grigori Grabovi, is a convicted swindler who once promised grieving mothers he’d resurrect their murdered children — for $1,200.
@the.keri.johnson Replying to @😋 I hope this helps #grabovoicodes #grabovoi #Manifest #Manifestation #ManifestMoney #ManifestingMethod #ManifestingTools #Ma... See more
In 1960s Soviet Kazakhstan, Grigori Grabovoi was a quiet, solitary boy obsessed with numbers he’d endlessly sequence in the margins of his notebooks. His mathematical gifts earned him a place at Tashkent State Polytechnic University, where he graduated in 1986 with credentials that should have led to a life of steady Soviet engineering.
Instead, while inspecting aircraft in Uzbekistan, Grabovoi launched his first con: claiming he could detect structural faults without opening planes, seeing through metal hulls with psychic vision.
No independent verification was ever produced. But it hardly mattered. As the Soviet Union crumbled and faith in rational materialism collapsed, people hungered for something beyond the failing state. Grabovoi sensed that hunger — and fed it.
On August 13th, I Wrote About The Easiest People to Control.
The Greatest Danger Isn’t Out There
Many of us grew up believing the greatest threat to democracy was an outside enemy or nuclear disaster.
(Who hid under their desk in the Duck and Cover classroom drills that lasted into the 80s?)
But that isn’t true—not entirely.
The greatest danger lies in our shared psychological blind spots—our inability to see the predictable ways we’re persuaded to act against our own interests. We fear foreign enemies when the more insidious danger is coming from inside the house.
We live in a world where our political leaders create danger that doesn’t exist, convinces citizens they’re under threat, and offer them ways out that only work against their own interests and well-being.
They know what many of us don’t—basic psychology. Yet, access to this knowledge isn’t limited to those in power.
It’s available for everyone.
Freedom isn’t something we possess—it’s something we continually create and defend.
As Timothy Snyder writes in On Freedom, we often mistake liberty to mean having no one tell us what to do. But real freedom is something we sustain together—through truth, solidarity, and keeping the future open to possibilities we can’t yet imagine. When we forget this, we become easy prey for those who seem to speak our language but in reality are quietly narrowing the space of what we can think, say, and do.
How Dangerous Leaders Work
The traits of dangerous leaders are well-documented. The “Dark Triad”—psychopathy, narcissism, and Machiavellianism—appears often, alongside paranoia and moral emptiness, and their tactics are textbook.
On August 20, 2025 I Wrote About How to Spot Manipulation in Real Time.
Last week, I wrote about how poorly equipped we are, as a society, in the basics of Psychology. Without these tools, many of us grow vulnerable to exploitative groups like NXIVM or One Taste, to championing or working for con artists like Anna Delvey or Elizabeth Holmes, and to casting our votes for leaders who erode democracy from the inside out, like Trump, Matt Gaetz, or Marjorie Taylor Greene.
This newsletter exists to democratize psychology — to make its insights and tools available to everyone.
As you read today’s guide, notice how the same red flags that signal corruption in government show up in friendships, workplaces, and intimate relationships. Learning to recognize these signs early can safeguard democracy, as well as the sanctity and sanity of our personal lives.
When I talk about “red flags,” I mean the early warning signs of unhealthy or dangerous behavior — the subtle but telling cues that, if ignored, almost always grow into something worse.
A red flag is the boss who takes credit for your work, the friend who vanishes the moment you need support, the romantic partner who breaks promises and insists it’s no big deal, the politician who blames everyone else for their failures. These signals might seem minor at first, but they are patterns in miniature, pointing toward the harm that will come if they’re overlooked.
I believe people fall into three categories:
Those who can’t identify red flags
Those who can recognize red flags, but don’t know what they foretell
Those who can recognize red flags and know what they foretell
As an adjunctive to last week’s piece, I’m offering this reference guide of Red Flags and what they foretell in politics, the professional realm and in our personal lives.
This guide is designed to move you into the third group.
Hello from upstate New York, where I’ve been holed up since August 10th, attempting the impossible: cranking out a messy first draft of a novel by September 3.
Bonkers?
Absolutely.
But what’s a goal worth if it lacks delirium?
Working outside on a screened-in porch with Busy
Which brings me to today’s theme: goals.
They’re equal parts compass and dare—something to steer by, but also something just out of reach that keeps us moving forward. When I launched this newsletter nearly four years ago, I had a whole constellation of them—visions for what this might be, what it might grow into, what it might hold. Some I’ve met, some I’ve missed, and some have shape-shifted into things I never could have predicted.
Today, I’m sharing that very first piece with you—the one where I first laid out what I hoped this experiment might be, and why I was doing it.
The only change is the addition of links!
Have I lived up or down to your expectations? Tell me in the comments what you want more of, less of; what works for you and what doesn’t.
But mostly, please accept my deepest gratitude for joining me on this challenging, purpose-driven, often agonizing, always worthwhile, delightful ride.
xx, Amanda
Welcome to the very first "How to Live" newsletter post.
In this space, I will interrogate questions of existence, examine why we are the way we are, and wonder aloud about what it means to be human, all to encourage the question: How do I want to live?
Subscribe and receive an email every Wednesday about something psychological!
I am not a psychologist, scientist, or journalist.
I’m just a person whose first 25 years of life were spent suffering from an undiagnosed and untreated panic disorder, as the adults around me misapprehended my symptoms and sent me, year after year, for myriad intelligence and personality tests.
Growing up as a panicked child shaped the person I am. It has led to a lifelong investment in self-interrogation and reflection, while also alerting me to the inadvertent ways well-meaning adults often damage children's fragile psyches.
Thank you for subscribing! If you like this newsletter, please share it with friends!
Until next week, I will remain…
Amanda
P.S. Thank you for reading! This newsletter is my passion and livelihood; it thrives because of readers like you. If you've found solace, wisdom or insight here, please consider upgrading, and if you think a friend or family member could benefit, please feel free to share. Every bit helps, and I’m deeply grateful for your support. 💙
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Share Quick note: Nope, I’m not a therapist—just someone who spent 25 years with undiagnosed panic disorder and 23 years in therapy. How to Live distills what I’ve learned through lived experience, therapy, and obsessive research—so you can skip the unnecessary suffering and better understand yourself.
Some links are affiliate links, meaning I earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. Every bit goes straight back into supporting this newsletter. Thank you!
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