Working through an insanely optimistic plan changes how you think.
Keep your small daily habits, continue to aggregate your marginal gains, but occasionally go through intense exercises involving schemes for way too much money, insane destinations, and novel values. It can entirely change your life.
Category: Growth
- Theme: Growth
Planning beyond reason
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1–2 minutes - Theme: Growth
Find yourself by subtraction
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1–2 minutesTo know who you are, quit chasing and adding. Try restricting your activities. Your increase in focus will be more revealing.
By quitting most things, you give the remaining items more importance and intensity, and in their growth, you find yourself. - Theme: Growth
He who dies with the most toys wins
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1–2 minutes"He who dies with the most toys wins" is a child-like sentiment, and yet there is comfort in the physical items that surround us. They offer a concrete means to validate our place in the world, which delivers tangible stability.
When do we graduate from childhood’s external value measures to the maturation of internal worth? Hopefully, before we die.
- Theme: Growth
Practice knowing your value
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1–2 minutesIf you do not get what you want out of a situation, you may be unreasonable (unrealistic), which should be tested through more conditions until a pattern emerges. But most of us stay servile and complacent: accepting of the status quo.
What you miss out on is the beautiful fullness of being you to the extreme, knowing your worth not just internally but in society, and being appreciated for it. - Theme: Growth
We don’t learn from mistakes
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1–2 minutesIf we learned from mistakes, we wouldn’t keep making the same ones repeatedly.
We learn from reflecting on the mistake and making a plan to behave differently. When we fail again, we have gained insight into one more way not to do a thing. - Theme: Growth
Mistakes cost you 3 or 4 times
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1–2 minutesA mistake costs you three times, sometimes four.
The first time you do it and mess up, the second time is taking it apart, and the third time is putting it back together properly.
The fourth time is when you need to gather more materials after ruining some. - Theme: Growth
Causes in the past rob you of your present
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1–2 minutesEtiology is the study of a cause, or causation, while teleology is the study of the purpose of a phenomenon.
When we focus too much on etiology we become deterministic: this was caused by that. We are detectives uncovering the cause-effect relationship and we allow ourselves to be determined by the past.
When we focus on teleology we look for “the role” achieved by a phenomenon/behavior to uncover its “goal.” Not what caused it, but what is its purpose. As in, “Why do you insist on letting your past control your present?”
The answer is often because it serves me well to blame the past rather than undertake the hard work of changing in the present.
“People are not driven by past causes, but move toward goals that they themselves set.”
The Courage to be Disliked - Theme: Growth
Giving yourself Away or Holding yourself tight
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1–2 minutesYou can dump yourself into the world, holding nothing back. Even after giving away everything, you will still be here.
Or, you can hold onto your "self" using the strain and pressure to shape a fortified self. And, yet, if that collapses you will still be here. - Theme: Growth
You can’t be harmless and thrive in the world
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1–2 minutesIt is a paradox to thrive in the world and be harmless. To thrive means you exceed survival, which means you have some skill. You may choose to appear harmless, but with sufficient skill, you are armed for harm.
- Theme: Growth
We are paid to test our foresight
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1–2 minutesThe work begins before the “work.”
Most of our work is knowing what to prepare for: foresight from former floundering.
The dynamic moment of doing the work (the moment we charge for) is the testing ground against which we gauge our mental models, and appear worthy of the challenge.