#186 The hour of misery

Be a writer, and write.
Be a runner, and run.
Be a singer, and sing.
Be a teacher, and teach.
Be a parent, and love your children.
Be a lover, and love your partner.

I believe this is who I am. I believe this is what I do.
I believe I am free. And so are you.

“Is this really important right now?” I ask myself, as another distraction passes through my head.

I imagine an old wise man, disturbed from his task at hand, looking up.

“No? Can you come back later then, at a more appropriate time? Thank you very much.”

Back to work he goes.

“Is this really a life-threatening event?” I ask myself, as another anxiety-inducing thought intrudes my mind.

I imagine the same old wise man, fending off a harassing distraction.

“No? Can you come back with a message more appropriate to the severity of the event? Thank you very much.”

On with life he goes.

If only it were that easy, my friend.

The distracted, anxious, worried mind tends to fight back. I’m taking the liberty to assume you’ve also noticed that at some point in your life.

Nevertheless, I believe we can, nay, we must fight back.

Not that I’m advocating suppression.

Excited, worried, sanguine, anxious, passionate, defeated: let them have their moment of attention – at the appropriate time.

Maybe it’s all about the art of making all the selves get along?

I imagine the old wise man, who has mastered that art.

I know I’m not that old wise man yet.

But I could be, if I make it a point to practice every day.

And so could you, if you make it a point to practice every day.

If that’s something that’s important to you, of course. That’s for you to decide, in your personal situation and in your personal life.

Most people don’t see why you’re taking time out of your busy day to sit down and write until the book you were working on every day lies in front of them.

They don’t see why you run every day and eat clean until you set a personal best at the next marathon.

They don’t see the new product you’re working on until it’s developed so far that it helps them achieve their goals.

You’re the only one who sees the method to your madness.

And that’s fine.

Because you probably don’t see the method to their madness either.

A memory is what we decide to remember from an experience – and what we decide to delete and forget.

Intuition is the instant hunch we get after we’ve repeatedly created memories from experiences; the moment we don’t need the conscious memory anymore.

A small (or unrepresentative) sample size leads to inaccurate intuition.

If I’m betrayed three times in my life and have created strong memories around that, my intuition whenever meeting anyone else may be that they’ll betray me too. Three bad experiences have shaped, and skewed, my relationship to billions of others.

How to develop accurate intuition?

The more memories we create, the bigger the “sample size” for our intuition to emerge from, and the smaller the weight of “outlier events” (like being betrayed).

The more deliberately we create these memories, the more deliberately we hone intuition.

Create more memories. And create them deliberately.