Insights
#37 The time you’re living anyway
Question: Do you know how old I’ll be by the time I learn to play the piano? Answer: The same age you will be if you don’t. Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way Some skills take years of practice before I’m any good at them. But I’m living those years anyway. And while society and systemic…
#36 Life isn’t better when you’re a bad forgetter
Perfect recall is paralyzing. Not everything is worth remembering. And life isn’t better when you’re a bad forgetter. Maybe life becomes easier to navigate if we remember the fact that we’ll always make mistakes – and the lessons we learn from them – yet forget (forgive) the specific slip-ups we and others make.
#35 Why time speeds up and the world become blurry
The first hour after I was born, 60 minutes encapsulated my entire life outside the womb. An hour is an eternity. When I celebrated my first trip around the sun, one year encapsulated my entire life outside the womb. An hour is not that long anymore. But a year… that’s an eternity. When I’ll celebrate…
#34 Where else?
Regularly asking “Where else?” is one of the simplest ways to become more creative and generate innovative insights. Not only does this allow you to connect new insights with existing knowledge and experience, but it also invites you to imagine new use cases. “Where else have I seen this (or something similar) before?” “Where else…
#33 There’s power in publishing imperfect work.
656 days ago, I started writing 3 pages of stream-of-consciousness journaling a day. That’s an inner dialogue of 1968 pages poured into piles of journals now safely stuffed away. 30 days ago, some of those thoughts started making their way to my blog. I promised myself that if I made it to 30 daily posts…
#32 Before I learned not to listen
Before I learned not to listenI would standseemingly stillbut secretly swayingswallowed up by a willow tree and its play with the wind Before I learned not to listenI would hold my head against the rindreachreconnect with an old friendthe way it has always felt bestcheek pressed to chest Before I learned not to listena breeze…
#31 Ignore, then highlight more
A daily insight from Tony Robbins: Wherever focus goes, energy flows. Tony Robbins, https://www.tonyrobbins.com/career-business/where-focus-goes-energy-flows/ We’re always ignoring and highlighting parts of our experience to make sense of the world – and it determines the way we feel. To feel bad, you (temporarily) have to ignore all the events and things you consider positive. To feel…
#30 Words that feel like coming home
This book put into words something I didn’t even know I had forgotten: that we’re all animal, but our minds deny it, so we have to learn to become animal again. With the memory of what being animal is likeback on my mindthe earth is my home again.
#29 The myth of self-sabotage
All behavior is inspired by avoiding pain or gaining pleasure – and since you usually act on what your brain perceives as the most intense of the two. So if you think you desire something, but then “sabotage” yourself so you never get what you desire, that means you have mixed feelings about desire (and…
#28 Write anyway – then write some more
Think you don’t have any good ideas to write about? Write anyway. Then write some more. The ideas might well reveal themselves on the page. (Morning Pages are good for this) Have an idea but struggle to put it into words? Write anyway… Then write some more. Struggling to edit your work and get it…
#27 Appreciating the meaningless melody of a foreign language
Learning a foreign language is both a frustrating and liberating experience. We can focus on the frustration of not understanding the words the way we understand our mother tongue. Or we can realize that without the words, we are free to fall back on other ways of capturing and understanding meaning. A crying baby can…
#26 Becoming less blind to what’s already here
I write about the same topics over and over again, with slightly different words. I listen to people explaining the same topics over and over again, with a slightly different interpretation. I practice the same breathing exercises every day, becoming aware of changes so subtle it’s hard to believe they make any difference. While all…