#197 Reminders upon reminders upon reminders

ByLukas
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Intentional living is about reminding yourself of what’s most important to you.

Reminding yourself that you can choose to be a writer, a runner, a musician, an artist, or a bon vivant.

Reminding yourself that you can choose to be kind to others.

Reminding yourself that you have a choice to act differently.

Reminding yourself that the past does not equal the future.

Reminding yourself that this, too, shall pass.

Reminding yourself that at any given moment, whatever reminder you need the most, you likely won’t think of yourself.

Reminding yourself that for this reason, it’s OK to get help and let someone else remind you with short daily notes.

And me, reminding myself that the act of writing daily reminders for you is the reminder I need to remember that I do, in fact, choose to be consistent, and I choose to be a writer.

Reminders upon reminders upon reminders that we will constantly get distracted, and we will always have the choice to come back to what truly matters.

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    #61 Talent vs discipline

    ByLukas

    In all his life Picasso produced about 147,800 pieces, consisting of: 13,500 paintings, 100,000 prints and engravings, 300 sculptures and ceramics and 34,000 illustrations – an impressive 78-year career.

    https://www.pablopicasso.org/picasso-facts.jsp

    13,500 paintings; that’s almost 37 years of producing a painting, every single day.

    How good would you be if you had painted daily for 37 years?

    Maybe still not as good as Picasso. Or maybe better. Hard to tell, because while many people might be born with talent, few people have the discipline to combine it with that level of discipline.

  • #27 Appreciating the meaningless melody of a foreign language

    ByLukas

    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 be soothed by words it does not yet understand, because she senses what’s behind the sounds, lets the meaningless melody cradle her to sleep…

    Similarly, we don’t always have to know what’s behind the words, as long as we make an effort to understand the meaning behind the sounds.

    Hearing a foreign language brings us back to that wordless world the way we experienced it as a newborn, before we tried so hard to put everything within and around us into language.

    It makes us remember, there’s more to life than our words will ever allow us to express. And somehow, that’s a soothing thought.

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    #24 Put your actions where your mouth is

    ByLukas

    Here’s a useful insight from James Clear, author of Atomic Habits:

    Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become.

    https://jamesclear.com/3-2-1/june-4-2020

    Writing every day reaffirms my “I’m a writer” identity.

    Sitting on the couch every day reaffirms my “I’m a couch potato” identity.

    As a consequence: when you change your actions and your identity starts shifting to align with those actions.

    And that’s how we get out of a rut.

    (The opposite isn’t always true: changing your thoughts without changing your actions will rarely shift your identity. I can think of being a writer as much as I want, if I never put any words on paper, I’m not a writer. That’s one of the principle of cognitive dissonance: Actions overrule Thoughts.)

    Here’s how to change your actions and your identity:

    1. First, you decide who you want to be (and what your new identity looks like).
      “I want to be a yogi: someone who regularly practices yoga and takes care of his mind and body.”
    2. Second you get clear on what that would look like in your daily life: which actions you’ll take that are different from the ones you’re taking right now.
      “Instead of watching TV before, my “yogi identity” would do a daily yoga session.
    3. Third, you gain enough leverage over yourself to go against your current habits, and take those different action for a prolonged period of time.
      This is where most resistance comes up, because my old “couch potato identity” is fighting my “yogi” identity — and through my past actions, the couch potato has received WAY more votes than the yogi.
      So you need perseverance at this stage. Remember, every time you take those new actions, you’re voting for your new identity and new habits are taking roots.
    4. At some point, you reach a tipping point productivity experts call “habit escape velocity“: you now have so much momentum that you’re out of the sphere of influence of your old habits, and your new habits (and new identity) can take root.

    Which begs the question…

    Where are you saying you want to be a certain way, but you’re voting for something else through your daily actions?

    Lukas Van Vyve

    Put your money (or your actions) where your mouth is.

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    #60 Memory is context

    ByLukas

    Memory is context – in language and in general.

    Context of words surrounded by other words and sounds within a sentence.

    • apple orchard

    Context of words surrounded by actions – actor, action, object affected (in whatever way or order your mother tongue expresses it).

    • I pick an apple from the tree.

    Context of words and the images they spur.

    • An apple falls on Newton’ head.
    • An apple falls off a tree in my grandparents’ garden.
    • I bite into a green apple – a bit sour. I don’t like it.
    • The first time I combine an apple part with peanut butter. Delicious.

    Context of words and the feelings they evoke.

    • I’m thirsty and hungry after a volleyball game. The first bite of an apple – what a relief.
    • My grandpa cuts an apple and gives me a part. Safety. Home.
    • I eat 2 apples and my mouth starts itching. Allergy? Fear.

    When learning another language, you can link words to the context of your mother tongue.

    But to truly understand them, you’ll have to create a new context too.

    For example, an apple in Spanish: una manzana.

    Seemingly the same object, now perceived through new sounds.

    • huerto de manzanas (apple orchard)

    New actions.

    • Yo limpio una manzana. (I wash/clean an apple.)

    New images.

    • I see una manzana in a Mexican supermarket. Someone is polishing it with wax to make it extra shiny. The first time I saw was in Mexico. So I didn’t see the guy polishing an apple. Vi a un hombre encerando una manzana. (I saw a guy putting wax on an apple.)

    New feelings.

    • Compré una manzana (I bought an apple) and ate it without washing it well. My stomach wasn’t happy with my actions.

    Keeping all that in mind, are we really still talking about the same object? Is the Spanish manzana encerada that made me sick in Spanish the same as the apple my grandpa helped me pick? If it is, do I now have a richer perception of that object that once up on a time, I could only interact with through the limits of one language?

    Learning vocabulary lists with isolated words will never get you fluent in a foreign language.

    If you don’t build a new context of sounds, actions, images, feelings, you’ll always keep imposing your mother tongue on the foreign language.

    That’s why you can’t just learn a foreign language. You have to live it.

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