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  • #356 Don’t be guilted into discipline

    You don’t become truly happy when a Duolingo owl, notifications, or leaderboards guilted them into spending hours on their phone – even if they learn something.

    Could we create learning environments that build self-trust (you showed up because it’s important for you to show up)?

    Discipline (I stuck to my plan and I feel good about it)?

    Agency (I chose to do this today)?

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    #45 The tragedy of the spoken word

    Language helps us describe the world we perceive. Yet in doing so, it closes our eyes, our ears, our touch, and our heart to the parts of the world we don’t have words for.

    Every language is a lens on a felt reality within and around us – both clarifying and categorizing the world, and limiting it by the words it has available.

    Learning more languages gives you new lenses – and a richer sense of reality.

    But just like the structure of our ears limit the sounds we can hear, and the structure of our eyes limit colors we can see, the structure of any language somehow limits our felt experience of the world.

    How do we re-access memories, emotions, hidden away in a long-forgotten language?

    How do we re-learn to listen to the voices of the wordless world speaking to our animal self… the voices that once upon a time, before verbal language emerged, were all we had?

    there’s an eternal song
    drowned out by the confines of my mother tongue
    a wordless melody that once made sense
    until our brain started blurring it with a lens
    narrowing it down
    neglecting its nuances through verbs and nouns

    with all its might language wants us to abide
    but the wordless world it tries to hide
    will forever be inside

    Lukas Van Vyve
  • #474 You’ll always be exposed

    You can’t reach great successes without exposing yourself to spectacular failure.

    You can’t feel amazing without exposing yourself to a downfall.

    You can’t feel great love without exposing yourself to a broken heart.

    You can’t explore the world without exposing yourself to getting lost.

    And what’s more: you won’t be able to fully appreciate the good things in life without having been exposed to the challenging things.

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    #119 Make anything a fulfilling skill

    Learning a skill isn’t so much about getting better – that’s just a side effect.

    It’s about discovering new ways of doing the same thing – just because you can, and just because you’re curious.

    Doing the same thing, this time precisely – then doing it again, not precisely at all.

    Doing the same thing, this time deliberately, carefully thinking about every step – then doing it again, not thinking about any steps at all.

    When you stay curious, you learn to discover nuances you couldn’t perceive before.

    When you stay curious, you learn to be deliberate until you can be intuitive.

    When you stay curious, you learn to become less blind to what’s already here.

    And when you stay curious, you realize there’s not much more to a fulfilling life than sculpting away, day by day – and anything can be a fulfilling skill.

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    #205 Why “kind of” doesn’t work

    You kind of want to run a marathon.

    You kind of want to eat better.

    You kind of want to move more.

    You kind of want to feel better.

    And everything kind of stays the same.


    Only when “kind of” becomes “absolutely” and “want to” becomes “choose to” change happens.

    I absolutely choose to write.

    I absolutely choose to run a marathon.

    I absolutely choose to eat better.

    I absolutely choose to move more.

    I absolutely choose to do whatever it takes to feel better.

    Because there is no other way.

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