When Jon Snow first meets Samwell Tarly he is struck by how incapable and frightened the ‘fat boy’ is. Sam doesn’t fit in with the hardened brothers of the wall. He doesn’t care for hunting, cannot fight with a sword, and even proclaims himself a coward. But when Sam tells Jon that he doesn’t like high places, Jon can no longer keep his thoughts to himself. Jon asks in baffled frustration, “Are you afraid of everything?”
Continue reading “Are you afraid of everything? | Lessons from Jon Snow”
Whenever I draw something, there might be a part of the drawing that is repetitive and “not fun”. The challenge with these parts is to stay present and avoid just-get-it-done mode.
With drawing, parts with low variability and high repetition—like say the wing of a bird—can evoke restlessness and carelessness. But rushing screws up the drawing. This is always the case. Rushing is the enemy of good work. So is carelessness. I know that if I want the entire drawing to be of a certain standard then I need to be present for the boring parts, the difficult parts, and the enjoyable parts.
Continue reading “State Of Consciousness Matters”
I started meditating circa 2010. Six months later I noticed fundamental changes in myself. My baseline anxiety went down by a very noticeable degree. Large crowds no longer freaked me out. I slept better. I quit smoking. And tests and exams became a breeze.
Before discovering meditation, tests were the bane of my existence. University level math is not a joke, and I’d had panic attacks in a bunch of tests. Always math. In one of those, I had to walk out after writing only my name and a scribble of a matrix. Not being able to breathe in a large lecture hall is horrible.
Continue reading “The Benefits Of Meditation”
Thinking anaesthetizes the emotional body. This is an important point that is often overlooked in mindfulness teachings. There is a reason why incessant thinking is so addictive—it shifts awareness from the emotional body to the mental body.
Continue reading “Thinking Anaesthetizes The Emotional Body”
Years ago I wrote a post about how we should favour process over progress. In that article I make the argument that we should not aim for predefined goals to get to some predefined top of the mountain. We don’t always know how long something will take. And we don’t know how the journey will look, so our best strategy is to settle in and focus on what we are doing in the moment.
People—especially large institutions and organisations—fixate on progress to the point where they no longer realise that their checkbox approach has nothing to do with real work. Peter Thiel makes a similar point in Zero To One. Here’s a quote:
“In the most dysfunctional organizations, signaling that work is being done becomes a better strategy for career advancement than actually doing work.”
Continue reading “No Progress Without Presence”
A practice is powerful and it might be the only thing you need to shift things permanently.
A daily meditation practice.
A daily reading of spiritual material.
A daily journalling session.
Choose something and stick with it for weeks, months, years.
Every success holds within it bitter disappointment.
Every failure holds triumph.
No state contains only good.
Continue reading “Presence”
Making a small piece of art isn’t necessarily hard, especially if you’ve done it before. Making a small drawing might take a few hours. A first draft of a short story might take an afternoon. Creating an interesting guitar riff—a few minutes.
Continue reading “Do An Experiment – Make A Tiny Piece Of Art”
I’ve often found myself pushing too far with a certain approach only to realise that my rigid consistency was actually damaging. Mindless consistency isn’t a good thing. The first John Glock short story touched on this idea. Mechanically repeating certain actions, just because you’re supposed to, isn’t a way to live.
Besides, it’s possible to be consistent in the wrong pursuits. It is possible to push too far with something that might have been good initially.
So, the question becomes, How do we know if we have moved too far with something? How do we know when to shift gears? Ho do we know when to slow down or when to try a different approach?
Continue reading “How To Know If Your Consistent Efforts Are Serving You”
The other day, I had a conversation with a person who told me that he tends to have less arguments in his head these days. Yet, throughout the entire conversation he attempted to argue with me. I wondered how accurate his self-assessment was.