I kept thinking I’d get back to it soon. But my mind has been completely occupied by something I started building this year, and I didn’t want to write until I had something real to share.

This is that newsletter.

Last November, I changed the way I use AI at work. Not gradually. It was a switch.

I stopped using ChatGPT the way most people do, typing a question and reading the answer. I moved to developer tools instead. First Cursor, then Claude Code. And I started building agents that could do things I used to do myself.

I built a system that keeps memory for our whole team. Skills that automate recurring research and documentation. Agents that handle tasks I used to spend hours on.

We are a team of two. But we started doing the work of four or five people. At roughly three times the speed, with higher accuracy.

That change mattered to me. Not just because of the productivity. But because of what it felt like to work that way.

I’ve always been someone who loves to learn and then share what he learns. That’s why I started Pursuit. I was reading people who were smarter than me about how to live better, and I wanted to pass that on.

I noticed the same pattern happening here. I had changed my relationship with work, and with AI. And it felt like something worth sharing.

So I decided to build a course.

I’m going to be honest with you about how that went.

I had a lot of anxiety about it. I had never built a course. I’ve always felt strange recording myself. I rarely post videos of myself talking on social media. And now I was going to teach something for four-plus hours on camera.

I procrastinated for months. I used Claude Code for everything around the course: research, positioning, target audience, marketing. Everything except the one thing that actually mattered. Sitting down and recording.

Then I went to Morocco with a friend. He pushed me. Not in a lecture way. Just by being someone who genuinely believed I should stop waiting.

When I came back, it was Easter. Four days off. I said no to every friend who reached out. I sat at home, and I recorded everything. Four-plus hours of video. Edited it all.

The course is done.

I’ve already sent it to my closest contacts and to the people who signed up as founding members through LinkedIn. Now I want to share it with you.

I know some of you didn’t sign up for this newsletter to learn about AI. You came here to read about intentional living and finding more clarity. I hear that.

But I think what’s coming with AI is unavoidable. The way we work, the way we make decisions, all of it is changing. Staying ahead of that isn’t separate from living well. It is part of it. Falling behind in this shift is its own kind of stress, one I want to help you avoid.

And honestly, I find this genuinely exciting. I have fun building with it. That’s why I wanted to share it with you.

The course is called Beyond Chat: Claude Code for Business Professionals.

Here’s what you’d learn:

• How to set up Claude Code and Cursor properly, including AI model selection, voice input, and how billing works

• How to build a system with persistent memory, custom skills, and a knowledge base that carries context across every session

• How to connect Claude Code to your email, calendar, documents, and the web so it can actually act on your behalf

• How to run a real research project end to end: gathering information from multiple sources, organizing it, and turning it into decisions

There is also a capstone project where you use the full system to plan a trip to Japan. It sounds simple. That’s deliberate. When the use case is something everyone can picture, the mechanics are much easier to see. You’ll finish it knowing exactly how to apply the same system to something more complex at work.

The course is hosted in a private community. Live Q&A sessions are included. Lifetime access.

I’ve kept 10 spots open for people in this newsletter, at the founding member price: €50. After these are filled, the price goes to €200.

If this sounds like you, here’s the link: https://10x-operator.circle.so/checkout/beyond-chat?coupon_code=FOUNDER

Claim Your Spot

If you have questions before joining, just reply to this email.

Talk soon,
Amir

👋 Welcome to Pursuit, a gentle pause for intentional living, self-discovery, and inner clarity. My name is Amir, and in each edition I share four carefully chosen ideas to help you design a more fulfilling life.

Driving through Morocco, I kept seeing something I recognized.

Families pulled over on the side of the road. Picnic gear out. Meat on a grill. Kids running in the grass near a river or a patch of shade. Adults sitting under trees, talking to each other or just resting.

It looked like Iran. Specifically like the drives north toward the Caspian Sea, where the roadside becomes a living room without walls. I grew up watching that scene. I didn’t expect to find it again here.

I wasn’t comparing countries. I was watching the same human instinct surface in two different places: find some green, slow down, eat together outside. No app. No plan. Just the side of the road and a grill.

Day one had nothing on it. Breakfast. A slow drive. A hike that kept going past where most people turn back, until it was just us and a valley and a muddy mountain pond with a cliff hanging over it. Most people looked at the water and passed. I climbed up and jumped. The sound of water. The weight of rocks under my feet. The sun.

In the evening, we found one of the only restaurants in town that was still open and serving food. The waiter told us the kitchen was overwhelmed. They’d be pausing orders for fifteen or twenty minutes. We could order when the chef was ready. We sat with it. Talked. Nobody was annoyed. Nobody reached for their phone.

I keep thinking about what it would take to bring even one of these things home. Not the place. The pace. The willingness to sit in a restaurant and just wait. To find a muddy pond and jump anyway.

This week’s reflections:

• 🌿 Rest is not the opposite of doing. It is the thing itself.

• ✨ The ache does not disappear. You just stop being alone in it.

• 🎧 Not every season is for growing. Some are for rooting.

• 🗒️ Speed is not the proof. It is the blur.

🌿 Rest is not the opposite of doing. It is the thing itself.

Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under the trees on a summer’s day, listening to the murmur of water, or watching the clouds float across the blue sky, is by no means a waste of time.

That mountain pond wasn’t productive. It was not on the itinerary. It will probably be the part of this trip I carry longest. Not because something happened. Because for a stretch of time, nothing needed to.

The exhaustion most of us are carrying is not really physical. It is the constant low-level demand to be mentally available. Processing. Responding. Optimizing. A river doesn’t make that demand. A cliff doesn’t require a reply.

The question isn’t whether you deserve a break. You do. The question is whether you can stop treating stillness as something you earn. What if it is just the other half of being alive?

✨ The ache does not disappear. You just stop being alone in it.

What a gift it is to let things take the time they take, even if the timeline is different than we think it’s supposed to be.” Lisa is writing about a book. But the sentence works for almost anything you are carrying: a decision you haven’t made, a grief that won’t resolve, a life that doesn’t match the version you planned for. The issue was never that the ache exists. The issue is that we believe it shouldn’t. That if we are still hurting, something has gone wrong.

It hasn’t. Holding contradictions is not a failure to heal. It is what being fully alive actually looks like. Joy and heartache in the same body. Stillness and weight in the same swim. She names this directly: these aren’t betrayals of pain. They are necessary aspects of being present.

The question worth sitting with is not how to make the ache go away. It is: what is actually here alongside it, that you have been too busy to notice?

🎧 Not every season is for growing. Some are for rooting.

In another article, Lisa has a line I keep returning to: practice nature’s pace. She doesn’t mean it as a metaphor. She means it as instruction. The cycles, rhythms, seasons of the natural world are a mirror to your own. When you allow them to be.

The village rhythm I noticed this week was operating on something like that logic. The store was closed because it had been open long enough. The kitchen paused because the chef was overwhelmed and that was simply true. The day had edges again. Real ones, not ones drawn by a calendar.

We call that inconvenience. For a moment I did, too. Then I noticed it wasn’t making me angry the way it might have back home. Because something in the rhythm felt honest. It was moving at the speed of what was actually happening, not the speed of what we all pretend is always possible.

There is beauty in letting things take a long time. There is beauty in how much deeper it all gets to root when we stop rushing.

What in your life is being hurried that might actually need more time? What are you trying to bloom before the ground is ready?

🗒️ Speed is not the proof. It is the blur.

When you are always moving fast, everything turns into a blur. You are busy. But you are not always seeing.

That is the word. Seeing.

Life is not short. It is actually very long. But we make it short when we sprint through it. Every moment treated as a means to something else. Every pause felt as friction. Every slow restaurant a tax on your time.

The impatience that rises when something moves slowly. That is a signal. Not a character trait. Not who you are. A signal. It tells you that you have been asking the world to move faster than the world actually moves, and your nervous system has started to agree.

There’s a line from Inner Engineering by Sadhguru I couldn’t stop thinking about in Morocco. That every moment is inevitable. The moment just is. Not the one you planned, not the one you deserve. The one in front of you. The restaurant was overwhelmed. The pond was muddy. Neither was asking for your opinion. What changed wasn’t the situation. It was whether I was fighting it or actually in it.

What would it cost you to stop rushing for one hour today? Not forever. One hour.

🎵 Music I’m listening to

You’ll find mostly Ethnotronica, Organic House, World, Disco, and Organic Electronic here:

🎧 If you appreciate the music I carefully select and haven't followed my Spotify playlists yet, now is the perfect time to hit that follow button and join me on this musical journey! 🎶

• 🌒 Pano: Danceable and electronic obscure songs

• 🌓 Sisy: Ethnotronica and organic house

• 🌑 Berghain: Dark, minimal techno and tech house

• 🌕 Heide: Groovy soul and disco house

• 🌞 Sonntag: Afterhours shit

• 🦥 Slow rave: Sleepy techno for tired danced

• 🌎 World: From Latin jazz to Turkish psych

• 🌚 Super Slow: For your intimate moments

Previously on Pursuit:

👋 Welcome to Pursuit—your weekly pause for intentional living, self-discovery, and inner clarity. My name is Amir, and every week I share four carefully chosen ideas to help you design a more fulfilling life.

Since the Iran-US war began, I haven’t been able to focus on much of anything. Every night I open a map of Tehran, look at our neighborhood, and trace the route my dad takes to work. He still goes, every day, despite all of us asking him not to. I sit there hoping, with every cell in my body, that I won’t find a new mark on that map.

Sitting down to write this felt close to impossible. But I think life has to continue. This is likely the new normal for a while.

I want to be honest with you about something else too. After more than two years of showing up here every single week, the pace is going to slow. I won’t force it, because once this becomes obligation, something essential disappears. What I can promise is that when I do show up, it will still mean something. Something I genuinely want to put in your hands.

Thank you for being here. Even now.

This week’s reflections:

• 🎭 The ego is an image we mistake for ourselves

• 🔔 Your anger is a smoke alarm, not the fire

• 🌱 We’ve confused protection with safety

• ✏️ You are the author of the story your brain believes

🎭 The ego is an image we mistake for ourselves

We carry an idea of who we are, stitched together from what others told us, how we appear in mirrors, the roles we learned to play. This image feels solid. We call it “I.” But an image is not the thing itself.

The word “person” traces back to persona, the mask worn by actors in ancient drama. Your mother told you what was “like you” and what wasn’t. Teachers, friends, and early experiences shaped the contours of your character. You learned which roles were acceptable: the achiever, the quiet one, the clown. You identified with a particular way of acting and called it yourself.

Yet this image excludes nearly everything essential. It doesn’t include the silent work of your brain, the air pressure keeping you alive, the network of strangers whose labor sustains your day. The ego is a caricature, useful for navigation, like lines of latitude across an imaginary map, but fundamentally incomplete.

The real you is everything you’re experiencing. Not the image. Not the strain. The totality itself.

🔔 Your anger is a smoke alarm, not the fire

Anger isn’t something to suppress or condemn. It’s a messenger we’ve been taught to silence. We confuse the emotion with its expression, and in that confusion, we lose access to something vital: the information it carries. Anger erupts only when something we need or care about is under threat. The work isn’t to eliminate it. The work is to listen.

Think of anger as a smoke alarm in your home. When it sounds, the alarm isn’t the problem. It’s doing exactly what it was built to do. We have three choices: smash it and ignore the fire, panic and watch it spread, or pause and respond with intention. Beneath the heat lies an unmet need: connection that didn’t arrive, autonomy that was taken, clarity that was withheld, dignity that went unrecognized.

The unmet needs that fuel anger are often familiar:

• Connection and belonging: Feeling truly included, heard, and accepted

• Autonomy and agency: Having choice over your time, decisions, and direction

• Clarity and transparency: Understanding the “why” behind what affects you

• Security and stability: Predictability in your environment

• Respect and recognition: Having your contributions and worth acknowledged

• Competence and growth: Seeing your efforts matter and your skills deepen

• Fairness: Believing in the equity of how decisions are made

Understanding this, anger becomes less about the eruption and more about the reading. The real skill is learning to recognize the alarm before it becomes a fire.

🌱 We’ve confused protection with safety

We have inverted something fundamental about how humans develop. For generations, children learned to govern themselves: to make rules, enforce them, navigate conflict, experience consequence. They fell. They were excluded. They figured it out. This wasn’t cruelty. It was the curriculum of becoming capable. Yet somewhere in recent decades, we began training them differently. We taught them to report, to retreat, to wait for an adult to make it safe. We meant well. We created the opposite of what we intended: a generation trained not for agency, but for dependence on external authority.

The science is clear. Small doses of adversity don’t break children. They inoculate them. The body learns from falling how to fall better. The mind learns from exclusion what inclusion means. Real resilience isn’t the absence of hardship. It’s the capability built through moving through it. We’ve confused protection with safety. One keeps you comfortable. The other builds you strong.

Independence isn’t learned in theory. It lives in the doing. A child who walks the dog alone, who navigates a conflict with a friend without adult intervention, is not just gaining a skill. They’re learning something deeper: that they can handle what comes. That the world is navigable. That they are enough.

✏️ You are the author of the story your brain believes

Your brain is constantly predicting. It fills the gaps you cannot see, edits the moments you think you experience, calculates futures that don’t yet exist. For most of your day, you are not in control. Your body moves through space guided by systems far older and faster than conscious thought. This is not a flaw. It is elegant design.

Yet here is what your brain cannot do: see the arc of your life. It excels at reaction, at survival, at the next step. But the big picture, the story of you across time, belongs to something else. That belongs to you.

Your conscious self is a storyteller. It observes patterns your brain missed. It notices which predictions serve you and which ones trap you. When your brain insists you are anxious before you even enter the room, you can pause and ask: Is this true, or is this a prediction I inherited? When it whispers that you cannot do something, you have the power to edit that narrative. To write a new one.

This is not positive thinking or willpower. It is something quieter and more profound. You are the author of the story your brain believes about who you are. And your brain, remarkably, will make that story real. It will adjust your body, your emotions, your instincts to match the narrative you have chosen to tell. The prediction becomes the reality.

🎵 Music I’m listening to

You’ll find mostly Ethnotronica, Organic House, World, Disco, and Organic Electronic here:

🎧 If you appreciate the music I carefully select and haven't followed my Spotify playlists yet, now is the perfect time to hit that follow button and join me on this musical journey! 🎶

• 🌒 Pano: Danceable and electronic obscure songs

• 🌓 Sisy: Ethnotronica and organic house

• 🌑 Berghain: Dark, minimal techno and tech house

• 🌕 Heide: Groovy soul and disco house

• 🌞 Sonntag: Afterhours shit

• 🦥 Slow rave: Sleepy techno for tired danced

• 🌎 World: From Latin jazz to Turkish psych

• 🌚 Super Slow: For your intimate moments

Previously on Pursuit:

👋 Welcome to Pursuit—your weekly pause for intentional living, self-discovery, and inner clarity. My name is Amir, and every week I share four carefully chosen ideas to help you design a more fulfilling life.

This week’s reflections:

• 🧭 How to conquer rumination

• 🔥 7 strategies to be more consistent

• 🚨 The most dangerous person in the world

• 💪 The age designed to eliminate effort

🧭 How to conquer rumination

Rumination can be reframed as a smoke alarm for action. If you catch yourself ruminating, reply with How can I take action on this?

One tool to make this easier is to reframe decisions as experiments. You’re no longer a perfectionist frozen on stage with everyone watching your every move—you’re a curious scientist in a lab trying to test a hypothesis. E.g. “I’m 60% certain that moving to New York is better than 40% of staying in Doncaster…Ok. It’s time to Blitzkrieg.” Book the tickets to New York and run the experiment. Success isn’t whether your forecast is correct and New York is perfect, it’s that you tested the hypothesis.

In the 5 years spent ruminating on the theoretical decision to move from Doncaster to New York, you could’ve collected practical living data on New York, Los Angeles, Rio De Janeiro, Tokyo, Sydney, London, and Reykjavík.

The next time you catch yourself stuck in your head, pause and ask: What experiment can I run right now?

🔥 7 strategies to be more consistent

Consistency isn’t about perfection. It’s about managing your imperfection to achieve the things you want. Here are seven strategies that actually work:

1. Every day is easier than most days. It’s easier to do something every single day than it is to do something most days. Every day becomes an identity. It’s a routine, a lifestyle, a structure, a schedule. It’s daily evidence of who you really are.

2. Fire in the act, grace in the amount. Hold yourself to the fire when it comes to the act, but give yourself grace when it comes to the amount. In other words, make sure you do the thing, but don’t worry about how much of the thing you do. This approach gives you the flexibility to adapt to the natural chaos of life without breaking the streak, recognizing that anything above zero compounds.

3. Mornings are your cheat code. Here’s the truth: Willpower fades with energy throughout the day. It’s much easier to take something on first thing in the morning than it is to take it on after work in the evening. Mornings are also less susceptible to being derailed by the unforeseen chaos that life inevitably throws at us.

4. Harness the power of peer accountability. The harsh reality is that consistency is lonely. Few will support you on the path. In fact, you will probably lose friends as you grow. But it’s hard to do things alone. Having one person with whom you can take on the challenge makes all the difference. Find one accountability partner for your consistency journey.

5. Use progressive overload to build the muscle. As a rule, only focus on one new lifestyle change at a time. You don’t need to change your life in a day, but if you slowly change your days, you’ll eventually change your life. Use progressive overload to build the muscle.

6. Never try to make up for a miss. Don’t punish yourself, just get back to it. Never try to make up for a miss.

7. Focus on the trend, not the position. On your consistency journey, your trend is much more important than your position. The trend is built through the daily deposits—controllable factors which create momentum you can build upon. Focus on the trend, not the position.

Consistency isn’t glamorous. It’s not easy. But it’s what separates those who talk about their dreams from those who actually go out and live them. So show up. Show up when it’s hard. Show up when it’s messy. Show up when no one’s watching. Show up when you don’t feel like it. Show up when the rewards are uncertain. Just show up.

🚨 The most dangerous person in the world

🎯 The age designed to eliminate effort

We live in an age built to spare us effort. Every product, app, and service promises less friction, fewer steps, more ease. The message is seductive: comfort equals happiness. But this pursuit of convenience has a hidden cost.

When everything becomes effortless, life begins to feel weightless. Our sense of satisfaction dulls. The small victories that once meant something lose their edge, and pleasure turns into background noise. The more we smooth the path, the less we feel the ground beneath our feet.

Real joy asks for effort. It demands friction, engagement, and a willingness to meet discomfort head-on. What’s hard is personal—public speaking, physical labor, solitude, creation—but whatever form it takes, it roots us in the present. Doing hard things isn’t punishment; it’s practice for being alive. It’s where meaning accumulates quietly through repetition and resistance.

The reward isn’t comfort, but a deeper kind of ease—the kind that comes from knowing you earned your place in the world, one difficult step at a time.

🎵 Music I’m listening to

You’ll find mostly Ethnotronica, Organic House, World, Disco, and Organic Electronic here:

🎧 If you appreciate the music I carefully select and haven't followed my Spotify playlists yet, now is the perfect time to hit that follow button and join me on this musical journey! 🎶

• 🌒 Pano: Danceable and electronic obscure songs

• 🌓 Sisy: Ethnotronica and organic house

• 🌑 Berghain: Dark, minimal techno and tech house

• 🌕 Heide: Groovy soul and disco house

• 🌞 Sonntag: Afterhours shit

• 🦥 Slow rave: Sleepy techno for tired danced

• 🌎 World: From Latin jazz to Turkish psych

• 🌚 Super Slow: For your intimate moments

Previously on Pursuit:

👋 Welcome to Pursuit—your weekly pause for intentional living, self-discovery, and inner clarity. My name is Amir, and every week I share four carefully chosen ideas to help you design a more fulfilling life.

This week’s reflections:

• 🧘 Seven steps to escape overthinking

• 🎯 How to get out of your head

• 🌊 The seven-year rule

• 💰 Want less, save more

🧘 Seven steps to escape overthinking

A few weeks ago, because of a recommendation from a dear friend, I started a course called Inner Engineering by Sadhguru. And after even a few sessions sitting down listening to the teachings, I felt a change in my mind and how I see life. And now, when I came back to this piece from Eckhart Tolle on escaping overthinking, I saw the similarities between some of the techniques and approaches that are explained by both of these great men on how to detach yourself from your thinking and mind. Here’s a quick seven steps that you could always remind yourself to escape overthinking.

Step 1: Witness Consciousness

Don’t just “be aware” of thoughts—create deliberate distance by labeling them: “Having a thought about failure” instead of “I’m going to fail.”

Step 2: Pattern Interruption

Tolle recommends a specific technique: When caught in rumination, focus on your hands for 30 seconds. Feel the subtle energy or tingling sensation in your palms. This instantly shifts brain activity from Beta to Alpha waves, breaking thought loops.

Step 3: The Power of Pause

When negative thoughts arise, wait 90 seconds before responding.

Step 4: The Reality Test

Ask: “Is this thought happening in physical reality right now?” Not “Is this thought true?” (which keeps you in thought).

Step 5: Body Anchoring

Instead of general “body awareness,” Tolle recommends feeling your inner energy field: The tingling life-energy inside your hands, feet, and entire body. This creates what neuroscientists call “embodied cognition”—thinking from your whole nervous system.

Step 6: Radical Acceptance

Don’t just “accept what is”—Tolle teaches saying “yes” to the feeling of resistance itself. When you feel yourself fighting reality, accept the fighting. This paradoxical approach dissolves the ego’s oppositional nature at its root.

Step 7: Present Moment Anchoring

Rather than trying to “be present,” Tolle suggests focusing on one sense perception completely: The sound of water, the sensation of breath, the feeling of air on skin. This creates what he calls “portals to presence”—gateways beyond thinking.

He’s revealing that your true identity isn’t your thinking mind at all. You are the awareness behind thoughts—unchanging, peaceful, and whole.

As you practice this protocol, you’ll experience something remarkable: The space between your thoughts grows wider. In that space, you’ll find what you’ve been searching for all along.

🎯 How to get out of your head

High agency can be a confusing idea to understand because it’s not just one idea. It’s a combination of three distinct skills rarely found together: clear thinking, bias to action, and disagreeability.

High agency is like a tricycle. If you remove one of the wheels, it stops working.

The human brain is a question-answering machine. If you ask it: “What’s good in my life?”—it will find answers. If you ask it: “What’s bad in my life?”—it will find answers.

Thoughts feel so real in the moment and then disappear into the memory abyss. Most thoughts aren’t even clear sentences. It’s a series of emotional GIFs, JPEGs and prompts bouncing around consciousness like a random Tumblr page.

Write your thoughts down. Draw the problem. Use a whiteboard. Create a spreadsheet. Talk out loud to a smart person. Go for a walk or run with a specific question.

The act of transforming out of your head to another medium acts like a filtration system, removing the vague mud from your thinking. Each time you transform your thoughts out of your head, keep trying to refine problems and solutions in the simplest, clearest, most specific language possible.

Vague question: What career should I choose?

Specific question: What does my dream week look like hour by hour? What does my nightmare week look like hour by hour? What’s the gap between my current week and the dream/nightmare week?

🌊 The seven-year rule

The version of you that will exist seven years from now hasn’t formed yet. So why not focus your energy and attention on the present moment?

As you read these words, you are uniquely yourself, different from who you were a moment ago and who you’ll become in the next. By embracing this present version of yourself, you release yourself from the bonds of history while simultaneously doing the greatest possible favor to your future self.

We exist in a perpetual state of transformation: cellular, psychological, and spiritual. When we recognize and honor this constant evolution, we free ourselves to live more fully in the eternal now.

💰 Want less, save more

Happiness with money starts by wanting less. When you learn to be content below your means, you create the same gap others chase by growing their income, only with more control and less stress. A high savings rate is simply lower expenses. Lower expenses make every euro you save stretch further.

Past a certain income, most extra spending sits just beneath the ego. The basics matter. Comfort matters. Beyond that, much of what we buy is signaling. Raise humility and you raise your savings. Define savings as the distance between your income and your ego and you see why many high earners save so little. Peacock instincts turn into an arms race of social proof. People who do well over time tend to care less about what others think. That quiet confidence lets them use money more efficiently.

Saving is more in your control than it feels. Many people say, “My costs are so high I cannot save,” and then repeat the story at every income level. You can spend less if you desire less. You will desire less when you stop outsourcing your self-worth to other people’s opinions.

You also do not need a specific reason to save. Goals like a home, a car, or retirement are great. They are not the only reason to build a cushion. We do not live in a predictable world. Careers shift. Families change. Economies lurch. Saving for its own sake is a form of respect for the future you cannot see yet.

🎵 Music I’m listening to

You’ll find mostly Ethnotronica, Organic House, World, Disco, and Organic Electronic here:

🎧 If you appreciate the music I carefully select and haven't followed my Spotify playlists yet, now is the perfect time to hit that follow button and join me on this musical journey! 🎶

• 🌒 Pano: Danceable and electronic obscure songs

• 🌓 Sisy: Ethnotronica and organic house

• 🌑 Berghain: Dark, minimal techno and tech house

• 🌕 Heide: Groovy soul and disco house

• 🌞 Sonntag: Afterhours shit

• 🦥 Slow rave: Sleepy techno for tired danced

• 🌎 World: From Latin jazz to Turkish psych

• 🌚 Super Slow: For your intimate moments

Previously on Pursuit:

I felt like I’d been dropped into the future of how we’re going to work in the coming years. I had to rewire my brain completely.

The discovery sparked something in me. I got so passionate and curious that I started leading a movement in our company to help non-technical team members adopt this new way of interacting with AI. The question kept surfacing: What if I could share these learnings more widely?

So I’m considering putting everything into a course—to teach people how to change their relationship with AI and finally get meaningful outcomes from it. To feel truly unstoppable.

If you’re curious, check out the short video I made about this on LinkedIn. Then fill out this short survey to help me evaluate if there’s enough demand for it. And if you’d like to be part of the small group of founding members to help me test the first version, let me know in the survey.

Much love
Amir 👋

Today, I’m sitting in Berlin trying to find words for what happened after I left. The internet blackout didn’t end. What followed was a massacre. Thousands killed. Families torn apart. A nation grieving in darkness while the world looked away.

I sat down trying to write about growth, about becoming a better version of ourselves, about the usual pursuits of self-improvement. But none of it sat right with my heart. The air here is clean, yet I feel like I can smell the smoke, the ashes, the blood shed over these past three weeks.

And I thought: what can I offer right now? Not just to Iranians carrying this weight, but to anyone who has felt paralyzed by grief. Anyone who has struggled to continue life as normal when the world feels broken. Because tragedies visit all of us eventually. And even if you haven’t faced one yet, you will. We all will.

So I went back through everything I’ve read on sorrow, grief, hope, and healing. Not to make the pain easier to bear—I don’t think that’s possible. But maybe to offer a different lens. Maybe to make your heart ache a little less, or to spark a bit of light in a hopeless mind.

The Opposite of Good Is Not Evil—It’s Indifference

There’s a teaching from the Sufi tradition that keeps circling back to me: The opposite of good is not evil, it’s indifference. The opposite of love is not hatred, it’s indifference.

This cuts deep because it reveals the real test of being human. To witness suffering—whether across the world or across the street—and choose not to look away. To let it matter. To let it move you.

In The Emerald’s piece “Oh Justice,” there’s a powerful question: How do we respond to injustice without simply becoming the mirror image of what we find loathsome? How do we respond without just reacting?

This is a spiritual crisis as much as it is political or economic. When a government orders snipers and machine guns on its own people. When thousands are killed for demanding the right to feed their families. When hospitals are raided to arrest the wounded. When an entire nation is kept in darkness to hide massacres—this isn’t just a political failure. It’s a collapse of our shared humanity.

We face a choice: Do we become indifferent to protect ourselves? Or do we stay connected, knowing that “if I am unmoved by their suffering, then in some capacity, I have failed the test of being human”?

The practice—and it is a practice—is deciding you will not be indifferent to suffering. Not because it’s easy. Not because it feels good. But because we’re all wrapped up in each other, and their pain is part of ours.

Hope Is Not Denial—It’s a Survival Trait

I used to think hope was naive. A way to set yourself up for heartbreak. After watching movements fail again and again, I told myself: don’t be hopeful. Protect yourself.

But Jane Goodall says something that makes me think: “Hope is a survival trait. Without it, we perish.”

Hope isn’t idealism. It doesn’t expect everything to be fair or easy or good. That’s denial. Real hope doesn’t deny the darkness—it responds to it.

Hope says: Yes, this is terrible. Yes, people are suffering. Yes, the odds are stacked against us. And still, I will act.

Lisa Olivera writes: “Sometimes, all of this is so fucking hard. Sometimes, it all feels impossible—this weight, this violence, this grief. And right alongside the hardness, there is the vision of what could be, and that vision becomes an anchor to turn toward when the hardness is too much to bear.”

That’s the tension we have to hold. The grief and the vision. The pain and the possibility. Not one or the other, but both.

Your Sadness Connects You Deepest

Here’s something I keep coming back to, from Julie Zhuo: “Irritation and frustration shield anger. Anger shields sadness. Sadness is the thing we fear most. But sadness also connects us deepest.”

We avoid sadness because it feels like drowning. But sadness is what makes us human. It’s what lets us see each other clearly. When we let ourselves feel it—really feel it—we connect to something larger than ourselves.

And maybe that’s what this moment is asking of us. Not to be strong. Not to have answers. Just to feel what’s happening and let it connect us.

What We Can Do

Jane Goodall offers a framework that helps me when everything feels overwhelming. She says hope requires four things:

1. Realistic goals - not fantasies, but concrete actions we can take

2. Realistic pathways - ways to actually achieve those goals

3. Confidence - the belief that our actions matter

4. Support - people to help us through the hard parts

Right now, my goal is simple: bear witness. Tell the stories. Don’t let the darkness go unnoticed. Pass messages for people who can’t speak. Show up for the Iranians in my community who are carrying this alone.

These aren’t grand gestures. They won’t topple regimes. But they keep the light alive.

As one writer put it: “Hope does not deny all the difficulty and danger that exists, but it is not stopped by them. There is a lot of darkness, but our actions create the light.”

Keep Going

So wherever you are, whatever weight you’re carrying, here’s what I want to say:

You don’t have to be strong. You don’t have to have answers. You just have to stay connected.

Feel what you need to feel. Let it move through you. Find the people who will sit with you in it. And when you can, do one small thing to create light for someone else.

That’s enough. It has to be.

I don’t usually share personal pieces like this, but some weeks require it. If this resonated, I’d love to hear from you. And if you know someone who needs to read this right now, please pass it along.

With love and solidarity,

Amir 👋

Previously on Pursuit:

As I write this, I am flying back from Dubai to Berlin, suspended in the quiet hum of an airplane cabin. Below me, the world looks peaceful, borderless. But the silence I carry with me is different. It is the silence of a country cut off from the world.

A few days after New Years, I flew to Tehran to visit my family. It had been four years since my last proper visit, and I was adamant to return. I wanted to embrace the new energy moving through the city—an energy permitted by the brave Iranian women who have given a new face to the streets. I wanted to connect with my roots, see my cousin’s son in Shiraz, and remember what it feels like to belong.

I came prepared. Before the trip, I spent weeks setting up a dedicated server in London to route my parents’ home internet, ensuring I could work securely. It’s a strange reality: going to such lengths just to access the basic right of connection without fear. When I arrived, it worked perfectly. I felt clever. I felt prepared.

I had no idea that we were about to be cut off completely.

The Darkness and the Fire

The protests began differently this time. It wasn’t just about politics; it was about dignity. The currency had devalued so sharply that business owners and families were facing ruin. When people have nothing left to lose—no means to feed their children, no future to protect—shame turns into a warrior’s spirit. They fight to restore their dignity.

On Thursday evening, as I was wrapping up work, the connection snapped. Not just my server—everything. Mobile networks, landlines, global and local. Total blackout.

I had experienced this before, years ago. The silence that follows a blackout is heavy. It breeds fear. I was torn. Part of me—the part that lives in Berlin, the part that “got out”—felt this wasn’t my battle anymore. I told myself I had too much to lose.

Then I saw my mom.

My dad was out hiking, and she was pacing the kitchen, anxious. I asked if she wanted to watch a movie. She said yes, but her eyes said something else. I paused.

“Mom, do you want to go out and see what’s happening?”

Her “yes” came from her whole heart.

When we stepped onto the streets, the air was vibrating. We drove toward a famous junction, passing scattered groups in dark clothes. When we arrived, I couldn’t believe my eyes. Thousands of people blocked the junction. They weren’t just walking; they were claiming their space.

I looked at my mom. She was weeping. “This reminds me of 47 years ago,” she said. “When we went to protest against the Shah.”

I tried to imagine what it feels like to witness mass uprisings twice in one lifetime—to see the same cycle of hope and struggle loop across generations. The energy of the crowd moved through the car walls and settled in my chest. I felt a fire in my heart. Could this be the moment?

The Street Sweeper

That night, we drove through the city, witnessing a people unafraid. But the moment that broke me wasn’t the chanting crowds. It was a moment of quiet in the storm.

We stopped near a BBQ restaurant. I suddenly craved liver skewers, a street food I hadn’t tasted in years. As I ordered, my mom told me to get an extra meal.

“For whom?” I asked.

“For the street cleaner,” she pointed. “Over there.”

Amidst the revolution, amidst the shouting and the history being made, an old man with calloused hands was quietly picking up trash from the sidewalk trenches.

I took the food to him. When I handed him the warm bag, he didn’t just say thank you. He kissed the package. He pressed it against his forehead. Tears filled my eyes. In that gesture, I saw everything—the hunger, the gratitude, the immense dignity of a man who, even on a night when the country was burning, was keeping his street clean.

People here deserve better. We are a rich country—rich in resources, in culture, in educated youth. But when a decent monthly salary is 120 EUR and a kilo of meat costs 10 EUR, you understand why people are on the streets. They are fighting for the right to live.

The Messenger

Leaving was surreal. With the internet still down, I felt like I was fleeing a war zone. I managed to find a seat on a flight to Dubai at three times the price.

As I prepared to leave, people began handing me “envelopes” in the form of verbal messages.

“Tell my family I’m safe.”

“Tell my business partner how to keep things running.”

I became a messenger from the silence. It broke my heart to see how we—people from the same soil—can be stripped of our basic rights by those meant to protect us. It felt like a chronic autoimmune disease: a body turning on itself, attacking its own cells.

I am writing this now from the sky, safe again. But my heart remains on the ground. The internet is still down. They are keeping the country in the dark to hide their crackdown. But they cannot hide the light I saw in my mother’s eyes, or the dignity of the street sweeper.

I used to tell myself not to be hopeful, to protect myself from the heartbreak of failed movements. But maybe that is the wrong path. Maybe the only way forward is to be hopeful for a better world, and to do our little piece to keep the light alive for those who are still in the dark.

If this story resonated with you, I’d love to hear your thoughts. Sometimes the most important pursuit is simply bearing witness.

Amir 👋

Previously on Pursuit:

👋 Welcome to Pursuit—your weekly pause for intentional living, self-discovery, and inner clarity. My name is Amir, and every week I share four carefully chosen ideas to help you design a more fulfilling life.

This week’s reflections:

• 🎸 Tune the space between you

• 💑 Choose the slow burn

• 🧠 Stop thinking, start acting

• 📖 Write a more interesting story

🎸 Tune the space between you

Relationships need the right amount of tension, like strings on a guitar. Too little and they fall flat. Too much and they snap.

The art isn’t in avoiding tension—it’s in tuning the space between you so it can hold honesty, difference, and care all at once. When you get it right, that tension becomes music. When you get it wrong, everything goes silent.

Most of us default to one extreme or the other. We either avoid conflict entirely (flat strings) or we let every disagreement become a breaking point (snapping strings). But the sweet spot lives in the middle: enough tension to create resonance, not so much that it shatters.

The question isn’t whether you’ll have tension. You will. The question is: Can you tune it? Can you hold space for both your truth and theirs, for both connection and difference, for both care and boundaries?

That’s where real relationship happens. Not in the absence of tension, but in the skillful management of it.

💑 Choose the slow burn

I loved this dating advice from the Knowledge Project:

On a first date, drop the soulmate test and ask a simpler question: Do I want to spend more time with this person?

“The spark” can be thrilling, yet it often misleads. Attraction can grow with time and shared context, so lack of instant fireworks is not a dealbreaker. Butterflies can also be anxiety in disguise, especially when someone sends mixed signals or relies on charisma that feels special to everyone. And a dazzling start does not guarantee a steady middle.

Aim for the slow burn instead. Look for someone who becomes more compelling the more you know them, not because you are settling, but because you are choosing a sturdier path to connection.

Replace “second date by default” with a quick check-in right after the date. Run the Post-Date Eight in your head before the story takes over. How did your body feel? Relaxed or tense? Did you laugh? Did you feel heard and curious to know more? Most important, what side of you did they bring out? Confident and playful, or defensive and small?

If the answer is zero, move on. If there is even a seed of interest, honor it with one more meeting. Dating gets easier when you track how you feel in someone’s presence rather than judging them only on paper. The person who brings out your better self is worth a slower look.

🧠 Stop thinking, start acting

The most dangerous, oddly glorified, yet overlooked problem in the world: Overthinking and underacting.

Most people don’t realize that unnecessary negative mind activity generates a significant part of their unhappiness. Overthinking isn’t just annoying—it’s physically damaging your body.

Your body can’t distinguish between an actual threat and your anxious thoughts. When you think fearful thoughts, your body reacts as if you’re in real danger. Your mind says “what if I fail?” and your body releases stress hormones. Do this for years and it depletes your immune system. Even mainstream medicine now acknowledges this mind-body connection.

The first awakening is surprisingly simple: Recognizing there’s a voice in your head that never stops commenting on your life. This realization alone can be transformative.

People believe more thinking will solve their problems created by... thinking. It’s like trying to put out a fire by adding more fuel. True solutions emerge from the space of awareness, not from more mental activity.

The shift isn’t about stopping all thought. It’s about recognizing when your thinking has become a problem instead of a solution. When you notice that loop, that’s your cue: Stop thinking. Start acting.

📖 Taking a path that makes a more interesting story

“Life is a form of self storytelling. We’re continually retelling ourselves our life story, but very few people think of themselves as authors of their story, not mere subjects. People with extraordinary high-agency realize this early in life and start maximizing the interestingness of their life story.

Having a fascinating life story is not just an exercise in vanity -- it has a real impact on your success in life. You’ll have an easier time attracting friends as well as life and business partners. It’ll also make it much easier to sell yourself or your products. It has a kind of compounding halo effect. So next time you’re faced with a tough decision, consider the path that makes a more interesting story. If it turned out to be the wrong decision to have made, you’d at least be fun at dinner parties.”

🎵 Music I’m listening to

You’ll find mostly Ethnotronica, Organic House, World, Disco, and Organic Electronic here:

🎧 If you appreciate the music I carefully select and haven't followed my Spotify playlists yet, now is the perfect time to hit that follow button and join me on this musical journey! 🎶

• 🌒 Pano: Danceable and electronic obscure songs

• 🌓 Sisy: Ethnotronica and organic house

• 🌑 Berghain: Dark, minimal techno and tech house

• 🌕 Heide: Groovy soul and disco house

• 🌞 Sonntag: Afterhours shit

• 🦥 Slow rave: Sleepy techno for tired danced

• 🌎 World: From Latin jazz to Turkish psych

• 🌚 Super Slow: For your intimate moments

Previously on Pursuit:

👋 Welcome to Pursuit—your weekly pause for intentional living, self-discovery, and inner clarity. My name is Amir, and every week I share four carefully chosen ideas to help you design a more fulfilling life.

This week’s reflections:

• 🎭 Become the joker who sees the game

• 🛠️ Mold your world until it fits your form

• 🌊 Learn to be comfortable inside uncertainty

• 💭 Feel first, interpret later

🎭 Become the joker who sees the game

Life is a game that we forget is a game. We take institutions, roles, and even our own seriousness as absolute, when in truth they are masks in play. The “joker” is the one who sees through this: that the world is not headed toward some final purpose but is more like music, valuable simply because it is being played. From this view, even flaws, neuroses, and contradictions are not errors to be eliminated but part of the harmony. Like salt in a stew, the imperfections give the whole its flavor.

To awaken is not to escape the game but to recognize you were always part of it. Existence contains both light and shadow, winning and losing, virtue and rascality. Each person, like pearls on a necklace—large or small—belongs exactly where they are, forming the symmetry of the whole. What matters is not moral fear or rigid purity but choosing how you wish to play, knowing that all of it, even the rough edges, is a manifestation of the same ground of being.

✨ From Alan Watts

🛠️ Mold your world until it fits your form

We each have our own journey. Each one of us holds our own thread. We don’t know what someone else’s deep business is. And I’m not talking about the work and the jobs we do; I’m talking about the reason for their being. We don’t know what that is, and we don’t know what their timeframe is.

If whatever it is that you’re doing doesn’t work for you, change it. And keep changing it until it does work. It’s your right to mold and remold, and keep remolding your world and your life until it fits your form. Don’t fit your form to whatever is being given to you. And don’t give up on yourself because you are all you’ve got. I’m all I’ve got. And what we’ve got is a lot. We have so much potential. Potential... potential and possibility... it’s all about that.

🌊 Learn to be comfortable inside uncertainty

We are living through a season of deep uncertainty. The unknowns pile up and most of us feel some form of anxiety. When that happens, we reach for something that promises relief. Therapy. Astrology. Religion. Longevity protocols with their trackers and metrics. All are attempts to hear that things will be okay, or to control what can be measured.

There is another path. You can learn to be comfortable inside uncertainty. The happiest people I know are not the loudest. They hold opinions lightly. They change their minds. They are receptive and curious.

Curiosity, openness to uncertainty, and fluidity of perspective correlate with optimism and resilience. You do not need forced positivity to face the future. You need the capacity to stay flexible as it unfolds.

When anxiety spikes, engage in something creative. It does not have to be art. Cook a new recipe. Rearrange a room. Sketch an idea. Make a small thing and let your hands lead. Creative work quiets the mind by giving it a present task. Over time these practices build a nervous system that can meet uncertainty without grasping for control.

💭 Feel first, interpret later

Constant analysis can drown out the wisdom of feeling. Emotions often carry guidance that thinking cannot access. Feel first and interpret later. When your mind snaps into either–or, notice that fear is steering. Ego is not only the identity you claim. It is also the parts of yourself you refuse to be.

Anxiety sometimes hides repressed excitement. Ask what wants to move. Exhaustion often tracks with self-criticism because beating yourself up is draining. Endless critique can signal a wish to be seen as valuable rather than a wish to be of value. You cannot stop the voice in your head, yet you can change how you respond. Your response alters its tune.

✨ Joe Hudson

🎵 Music I’m listening to

You’ll find mostly Ethnotronica, Organic House, World, Disco, and Organic Electronic here:

🎧 If you appreciate the music I carefully select and haven't followed my Spotify playlists yet, now is the perfect time to hit that follow button and join me on this musical journey! 🎶

• 🌒 Pano: Danceable and electronic obscure songs

• 🌓 Sisy: Ethnotronica and organic house

• 🌑 Berghain: Dark, minimal techno and tech house

• 🌕 Heide: Groovy soul and disco house

• 🌞 Sonntag: Afterhours shit

• 🦥 Slow rave: Sleepy techno for tired danced

• 🌎 World: From Latin jazz to Turkish psych

• 🌚 Super Slow: For your intimate moments

Previously on Pursuit:

👋 Welcome to Pursuit—your weekly pause for intentional living, self-discovery, and inner clarity. My name is Amir, and every week I share four carefully chosen ideas to help you design a more fulfilling life.

This week’s reflections:

• 🌊 The difference between perceiving and experiencing life

• 🧠 Overthinking is unprocessed energy

• 🧘 Meet the same life with a different mind

• ✨ Purpose is something you notice, not find

🌊 The difference between perceiving and experiencing life

Perception and experience aren’t the same.

Your senses allow you to perceive reality—the way a burger smells, the way your partner looks at you. But emotions are how you experience reality—the richness of being at a party, the simple pleasure of a meal, the depth of connection in a relationship.

Many people, especially men, get stuck in the seat of perception—analyzing, explaining, observing—because diving fully into experience can feel overwhelming.

But life isn’t just something to be perceived. It’s meant to be felt. To truly live is to step out of analysis and into direct experience, even when it’s intense.

🧠 Overthinking is unprocessed energy

Overthinking is a byproduct of unprocessed trauma and negative emotions. It’s like when your grandma’s kettle boils; the steam builds up until it screams. Energy that you push down corrupts your mind. In order to heal, you need to feel.

We fear the pain of making the wrong choices. And worse, we fear regret. But once you understand that every decision has consequences, you can make a choice with certainty. Choose the path that aligns with your values and don’t look back.

If you allow yourself to be distracted by social media, messages, emails, calls, and cheap media, you are training your mind to be chaotic. If you can take control of your mind, you’ve joined the 1%. Where your attention goes, you give power. Do you want to give it to politicians and meme accounts who don’t know you exist? Or do you want to use it to make your dreams come true?

Overthinking equals scattered consciousness. Focus equals single-pointed consciousness.

🧘 Meet the same life with a different mind

Change begins when you can think, feel, and act differently in the same environment. It means being greater than your body’s drives, its emotions, its habits, and the stories they keep repeating.

Meditation is a training ground for this. The body will want to get up. It will push you toward the next task and insist it knows better. Notice it, bring it back, and remind it that it is not in charge. Over time the body responds to a steadier mind. Energy that was locked in habit becomes available again.

Let the mind drop its usual anchors. Stop rehearsing yesterday and predicting tomorrow. Loosen your grip on where you are, who you are, and what you are doing next. In those moments of no time and no place, awareness widens. You touch a quieter field of consciousness that is not tied to identity or circumstance.

This is the work. Train attention. Settle the body. Meet the same life with a different mind.

✨ Purpose is something you notice, not find

Purpose isn’t something you find—it’s something you notice inside yourself. It’s there already, waiting for the right conditions to grow. The desires of your heart move you forward almost effortlessly; the desires of your mind usually need force. Overwhelm creeps in when you think you have to control everything instead of flowing with it. Just return to the next simple step—begin again.

✨ Joe Hudson

🎵 Music I’m listening to

You’ll find mostly Ethnotronica, Organic House, World, Disco, and Organic Electronic here:

🎧 If you appreciate the music I carefully select and haven't followed my Spotify playlists yet, now is the perfect time to hit that follow button and join me on this musical journey! 🎶

• 🌒 Pano: Danceable and electronic obscure songs

• 🌓 Sisy: Ethnotronica and organic house

• 🌑 Berghain: Dark, minimal techno and tech house

• 🌕 Heide: Groovy soul and disco house

• 🌞 Sonntag: Afterhours shit

• 🦥 Slow rave: Sleepy techno for tired danced

• 🌎 World: From Latin jazz to Turkish psych

• 🌚 Super Slow: For your intimate moments

Previously on Pursuit:

👋 Welcome to Pursuit—your weekly pause for intentional living, self-discovery, and inner clarity. My name is Amir, and every week I share four carefully chosen ideas to help you design a more fulfilling life.

This week’s reflections:

• 🎯 Goals should guide you, not trap you

• 🚶🏻It will take you

• 🌱 Life is not what happens to you, it is the story you tell about it

• 🌿 The price of knowing too much

🎯 Goals should guide you, not trap you

We set goals to become happy, yet often the opposite happens. Traditional goals trap us in prediction: we assume we know what we want and how to get it, despite being furthest from that reality. Then we land the plane—get the body, the money, the promotion—only to discover it doesn’t feel the way we thought it would. This is the arrival fallacy: we’re terrible at predicting how any future event will make us feel.

The alternative? Intentional goals. Instead of chasing an outcome in the future, focus on who you want to be right now. Traditional goals are like airports—miss the runway and it’s a disaster. Intentional goals are like lighthouses—they help you navigate, not by giving you a destination, but by offering a light to orient yourself as reality reveals itself.

Ask yourself: does this goal help me become who I intend to be? Not someday. Today. Because all those moments between your goals are your life. The real question isn’t whether you cross the finish line—it’s what you’re learning about who you’re being along the way.

🚶🏻It will take you

Be soft in your practice. Think of the method as a fine silvery stream, not a raging waterfall. Follow the stream, have faith in its course. It will go its own way, meandering here, trickling there. It will find the grooves, the cracks, the crevices. Just follow it. Never let it out of your sight. It will take you.

🌱 Life is not what happens to you, it is the story you tell about it

Life seems like an external journey, a series of obstacles and events we must navigate. But if you slow down enough to notice, you realize most of life is internal.

Beyond basic needs like food and shelter, much of what we chase is not reality but a story we have written. A story about what we think we need to be happy, to be respected, to feel worthy.

The truth is, it is just a story. Even the idea that you must prove yourself is a story.

When you see this clearly, it can feel unsettling. It means you have more freedom than you realize. You get to choose which stories to keep living by and which ones to let go. You get to decide what matters, not according to an external scoreboard, but your own.

The real journey is not what happens to you. It is the quiet, constant act of choosing how you see it.

Last night, lying in bed, I had one of those rare moments of clarity. I truly felt—not just understood, but felt—that everything in life depends on how your inner voice speaks to you.

When I was younger, that voice was harsh. A surgeon with demands. At social events, it would whisper: “You’re not a social butterfly. You should have talked to more people.” When I saw someone more successful, it would say: “You didn’t push hard enough. You can’t sacrifice like they did.”

But here’s what I’ve come to realize: that old definition of success is a complete fallacy. Success isn’t achieving what you think you should. It’s being at peace with who you are. It’s having an inner voice that’s a friend, not a critic.

And that realization is both liberating and terrifying. Liberating because you can rewrite the narrative at any time. Terrifying because it means you might have been holding yourself back all along—letting autopilot and old conditioning drive your feelings without ever questioning if they were truly yours.

The playground is infinite now. And that’s a lot of responsibility to sit with.

What would change if you stopped fighting yourself?

🌿 The price of knowing too much

Human beings hold a strange power, the ability to predict. Through symbols and words, we imagine the future, plan for it, and try to control it. It seems like an advantage, a way to protect ourselves.

But knowing the future also carries a heavy cost. We glimpse endings we can’t escape. Deep down, we all feel it, a quiet melancholy, a subtle sadness that comes from knowing everything eventually falls apart.

Other creatures move through life without this burden. A cat walks with dignity. A moth flies into a flame without fear. They live fully in each moment, free from the weight of what’s to come.

In trying to outsmart nature, we gained foresight, but lost spontaneity. We traded presence for anxiety. We built an identity, a self stitched together from memories and stories, and became trapped by the knowledge that even our story must end.

The more we cling to our history, the more we fear its inevitable close. And so, in gaining control, we also inherit a quiet, relentless unease.

✨ Alan Watts

🎵 Music I’m listening to

You’ll find mostly Ethnotronica, Organic House, World, Disco, and Organic Electronic here:

🎧 If you appreciate the music I carefully select and haven't followed my Spotify playlists yet, now is the perfect time to hit that follow button and join me on this musical journey! 🎶

• 🌒 Pano: Danceable and electronic obscure songs

• 🌓 Sisy: Ethnotronica and organic house

• 🌑 Berghain: Dark, minimal techno and tech house

• 🌕 Heide: Groovy soul and disco house

• 🌞 Sonntag: Afterhours shit

• 🦥 Slow rave: Sleepy techno for tired danced

• 🌎 World: From Latin jazz to Turkish psych

• 🌚 Super Slow: For your intimate moments

Previously on Pursuit:

👋 Welcome to Pursuit—your weekly pause for intentional living, self-discovery, and inner clarity. My name is Amir, and every week I share four carefully chosen ideas to help you design a more fulfilling life.

This week’s reflections:

• 😩 The hidden drive behind overwork

• 🚫 Some problems aren’t meant to be solved

• 🏆 In praise of mastery

Last week, I came back from Tehran. I hadn’t been to my hometown in four years—the last time was before the Woman, Life, Freedom uprisings.

When I entered the airport, I couldn’t believe my eyes. Women at customs, standing in front of authorities, weren’t wearing their scarves. In the streets, more than fifty percent of women weren’t wearing hijab. In my entire lifetime growing up in Iran, I had never seen such a scene.

The city was beautiful. I saw people smiling at each other, quietly communicating something unspoken—a shared acknowledgment that we triumphed in the first step of our battle. A victory over more than thirty years of oppression.

Right now, there’s a new renaissance happening in Iran. Young people are out all the time, filling cafes. There are so many coffee shops where people simply hang out. DJs are playing vinyl in cafes across Tehran and people are dancing!

I could never have fathomed that one day Iran would look like this. That I would see it with my own eyes.

This makes me want to return more frequently—to firsthand experience this tectonic societal change and feel the energy in the city.

If you’re Iranian and you live outside of Iran, and you haven’t been back since this pivotal time, I highly recommend going. Experience it firsthand. It might soften something in you toward your own country—and plant small rays of hope for long-term change.

😩 The hidden drive behind overwork

Status isn’t about how many followers you have or how famous you are. At its core, status is the feeling that you are of value to others.

In the past, this was built into daily life. In hunter-gatherer tribes, everyone knew their role—whether as a forager, a hunter, or a caregiver. Your contribution was visible and essential.

Today, many of us live disconnected from any real sense of belonging. We move away from communities for opportunity, but often pay the price of feeling unseen.

Without clear proof of our value, we chase it elsewhere—through overwork, through achievements, through constantly trying to prove our importance.

Religious practices, regardless of belief, often create built-in ways to serve others—to feel needed. Without these structures, many people today are facing a value deficiency.

And that over-reliance on feeling important? It’s quietly pushing a lot of us past what we can handle.

🚫 Some problems aren’t meant to be solved

Some people live as if frustration itself is an injustice—like life should run perfectly if only everyone else would just cooperate. But real life doesn’t work that way.

There’s a level of hassle and inefficiency built into the world that no amount of control can eliminate. Trying to stamp it out entirely doesn’t make you powerful—it blinds you to reality.

Imagine running a grocery store: you could eliminate shoplifting entirely by strip-searching every customer. But you’d also eliminate your business. Some problems aren’t meant to be solved completely—they’re meant to be tolerated wisely.

The healthiest mindset isn’t demanding a frictionless life. It’s accepting that a little nonsense, a little inefficiency, is the true cost of living freely. And when you stop denying that truth, you see the world more clearly—and handle it with a lot more grace.

Think about your past week. Which inefficiencies or nonsense tipped you off and made you frustrated? Can you see it in yourself to tolerate it wisely instead of trying to eliminate it?

🏆 In praise of mastery

It resists definition, yet can be instantly recognized. It comes in many varieties, yet follows certain unchanging laws. It makes us, in the words of the Olympic motto, ‘Faster, higher, and stronger,’ yet is not really a goal or a destination but rather a process, a journey.

We call this journey mastery and tend to assume that it requires a special ticket available only to those born with exceptional abilities. But mastery is not reserved for the super talented or even for those who are fortunate enough to have gotten an early start. It is available to anyone who is willing to get on the path and stay on it—regardless of age, sex, or experience.

The problem? We have few, if any, maps to guide us on the journey or even show us how to find the path. The modern world can be viewed as a prodigious conspiracy against mastery. We’re bombarded with promises of instant success, immediate gratification, and fast relief—all of which lead in exactly the wrong direction.

Learning something new involves relatively brief spurts of progress, each followed by a slight decline to a plateau somewhat higher than what preceded it. You must be willing to spend most of your time on a plateau, keep practicing even when you seem to be getting nowhere.

What is mastery? At its heart, mastery is staying on the path. Starting on the path requires qualities more commonly found in children than in adults—curiosity, being present, and lack of ego. Specifically, not caring if you fail.

One who renounces immediate goals for the sake of diligent practice generally ends up reaching higher goals than one who shoots for quick results. One who takes the path of mastery is likely to end up a winner more often than one who thinks about nothing but scoring points.

But winning for a true master isn’t something to use as fuel for a depleted ego or to gloat about with cries of “number one.” It’s simply part of a process that began long ago—one that will continue as long as life goes on.

🎵 Music I’m listening to

You’ll find mostly Ethnotronica, Organic House, World, Disco, and Organic Electronic here:

🎧 If you appreciate the music I carefully select and haven't followed my Spotify playlists yet, now is the perfect time to hit that follow button and join me on this musical journey! 🎶

• 🌒 Pano: Danceable and electronic obscure songs

• 🌓 Sisy: Ethnotronica and organic house

• 🌑 Berghain: Dark, minimal techno and tech house

• 🌕 Heide: Groovy soul and disco house

• 🌞 Sonntag: Afterhours shit

• 🦥 Slow rave: Sleepy techno for tired danced

• 🌎 World: From Latin jazz to Turkish psych

• 🌚 Super Slow: For your intimate moments

Previously on Pursuit:

👋 Welcome to Pursuit—your weekly pause for intentional living, self-discovery, and inner clarity. My name is Amir, and every week I share four carefully chosen ideas to help you design a more fulfilling life.

This week’s reflections:

• 🌊 The storms will come—trust your compass

• 😔 What feeling regret is trying to tell you

• 🤹🏼 Don’t sacrifice play

• 🥰 A sense of worth you should have never had to earn

Next week I’m going to Tehran after four years—the longest I’ve been away from my hometown. Because of that, I won’t be writing next week’s post. I’ll see you in two weeks.

🌊 The storms will come—trust your compass

Reading these quotes this morning reminded me: the future is always uncertain. What matters isn’t eliminating that uncertainty. It’s how much we prepare, how deeply we trust our intuition, and how willing we are to adapt when plans shift.

Preparation always beats planning. Planning is based on the expectation of order. Preparation is based on the expectation of chaos. Plan for order and you’ll be destroyed by chaos. Prepare for chaos and you’ll thrive in any condition.

The worst decisions in life are made when you allow your head to talk you into something when your gut already said no. Rule for life: Never let your head outsmart your gut.

Adaptability is the single most important trait for life. The explorer doesn’t set out on his voyage trusting that the seas will remain calm and that he will stay perfectly on course; but rather, in his ability to adapt when the inevitable storms and chaos arrive. You are the explorer and life is your voyage. You don’t need to trust in your plan or your intelligence. You need to trust in your ability to adapt.

😔 What feeling regret is trying to tell you

Regret often disguises itself as perfectionism—the belief that we could have made flawless decisions if we had just tried harder. But this mindset traps us in the past, fueling guilt and shame instead of real growth.

The truth is, regret isn’t about the event itself; it’s about refusing to accept the limits of who we were at the time. Growth begins when we stop judging our past selves through the lens of who we are now.

Wistful uncertainty about the past is inevitable. Holding onto it is optional.

Instead of trying to eliminate regret, ask yourself: which regret could I bear living with? Which decision would I struggle to live without?

When you choose to believe that you did the best you could with the information and experience you had, regret loses its grip.

You can’t run life twice. You can only choose the story you tell about it—and that story shapes the quality of your life.

🤹🏼 Don’t sacrifice play

Last week I watched an interview with a bioecologist who said something that stuck with me: humans learn through play. That’s why kids are always playing—they’re learning about the world. When you try to teach them through lectures or lessons, they resist. They want to learn, and they learn best through play.

A few days later, one of my best friends asked me a question I struggled to answer: What do you do purely for joy, without any expectation of impact or outcome?

When I thought about it, I realized most things I enjoy also serve a purpose. I write because I love it, but there’s always an output. Same with everything else I do. It made me wonder: Have I lost touch with pure play? With doing something just for the sake of doing it, no outcome attached? How about you—what do you do for the joy of it alone, without expecting anything meaningful to come from it?

🥰 A sense of worth you should have never had to earn

Do you ever ask yourself if you work too hard? Dr. Gabor Maté, a well-known physician, author, and speaker known for his work on trauma, has an interesting take on working too hard:

Working hard isn’t the problem. It’s working too hard that leaves a mark.

No one regrets the effort it takes to build something meaningful. What they regret is being driven by invisible forces they didn’t even realize were there.

We might not understand how much of our ambition came from trying to justify our existence—to prove we mattered. That drive wasn’t fueled by passion. It was rooted in early wounds—a lack of feeling valued simply for being.

When children are celebrated just for existing, they don’t spend their lives trying to prove their worth. But if love only comes through achievements, the message is clear: you are valuable because of what you do, not because of who you are.

And that’s when the striving becomes endless. Not because you love the work—but because you’re still chasing a sense of worth you should have never had to earn.

🎵 Music I’m listening to

You’ll find mostly Ethnotronica, Organic House, World, Disco, and Organic Electronic here:

🎧 If you appreciate the music I carefully select and haven't followed my Spotify playlists yet, now is the perfect time to hit that follow button and join me on this musical journey! 🎶

• 🌒 Pano: Danceable and electronic obscure songs

• 🌓 Sisy: Ethnotronica and organic house

• 🌑 Berghain: Dark, minimal techno and tech house

• 🌕 Heide: Groovy soul and disco house

• 🌞 Sonntag: Afterhours shit

• 🦥 Slow rave: Sleepy techno for tired danced

• 🌎 World: From Latin jazz to Turkish psych

• 🌚 Super Slow: For your intimate moments

Previously on Pursuit:

👋 Welcome to Pursuit—your weekly pause for intentional living, self-discovery, and inner clarity. My name is Amir, and every week I share four carefully chosen ideas to help you design a more fulfilling life.

This week’s reflections:

• 🚪 The only prison is your inaction

• 📅 One year of going all-in on you

• ⛴️ Remember who’s steering the ship

• 🌗 The two choices that shape everything

🚪 The only prison is your inaction

The worst prison in the world is having the talent and intelligence to achieve something great but lacking the courage to go out and do it. There is someone out there living the life you want simply because they took action and you didn’t. They aren’t smarter than you. They aren’t more skilled than you. They aren’t more resourceful than you. They just acted when you didn’t. Think about that. It’s all on you. No one is coming to save you. No one will fix your problems. No one will change your mindsets. No one will hand you the things you want in life. It’s just you. It’s all on you. There’s a power in that.

Later you’ll be dead. Life is filled with laters. I’ll spend more time with my kids later. I’ll find time for my health later. I’ll have more freedom later. The brutal reality: Later is just another word for never. Most of the things you say you’ll do later won’t be possible by the time you claim you’ll do them. Your kids won’t be five years old later. Your health won’t be there later. Your life won’t suddenly be built for freedom and enjoyment later. Either design it into your life now or live with regret later.

📅 One year of going all-in on you

You may know how important your time is, yet you ignore its passage and engage in low-value activities that pull you away from the things that really matter. There is so much pressure to always strive for these big, huge things. To want more. To have the glamorous, sexy, impressive moments. To have this big life. You are told to focus on the big, but the real texture of life is found in the small. Your entire life can change in one year. Not ten. Not five. Not three. One. One year of focused, daily effort. One year of clear intentions. One year of leaving behind the things that no longer serve you. One year of going all-in on you. So, let’s get started today.

⛴️ Remember who’s steering the ship

Reading books and listening to podcasts about health gives you information. But information alone isn’t enough.

Real change comes from internal knowledge—the quiet, often overlooked ability to listen inward.

Interoception, the sense of perceiving your body’s signals, is like a hidden sixth sense. It tells you when you’re tense before you realize you’re stressed, or when you’re hungry before your mind wanders to food.

Strengthening this ability doesn’t just deepen your relationship with your body. It becomes a tool for navigating emotions like anxiety, helping you respond before overwhelm takes root.

The answers aren’t just out there. In a world constantly pulling at our attention, one practice matters more than ever: solitude.

Not isolation—just time spent with yourself, without noise, without outside input.

If the first thing you do each morning is consume—news, social media, even “good” information—you lose the chance to hear yourself.

Your body is always sending signals. But without stillness, without space, you’ll miss them.

Solitude isn’t a luxury. It’s a daily necessity—a way to remember who’s steering the ship before the world tries to grab the wheel.

🌗 The two choices that shape everything

Here’s something that caught my attention from Tony Robbins’ conversation in a recent Modern Wisdom podcast:

Sometimes the hardest moments leave behind the clearest lessons.

Every moment, two choices are being made, often without realizing it.

First: What do you focus on? There’s a million options—hunger, fear, hope, doubt. But life isn’t what happens around you; it’s what you choose to see.

Second: What meaning do you assign to it? Focus without meaning is empty. The meaning you attach shapes the emotions you feel. And the emotions you live in, define the texture of your life.

Choose wisely. Your experience of life depends on it.

🎵 Music I’m listening to

You’ll find mostly Ethnotronica, Organic House, World, Disco, and Organic Electronic here:

🎧 If you appreciate the music I carefully select and haven't followed my Spotify playlists yet, now is the perfect time to hit that follow button and join me on this musical journey! 🎶

• 🌒 Pano: Danceable and electronic obscure songs

• 🌓 Sisy: Ethnotronica and organic house

• 🌑 Berghain: Dark, minimal techno and tech house

• 🌕 Heide: Groovy soul and disco house

• 🌞 Sonntag: Afterhours shit

• 🦥 Slow rave: Sleepy techno for tired danced

• 🌎 World: From Latin jazz to Turkish psych

• 🌚 Super Slow: For your intimate moments

Previously on Pursuit:

👋 Welcome to Pursuit—your weekly pause for intentional living, self-discovery, and inner clarity. My name is Amir, and every week I share four carefully chosen ideas to help you design a more fulfilling life.

This week’s reflections:

• 🌌 What you won’t become costs you everything

• 🤯 The sanity of losing control

• ⛰️ Redefining happiness on the climb

• 🔑 What you avoid is what you need

🌌 What you won’t become costs you everything

We fear our highest possibilities. We are generally afraid to become that which we can glimpse in our most perfect moments, under conditions of great courage. We enjoy and even thrill to godlike possibilities we see in ourselves in such peak moments. And yet we simultaneously shiver with weakness, awe, and fear before these very same possibilities...If you deliberately plan to be less than you are capable of being, then I warn you that you’ll be deeply unhappy for the rest of your life. You will be evading your own capacities, your own possibilities.

Sometimes you don’t give your full energy to something because you’re afraid of what will happen if it works out. You’re afraid of seeing what you’re truly capable of. You’re afraid of realizing your full potential goes far beyond the limiting stories you’ve been telling yourself. You’re afraid of never being able to go back to the safety of those stories. But to fear your own light is to live in the dark—and that’s not where you belong. Embrace the fear. Embrace your highest possibilities. Shine that light.

🤯 The sanity of losing control

We often seek control, yet it’s in chaos that we truly discover ourselves. Losing control can feel terrifying, but it’s also exhilarating—revealing parts of ourselves we never knew existed.

There’s a hidden value in occasionally letting yourself go “a little insane,” stepping beyond comfort into the unknown. This could be through intense work, spiritual practices, or pushing physical limits. By confronting overwhelm, we find our edges and learn deep acceptance.

Peace isn’t the absence of chaos—it’s the willingness to embrace whatever arises, without judgment.

⛰️ Redefining happiness on the climb

As you ascend in life, something curious happens: your awareness of the distance between the peaks and valleys sharpens. You might think success brings more happiness, but the connection isn’t so simple.

In fact, it’s worth questioning whether success and happiness should even be the same thing. Most people, when they say they want to be happy, don’t mean they want to live in constant joy. If you press deeper, it becomes clear: what they really want is freedom from suffering.

Happiness isn’t endless laughter, nor the fleeting pleasure of a late-night cookie. It’s often just the quiet hope to avoid pain without purpose. And when asked to define it clearly, most realize—they can’t.

Maybe true happiness isn’t about chasing a feeling at all. Maybe it’s about understanding that life’s peaks and valleys will always coexist—and learning to move through both without needing to eliminate one or cling too tightly to the other.

What I’m trying to say to you is, whether you’re at a peak or a trough: most feelings are recursive. They end and they begin. If you’ve felt it once you’ll feel it again. All the joy and delight. All the loneliness and rootlessness. If I’ve lost once I’ll suffer loss again. If I’ve loved once, no doubt I’ll love deeply again. To orbit gently across these cycles with humility, with an open heart: that’s the game.

🔑 What you avoid is what you need

You’ll achieve much more by being consistently reliable than by being occasionally extraordinary. You can get pretty damn far in life by just being someone that people can count on to show up and do the work. There’s nothing more dangerous than the person who shows up every single day even when the rewards are uncertain. The one who can tolerate the most uncertainty is the one who will eventually win. The answers you seek are found in the actions you avoid. Every single thing you want in life is on the other side of something you don’t want to do. The body you seek is found in the workouts you skip. The relationships you seek are found in the hard conversations you delay. The success you seek is found in the hours of execution you avoid. The answer is found in the action. Remember that.

🎵 Music I’m listening to

You’ll find mostly Ethnotronica, Organic House, World, Disco, and Organic Electronic here:

🎧 If you appreciate the music I carefully select and haven't followed my Spotify playlists yet, now is the perfect time to hit that follow button and join me on this musical journey! 🎶

• 🌒 Pano: Danceable and electronic obscure songs

• 🌓 Sisy: Ethnotronica and organic house

• 🌑 Berghain: Dark, minimal techno and tech house

• 🌕 Heide: Groovy soul and disco house

• 🌞 Sonntag: Afterhours shit

• 🦥 Slow rave: Sleepy techno for tired danced

• 🌎 World: From Latin jazz to Turkish psych

• 🌚 Super Slow: For your intimate moments

Previously on Pursuit:

👋 Welcome to Pursuit—your weekly pause for intentional living, self-discovery, and inner clarity. My name is Amir, and every week I share four carefully chosen ideas to help you design a more fulfilling life.

This week’s reflections:

• 🎨 Between reflection and expression

• ✨ The magic of allowing life to unfold

• 🌑 Holding space in the dark

• 💎 What are you willing to trade for mastery?

🎨 Between reflection and expression

A well-lived life oscillates between two ends of a spectrum:

Introspection is about thinking through the course of your life and reflecting on how it’s going. It’s to find ways to calibrate your inner compass and to gain clarity into how you’re feeling. Simply put, it’s an exploration of your inner world.

Expression is about communicating and conveying your ideas to others. There’s a communal aspect to it, whether you’re trying to find your tribe or you’re looking to help others that you believe you can help. Simply put, it’s a connection with the outer world.

It’s a spectrum because life isn’t about one or the other. Periods of contemplation are followed by periods of activity, and there is a cyclical nature of sorts. But both are required to feel that your life has purpose and meaning.

Reviewing this piece reminded me how much time I spend in my head, tracing patterns between ideas, feelings, and actions. Coincidentally, last night I watched a documentary about the pioneer of animation in Iran and felt awe at how he followed what excited him despite everyone calling him crazy. He kept creating and sharing. No permission. No waiting.

It made me wonder how often I share my own ideas with my tribe. Many of you are introspective by nature. That is why you are here. Reflection is necessary, but expression is how ideas breathe.

Try a small experiment this week. Share one unfinished idea with two or three friends. Say it out loud. See what lands. Clarity arrives only after we give our thoughts a life outside the mind.

✨ The magic of allowing life to unfold

We often spend life pushing, striving, and forcing perfection, believing fulfillment waits at the finish line. Yet, as time passes, life gently shows us another way—the art of letting go.

Growing older softens not just our pace, but our perspective. You slow down, seeing clearly what you once rushed past. Imperfections reveal themselves as perfect, beauty found precisely because things aren’t forced.

Life isn’t meant to be wrestled into place; it’s meant to unfold naturally. True joy isn’t found by pushing harder—it emerges effortlessly when you allow yourself to patiently witness the gentle beauty of the present moment.

🌑 Holding space in the dark

You never forget the person who was there for you on your worst days. They weren’t loud. They weren’t offering advice. They weren’t fixing the problems. They were just there. They were just in it. They were just with you. If you want to find that person, start by being that person to someone else.

Let people support you. Let yourself need. Let your knees wobble in front of others. Let hurt and hope be held. Let yourself detach from the notion of needing equaling weakness (Ten things by Lisa Olivera). When you allow yourself to be vulnerable, you create permission for others to do the same. The person who shows up becomes the person others show up for. In working so hard to become independent, we forget how much satisfaction we get from the sense that others depend on us, and the meaning we can create by allowing ourselves to be dependent on others—if only we have the courage to let them help us (Friendships Form via Shared Context, Not Shared Activities by Bill Mei).

💎 What are you willing to trade for mastery?

Specialization is a ­trade-­off: pursuing one course means not pursuing another. It’s narrowing your focus to increase your impact. In a world of infinite knowledge and finite time, specialization is the key to unlocking mastery. It’s about going deep, not wide. Specialization has risks. If the world changes, what was once a valuable specialty can become obsolete. And yet, we need specialists. You wouldn’t want a generalist doing your brain surgery or a root canal. Ultimately, specialization is about where you spend your time and effort. It’s how you stand out. It’s choosing to be great at one thing instead of okay at many.

I’m not fully sold on the idea that success requires narrow specialization. In my experience curiosity across many domains has been an advantage. Being a generalist helped me connect dots and move faster. At the same time depth matters. A few skills became the engines that pulled me forward.

The balance I recommend is simple. Explore widely, then choose the handful of areas where you will go deep. Keep investing there. Those skills become your parachute when the engines fail. They give you confidence to take risks and a way to land on your feet.

🎵 Music I’m listening to

You’ll find mostly Ethnotronica, Organic House, World, Disco, and Organic Electronic here:

🎧 If you appreciate the music I carefully select and haven't followed my Spotify playlists yet, now is the perfect time to hit that follow button and join me on this musical journey! 🎶

• 🌒 Pano: Danceable and electronic obscure songs

• 🌓 Sisy: Ethnotronica and organic house

• 🌑 Berghain: Dark, minimal techno and tech house

• 🌕 Heide: Groovy soul and disco house

• 🌞 Sonntag: Afterhours shit

• 🦥 Slow rave: Sleepy techno for tired danced

• 🌎 World: From Latin jazz to Turkish psych

• 🌚 Super Slow: For your intimate moments

Previously on Pursuit:

👋 Welcome to Pursuit—your weekly pause for intentional living, self-discovery, and inner clarity. My name is Amir, and every week I share four carefully chosen ideas to help you design a more fulfilling life.

This week’s reflections:

• 📚 Useful ideas for life

• 🚪 The curse of keeping your options open

• 🔄 Trust as a self-fulfilling prophecy

• 🌌 What are you postponing your life for?

📚 Useful ideas for life

Small discomforts, big consequences

Often we fail to improve our lives simply because things don’t get bad enough. If your new job is hell, you’ll leave it, but if it’s just unsatisfying, you’ll likely grind it out. Thus, small problems often threaten our quality of life more than big ones.

Optimistic pessimism

The optimal state of mind is neither optimism, which leaves you unprepared for adversity, nor pessimism, which destroys motivation, but optimistic pessimism: by preparing for the worst outcomes, you increase confidence in dealing with any outcome, and thus, you increase hope.

The gift of the present moment

Every moment is unique and unrepeatable, so appreciate every experience as if it’s your last (which, in a way, it is). Even if your current situation sucks, be gracious that, of all the humans that will ever exist, only you will have the privilege of experiencing this moment in this specific way.

Trade bad problems for better ones

The more we solve our problems, the more we widen the definition of “problem” so that our number of problems remains constant. So don’t expect a life without problems. Progress doesn’t mean reducing your quantity of struggles, but increasing their quality. The goal of life is to trade bad problems for better ones.

🚪 The curse of keeping your options open

When I was younger, I used to think that committing to something would feel oppressive, limiting, restrictive. But I now realize that the opposite is true — that commitment is freeing. It lets you focus. It collapses the need for you to continue considering options endlessly and instead grounds you to where you are, and helps you enjoy the rewards of living out one of those options. In other words: the value of commitment is that you get something tangible in exchange for it. By making a choice, you get something Real. Whereas stewing in your potential and refusing to transform it into something Actual leaves you living more in your head—weighing and considering and thinking about all of the things you could be doing, but not actually doing any of them.

Don’t be afraid of the Actual. Don’t be so precious with your potential that you don’t make commitments. Making choices and letting go of options can be just as rewarding as “keeping your options open” — more so, in fact! Because you actually get things from commitment. Rewards. Meaning. Depth. Richness. Intimacy. Progress. Skill. Clarity. Confidence. These are valuable, important things! Things that living in the world of optionality and postponing these ‘choices’ that feel so essential and defining to your future does not offer you. And in a way, the options you are so worried about losing don’t really disappear. Not if they are something that is truly for you. If they are compelling to you in the future, you can probably reopen them. But be cautious about indulging in the dangerous idea that options are the whole point, that commitment and choice are the enemy. Commitment is where all of the juice is!

🔄 Trust as a self-fulfilling prophecy

The best leaders I know extend trust and loyalty long before receiving it - they treat people as if they’ve already proven trustworthy. This seems naive until you realize it’s a forcing function: by acting as if people have already earned your trust, you create the conditions that make it almost inevitable that they will.

🌌 What are you postponing your life for?

We imagine our happiness lies somewhere in the future, postponing fulfillment to an imagined later. But this waiting game is a trick—life occurs only in the present. Hoping to live “someday” robs us of living fully today.

When asked about our lives, we describe them in abstractions—tasks done, places visited—but rarely how those moments felt. Life isn’t found in plans, expectations, or hopeful waiting. It unfolds only in the silence and awareness of the present.

Your “self”—the ego, the collection of hopes and fears—doesn’t truly exist; it’s just a narrative you maintain. When you let go of this illusion, you’re freed to genuinely live. True liberation isn’t something waiting ahead; it’s right here, right now.

🎵 Music I’m listening to

You’ll find mostly Ethnotronica, Organic House, World, Disco, and Organic Electronic here:

🎧 If you appreciate the music I carefully select and haven't followed my Spotify playlists yet, now is the perfect time to hit that follow button and join me on this musical journey! 🎶

• 🌒 Pano: Danceable and electronic obscure songs

• 🌓 Sisy: Ethnotronica and organic house

• 🌑 Berghain: Dark, minimal techno and tech house

• 🌕 Heide: Groovy soul and disco house

• 🌞 Sonntag: Afterhours shit

• 🦥 Slow rave: Sleepy techno for tired danced

• 🌎 World: From Latin jazz to Turkish psych

• 🌚 Super Slow: For your intimate moments

Previously on Pursuit:

👋 Welcome to Pursuit—your weekly pause for intentional living, self-discovery, and inner clarity. My name is Amir, and every week I share four carefully chosen ideas to help you design a more fulfilling life.

This week’s reflections:

• 🕯️ Habit keeps the flame

• 🌊 Life without force

• 🤯 Do you have enough awe in your life?

• 💬 Conflict is a route to deeper understanding

🕯️ Habit keeps the flame

We like to think achievement comes from endless discipline. It rarely does. What shapes a life is habit.

When someone shows up at the gym or eats well day after day, you are not watching superhuman willpower. You are seeing a routine that has become automatic. Discipline matters at the beginning. It lights the match. Habit keeps the flame.

Trade lofty intentions for small, repeatable actions. Choose moves so simple you cannot fail, then repeat them until they feel like breathing. Over time the routine carries you. Goals become byproducts of what you do without thinking.

🌊 Life without force

The purpose of human life is not to win or lose, but to learn who you are. To look around and say what is this about, what can I learn from this, and why have I allowed it to come into my life? Everything without exception in the human world is an educational tool to recognize that in every given moment in your life you have not only the right but the responsibility to perceive where there is fear and when there is love. And to choose love. Until you know your own holiness you cannot love another. What is the indicator that you are truly in love with who you are? Allowing your life to be what it is without force. The moment you recognize that you are worthy of the garden of eden, you are worthy. And so is everyone else. You cannot push people into the garden of eden from the outside. You can only open the gate and invite them. So you must get there first.

What feels forced in your life right now. If you keep telling yourself you should do something but never find the energy, pause. Ask whether this is a true desire or a borrowed script. Is it your voice or the culture’s. Sit with the difference. When the impulse is yours, motivation arrives as a pull rather than a fight.

🤯 Do you have enough awe in your life?

Awe can help us be less stressed, less materialistic, and less isolated. There’s evidence that awe is good for our physical health, too; one study reported that people who experienced the emotion more often had lower levels of cytokines, the proteins that cause inflammation. Awe might also contribute to a more harmonious society. When researchers exposed one group of study participants to an awe-inspiring view of towering eucalyptus trees, and another group to a neutral scene of a building, those who admired the pretty view were more likely to help a stranger pick up something they had dropped afterward. Another study found that awe made people less aggressive.

When was the last time you felt awe. If you have to think, it has been too long. Go somewhere that humbles you. A night sky far from the city. A room in a museum that stills your breath. Put it on the calendar and stand somewhere that makes you quiet.

💬 Conflict is a route to deeper understanding

Conflict isn’t an accident; it’s something we build together. Every disagreement follows an arc, starting small and expanding through emotion and misunderstanding. How we respond has less to do with the moment itself and more to do with what we learned long ago—whether anger was punished, silence was safety, or honesty was allowed. Those early lessons shape the choreography we default to: pursuing, withdrawing, or doing one while the other flees.

When we pursue, we often chase clarity but end up driving the other person away. When we withdraw, we preserve peace at the cost of connection. Both loops leave the real issue untouched. Learning to pause the pursuit or break the silence changes the entire rhythm. Conflict becomes less about winning and more about staying in relationship, even when emotions run high.

Beneath most fights lie three unspoken questions: Who holds power here? Can I trust you? Do you value me? We argue about lateness, chores, or tone, but what really hurts is the fear of being unseen, unheard, or unimportant. Repair begins when we move past proving our point and toward curiosity—asking what truly stung, acknowledging it, and setting boundaries where needed. That is how conflict becomes not a rupture but a route to deeper understanding.

🎵 Music I’m listening to

You’ll find mostly Ethnotronica, Organic House, World, Disco, and Organic Electronic here:

🎧 If you appreciate the music I carefully select and haven't followed my Spotify playlists yet, now is the perfect time to hit that follow button and join me on this musical journey! 🎶

• 🌒 Pano: Danceable and electronic obscure songs

• 🌓 Sisy: Ethnotronica and organic house

• 🌑 Berghain: Dark, minimal techno and tech house

• 🌕 Heide: Groovy soul and disco house

• 🌞 Sonntag: Afterhours shit

• 🦥 Slow rave: Sleepy techno for tired danced

• 🌎 World: From Latin jazz to Turkish psych

• 🌚 Super Slow: For your intimate moments

Previously on Pursuit:

👋 Welcome to Pursuit—your weekly pause for intentional living, self-discovery, and inner clarity. My name is Amir, and every week I share four carefully chosen ideas to help you design a more fulfilling life.

This week’s reflections:

• 👂🏼 Listening between the lines

• 🫶🏼 Advice I love about LOVE

• 🦸🏼‍♀️ What story are you telling about yourself?

• 🔒 Boundaries make intimacy possible

👂🏼 Listening between the lines

We think arguments are about words—but they’re actually about unspoken emotions. When someone says, “You never call,” the issue isn’t missed calls; it’s loneliness or feeling unloved. Defensiveness focuses on facts, but understanding comes from hearing what’s not being said.

Effective communication means decoding underlying feelings. Recognize when someone uses fear, obligation, or guilt (FOG) to sway you. Don’t react; pause and reflect.

True resolution comes from seeing clearly through the FOG—responding not to the words, but to the emotions beneath them.

🫶🏼 Advice I love about LOVE

All roads ultimately lead to the same place: Reality is one of ultimate unconditional boundless unwavering love. That is what you already are. The work is in seeing through the obstructions that cloud that truth.

The point is not to destroy the ego. Understand the ego and how it forms, be aware of it, loosen its power when it comes from lower energy states, magnify its power when higher energy states illuminate it, let it be a tool to achieve Love’s aims. Let life use life.

Heal yourself then raise the ceiling. Too much inner-work and past rumination can be counter-productive. Eventually you have to expose yourself to high stakes situations: falling in love, doing risky things, manifesting brighter futures. In this way you experientially teach your “parts/stories” to trust and surrender to your “Higher Self/ a new story”.

For things like love and the things they pour into (career, another person, a child, a dream) there’s no going halfway. Because love is about blind faith. You have to just send it. There’s no consolation prize for going halfway. It will not happen. You have to fully go into it.

🦸🏼‍♀️ What story are you telling about yourself?

We often underestimate the power of the narratives we create about our lives. But through time I’ve learned that how we tell our story determines how we live it.

People who consistently frame themselves as victims—blaming others or circumstances—rarely thrive. This narrative traps them, limiting their growth and keeping them stuck. True healing begins when we recognize our own role in shaping our experiences.

The language we use isn’t trivial—it shapes our reality. By shifting our story from victimhood to agency, we create a narrative that empowers rather than imprisons.

💪🏻 Power lives in every relationship

Power lives in every relationship, at work and at home. We speak often about expectations, boundaries, and trust, yet we speak less about power and when we do the focus tends to be abuse. There is another view. All relationships involve power, and it is neutral. It can harm and it can create. A helpful lens is the difference between power over and power to. Power over dominates or coerces. Power to is generative. It enables action and invites collaboration. The same income can illustrate both. In one partnership the higher earner decides where to live and how to spend. In another the same earnings fund a degree, a studio, or time to care for an ailing parent.

Power is also an organizing feature. Some situations need leadership, and leadership creates hierarchy and structure. When parents refuse their authority, a vacuum forms and the child ends up parenting the parent. Teams without direction face the same vacuum. Either someone else steps in, or the group slides into chaos. The same logic holds in communities and politics. Power is voted, chosen, earned, attributed, or stolen, and in every case it shapes the system. Power is not the enemy of love or collaboration. It is the current that runs through them. The task is to direct that current wisely. Turn power over into power to. Use influence to enable growth, protection, and shared purpose. When power is acknowledged, bounded, and put in service of the relationship, it becomes a force for creation rather than control.

🇵🇸 If you want to support my work, commit to donating €5/month to the children of Gaza—living in what is now the deadliest place on Earth.

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🎵 Music I’m listening to

You’ll find mostly Ethnotronica, Organic House, World, Disco, and Organic Electronic here:

🎧 If you appreciate the music I carefully select and haven't followed my Spotify playlists yet, now is the perfect time to hit that follow button and join me on this musical journey! 🎶

• 🌒 Pano: Danceable and electronic obscure songs

• 🌓 Sisy: Ethnotronica and organic house

• 🌑 Berghain: Dark, minimal techno and tech house

• 🌕 Heide: Groovy soul and disco house

• 🌞 Sonntag: Afterhours shit

• 🦥 Slow rave: Sleepy techno for tired danced

• 🌎 World: From Latin jazz to Turkish psych

• 🌚 Super Slow: For your intimate moments

Previously on Pursuit: