#101: You are already here, in an eternal present
Discover how genuine confidence emerges from engaging with life, embrace difficult conversations, recognize when to move forward, and find peace in the present moment.
👋 Welcome to this week’s Pursuit. My name is Amir, and each week, I go over 10 hours of content about personal growth and mental well-being, bringing you four insights and thought-provoking perspectives from leading thinkers. I hope to have a tiny impact on your life and inspire you with the tools to lead a more fulfilling life. Join us on this journey of continuous improvement and discovery.
2025 commitment: I've always struggled with maintaining a consistent journaling habit. Last week, my friend Reza’s year-end post (35 questions I ask myself every year) inspired me to try again next year. In our busy lives, we often forget experiences, miss seeing patterns, and overlook personal realizations. I think journaling enhanced by LLMs can help us understand ourselves better as we age and become more comfortable with our authentic selves. If you've overcome similar journaling challenges, share what worked for you in the comments.
This week’s discovery:
🌻 Become confident by engaging in life
💭 Tiny thoughts
🛫 Don’t leave too late
🌌 You are already here, in an eternal present
🌻 Become confident by engaging in life
Being attractive isn't about complex techniques or perfect looks—it's about living authentically and openly engaging with life. Think of confidence like gravity: it creates an automatic response, no conscious thought required.
Start being genuinely interested in the world around you. Learn people's names. Strike up conversations. Say yes to opportunities. It's not about being the richest or most handsome person in the room - it's about being the most engaged.
This approach works because it's authentic. When you're comfortable in your own skin, pursuing your purpose, and genuinely interested in others, you naturally become magnetic. Not just to potential partners, but to all kinds of opportunities.
✨ From Modern Wisdom | Dr. Robert Glover - Why Most Men Fail to Attract a Quality Woman
💭 Tiny thoughts
Most people overrate the difficulty of hard conversations, and underrate how good it is to have them. Conflict avoidance slowly rots your whole life, and many people are about eight awkward discussions from a much-improved existence. In other words, go squash all of your beefs.
This one is dear to my heart. Whenever I faced a difficult conversation, the anticipation was always worse than the actual moment. I always felt lighter after having it. When was the last time you had a difficult conversation?
People really and truly cannot read your mind. It’s easy to think that people are ignoring your wants or emotions because they don’t care about you. But it’s likely that they have no idea what those are. If you’ve told them, they’ve likely forgotten, and may need a reminder — they have their own whole crowded bubble of consciousness going on!
Talent doesn’t feel like you’re amazing. It feels like the difficulties that trouble others are mysteriously absent in your case. Don’t ask yourself where your true gifts lie. Ask what other people seem weirdly bad at.
✨ From Sasha Chapin - 50 Things I Know
🛫 Don’t leave too late
Restlessness is a sign you've overstayed your welcome with where you are and need to leave by moving toward the person you can be. Our love of stability keeps us where we are. The key is to leave just before you’re ready. If you leave too late, you miss the opportunity.
✨ From FS (Farnam Street) - Chalkboard Decisions
🌌 You are already here, in an eternal present
Think of your mind like a busy street - constant traffic of thoughts, each one blocking out the reality beneath. Most of us live entirely in this world of mental chatter, never experiencing the silence between thoughts where reality actually exists.
True meditation isn't about forcing thoughts to stop. That's impossible - you can't meditate, because the "you" trying to meditate is just another thought. Instead, it's about watching whatever arises without getting caught in naming or judging it. Like listening to birds chirping outside your window, let thoughts come and go without getting involved.
The easiest entry point? Simple listening. Not identifying sounds or their sources, just experiencing them as pure sensations. This extends to making sounds ourselves - not for meaning, but for their pure vibratory quality. It's about letting sound happen through us rather than making it happen.
Reality isn't mental or spiritual - it's simply now. Western religious practices often miss this, focusing on concepts rather than direct experience. When we stop trying to improve ourselves and simply watch what is, something profound happens: the artificial gap between knower and known dissolves. Remember: You're not doing this to get anywhere. You're already here, in an eternal present.
✨ From Alan Watts - Don't Think
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🎵 Discovery for your ears
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
🌎 World: From Latin jazz to Turkish psych
🌚 Super Slow: For your intimate moments
Previously on Pursuit:
“Don’t ask yourself where your true gifts lie. Ask what other people seem weirdly bad at.” 🙏🏼😍
„ I think journaling enhanced by LLMs can help us understand ourselves better as we age and become more comfortable with our authentic selves.“
Interested to see what you mean by this enhancement?