#17: It's All a Show

#mission #greatness #values #fear #growth

May 05, 2023

👋 Hello and welcome to this week's edition of Pursuit. In a world where we are drowning in information but starving for wisdom, I spend over 10 hours each week learning about living a fulfilling life, productivity, and building great products. I feel grateful to bring the highlights of my findings to you, saving you time in your search for wisdom. So go ahead, give it a try, and subscribe now if you haven’t already.

This week’s discovery:

🔍 Find Your Meaningful Mission - #mission
🤔 What Separates the Greatest from the Rest - #greatness
🤷‍♀️ Who Do You Admire - #values
🍿 Don't Be Scared It's All a Show - #fear
🤑 How to Price a Product - #growth
⭐ A quote and music tracks…

🔍 Find Your Meaningful Mission

If you're struggling to find your meaningful mission in life, focus on the three P's: passion, power, and problem-solving. First, identify what you're passionate about and lean into that curiosity and that comes with being open to new experiences. Second, assess the power that you already have and unearth the invisible talents that you may not have recognized before. Lastly, find a problem that you want to solve, something that is meaningful to you and that you care about deeply. When you're in service of solving a problem that matters to you, you'll feel more useful and fulfilled. Don't be afraid to look at the pains you've been through in your life as a way to identify problems that you can solve for others. The obstacle is the way.

🎧 7-min

🤔 What Separates the Greatest from the Rest

If you're looking for the secret to greatness, you won't find it in a morning routine or a productivity hack. No, the truly brilliant minds throughout history have been driven by something much deeper, much weirder. Take Leonardo da Vinci, for example. The guy spent six months studying the tongue of a woodpecker. Or James Cameron, who was just a truck driver before he revolutionized the movie industry with Terminator. What was the most important thing they all had in common? A commitment to following their hearts, even when it led them down the craziest, most uncertain paths. Because that's where the magic happens, where the biggest returns are found. Not in chasing money or metrics, but in pursuing something true and incredible for the world. Keep your eyes on the magic, and the rest will follow.

🎧 3-min

🤷‍♀️ Who Do You Admire

Going through this piece made me think it would be great if I had these traits:

Highly agentic — an inherent belief that their actions shape their reality, and that reality has fewer rules than we assume.
Abundant persistence — high execution rate for the actions they claim they will take (when they say they want to do something, it happens). Also: consistency and regularity of actions taken when no one polices them.
Balanced relationship with advice — an elegance and mindfulness to which they give counsel. Possesses the self-assuredness to either align with or ignore advice/recommendations given to them.
Firmness of purpose: People who have absolute clarity and integrity with their values. Each choice is made with intention and accountability.

📖 7-min

🍿 Don't Be Scared It's All a Show

Picture yourself at the movies, watching a horror film. Why do we seek out such terrifying experiences? It's because the universe itself craves a thrill, for without it, life would be dull and uneventful. But what about the fear that grips us, that causes us to shake uncontrollably? We must remember that the key to mastering fear is not to resist it, but to allow ourselves to feel it fully. Only then can we truly begin to understand and conquer our fears. When we refuse to give in to fear, we create a cycle of worry and anxiety, which only serves to keep us trapped in our own minds. Remember, worrying is a useless pursuit, and only serves to distract us from the beauty and wonder of the world around us. Embrace your fears, and let them guide you on your path to enlightenment.

📺 10-min - Alan Watts

🤑 How to Price a Product

Step One: Use the most valuable attribute of your product — your value metric — to help define how you scale your price.
Step Two: Assess your customer’s willingness to pay for the product. You can research willingness to pay by running a Van Westendorp survey, which is designed to show how much customers are willing to pay for a specific good or service.
Step Three: Ensure your pricing and packaging strategy will drive compounding growth and revenue.
Step Four: Calculate how much you’re bringing in versus how much it costs to drive revenue.
Step Five: Test and adjust your pricing and packaging strategy as needed.

📖 10-min