#21: Not the Best

#relationships #decision-making #discipline #being-enough

Jun 02, 2023

👋 Welcome to this week's Pursuit. My name is Amir, and each week I go over 10 hours of content in pursuit of living a fulfilling life. I'm grateful to share my findings with you and hope I can have a tiny impact on your life. Subscribe now if you haven't already!

This week’s discovery:

🏇🏼 The Four Horsemen of the Relationship Apocalypse
🤔 The Paradox of Choice
👋🏼 If You Keep Showing Up
🤙🏼 Not the Best
🗒️ A Quote I'm Pondering On
🎵 Music Tracks I'm Listening To

🏇🏼 The Four Horsemen of the Relationship Apocalypse

This snippet caught my attention because in my past relationships, I would easily fall into the trap of stonewalling as a coping mechanism during disagreements.

If you're in a relationship or looking for one, it's important to be aware of the warning signs that your relationship may be in trouble. The four horsemen of the relationship apocalypse are criticism, defensiveness, contempt, and stonewalling. Criticism involves blaming your partner for a problem and attacking their character. Defensiveness is the natural response to criticism and involves counterattacks or whining. Contempt is criticism from a place of moral superiority and includes sarcasm, name-calling, and mockery. It's the strongest predictor of relationship demise and can even harm the listener's immune system. Finally, stonewalling is when one partner completely shuts down and gives no response to the other. If you want your relationship to thrive, avoid these behaviors and strive for positivity, affection, curiosity, and interest in one another.

🎧 5-min

🤔 The Paradox of Choice

After listening to this podcast, I have started to let go of the constant pressure to make the best choice for every decision. I am learning to be a satisfier.

When it comes to making decisions, we often fall into the trap of trying to maximize, or find the absolute best option. But what if I told you that there's a better way? According to Barry Schwartz's book "The Paradox of Choice," when we consider every option, we may technically make a better choice, but we'll actually feel worse about it because we're too aware of all the other choices we could have made. Instead, Schwartz suggests that we choose to satisfy, or settle for what's good enough. This doesn't mean that we should settle for mediocrity, but rather that we should focus on making a decision that feels right for us, even if it's not perfect. Satisfiers tend to feel much better about the decisions they make compared to optimizers, because they don't get bogged down in analysis paralysis.

🎧 3-min

👋🏼 If You Keep Showing Up

If you do something consistently for a long time, the people you see often are those that also exhibit that same consistency. In your eyes, this group will seem like the “regulars,” but in the eyes of most, they are individual outliers that exhibit a remarkable sense of commitment.

When you show up regularly in one aspect of your life, you won’t be perceived as that person who’s consistent in that one particular thing. Rather, you will be seen as “the person who always shows up,” regardless of how many domains you actually show up in.

Ultimately, commitment to showing up has to come from within. It has to stem from a fundamental belief that this routine or habit will make you a better person and that regularly acting on this belief is the only way to manifest that vision.

📖 5-min

🤙🏼 Not the Best

This was the first article I read from Lisa Olivera. I was doing my everyday morning routine after working out, listening to the article. And then, I felt my eyes becoming wet. I stopped what I was doing, sat down, and read the whole article with attention. It was beautiful! It's simply what all of us need to hear: we're enough!

No one else can do my work because no one else is me. And no one else can do your work because no one else is you. When we choose to show up for our work, our art, our callings, our passions, our creations, and our gifts anyway, we put more goodness in the world. We put more beauty in the world. We put more meaning in the world. We put more connection in the world. We put more hope in the world. We put more humanity in the world. And that matters, whether or not it’s one of a kind. That matters, whether or not it’s the best. That matters, whether or not it fits into some hierarchy we never even opted into.
We’ve been conditioned to think there’s only room for a select few so we must be the best — to see others as competition instead of companions — to dismiss our gifts if they don’t meet some externally-based standard — to view outcome as more important than the process of creating itself. We’ve been conditioned to think in terms of productivity and winning, of constant growth and surpassing, of individual success and social status. It’s no wonder we constantly question what we’re creating, sharing, and doing.
What you make, share, create, and do doesn’t need to be extraordinary for it to matter.What you have to say doesn’t need to be mind-blowing for it to be needed.What you want to offer the world doesn’t need to be original or the first of its kind.What you create doesn’t need to be the best.What you have to put out into the world doesn’t always need to be profound.You infusing yourself into whatever you do is enough.You choosing to show up to the work you’re called to create is enough.You being willing to put yourself out there without knowing the outcome is enough.Your desire and longing to do it is enough.Your own pleasure, fulfillment, and joy from doing it is enough.Your inner nudge to do it is enough.

📖 7-min

🗒️ A Quote I'm Pondering On

It’s incredibly easy to get caught up in an activity trap, in the busyness of life, to work harder and harder at climbing the ladder of success only to discover it’s leaning against the wrong wall. It is possible to be busy—very busy—without being very effective.