#24: Mining What’s Wrong

#self-compassion #adventure #loneliness #suffering #diversity

Jun 23, 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 meaningful, fulfilling and balanced 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:

🤗 Growth and Self-Compassion
🧗🏼‍♂️ Incorporating Adventure into Every Week
👭 Loneliness and Importance of Building Community
🤕 On Pain, Suffering, and Hope
💎 The Importance of Engaging with Different Communities
🗒️ A Quote I'm Pondering On
🎵 Music I'm Listening To

🤗 Growth and Self-Compassion

Like most of you, I like to grow. However, when I encounter areas of struggle, I sometimes associate them with my self-worth. How do you balance self-exploration with compassion?

There is a difference between always having more growth to do because you are human, and thinking you need to constantly grow because you're deficient. There is a difference between orienting toward self-exploration with compassion, and orienting toward self-mining for what's wrong. There is a difference between recognizing and honoring our tender spots, and continuously going over them until they feel like our identity. There is a difference between acknowledging the areas we still struggle with, and assuming the fact that we still struggle in some areas means we're bad, broken, or not doing enough. It is never all or nothing. We will always have more to do, more to understand, more to move through. Growth, healing, and transforming are never done.

📖 8-min

🧗🏼‍♂️ Incorporating Adventure into Every Week

"Adventure" is at the top of my list of values in life. When faced with two options, I tend to choose the one that will create a new experience for me. How do you infuse adventure into your day-to-day?

While routines can be helpful in making good choices, too much of it can make whole years feel like they've disappeared into memory sinkholes. Instead, try incorporating one big adventure and one little adventure into your week. These can be anything that's out of the ordinary and different from your usual routine, like visiting a park you've lived by for years but never explored or trying out a new gelato place. The big adventure can be a three- to four-hour activity, like spending half a weekend day doing something new. Meanwhile, the little adventure can be done in an hour or less, even on a weekday evening or lunch break. By having these adventures, you'll create new experiences that stand out in your mind and form memories that make time feel richer and more meaningful.

🎧 3-min

👭 Loneliness and Importance of Building Community

Research shows that loneliness can be more damaging to your health than having a poor diet or abstaining from exercise. There are three dimensions of loneliness: intimate, relational, and collective. While having a close partner can help alleviate intimate loneliness, it's crucial to also foster friendships that fulfil relational and collective loneliness. To build a community and enhance your overall well-being, seek out repeated activities where you can meet like-minded people. Don't be afraid to engage with others and show them that you value their presence. Assume that people like you and engage with them. Turn your hobby into a community. Remember, the most important quality that people look for in a friend is someone who makes them feel like they matter. So, try to make others feel valued and appreciated. Engage with them, tell them what you like about them, and ask them to hang out. Making friends isn't about being interesting or impressive, it's about connecting with others and making them feel safe.

🎧 6-min

🤕 On Pain, Suffering, and Hope

When faced with a biological fact, we have the ability to choose how we interpret it. The mind has the power to frame the inevitability of entropy in a way that aligns with one’s values and perceptions. When we call someone an optimist, for example, we’re referring to someone that takes the reality of pain and perceives it as an opportunity for something better. The optimist doesn’t deny the existence of pain, but instead sees it as a gateway to growth. If pain signals a hardship, then suffering is what internalizes that hardship to feel like a continuous burden. This tends to be the default setting we operate on, but if we take regular moments to reframe pain, then it’s possible to liberate yourself from suffering.

📖 5-min

💎 The Importance of Engaging with Different Communities

One of the things I appreciate about Berlin, and one of the reasons I'm glad I left North America to settle here, is the opportunity to meet people from diverse cultures. Exposure to people from different cultural backgrounds offers a more complete experience of humanity, and I find that very valuable.

The creation of self is a collective endeavor, and we cannot sustain a healthy understanding of ourselves in the world without interaction. Engaging with people from different communities can be one of the most enriching experiences you'll ever have. We tend to fall into the trap of thinking that the way we see the world is the only way, but every person is living in a different world with vastly different experiences. By engaging with people, you get a window into another world, and you can see the richness of what people can be. It's easy to become accustomed to what people are like in your own community, but that's not the only thing people can be. Other communities allow different things. When you deeply engage with others and talk to them, you'll be influenced by them whether you intend to or not. But this deep engagement has the potential to open your life up in ways that are hard to describe. Move between different communities and make friends from different walks of life. It's a privilege to have that choice, and it can be incredibly helpful in exploring a more complete experience of humanity.

🎧 2-min