#34: Significance of Insignificant Things

#Friendship #Lifestyle #SelfLove #Insignificance #Boredom

Sep 01, 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:

🔄 From Independence to Interdependence
🤾🏼‍♂️ The Purpose of Your Life Is to Choose a Lifestyle
😓 What To Do When Negative Emotions Knock on Your Door
🤏🏼 The Significance of Insignificant Things
🥱 Let Kids Get Bored. It’s Good for Them.
🗒️ A Quote I'm Pondering On
🎵 Music I'm Listening To

🔄 From Independence to Interdependence

I love it when my friends meet each other and they also become friends. When this happens, it weaves more threads into the social fabric around me, making us all more tightly interconnected. When you have a densely connected network like that, not only are the friendships more rewarding, but everyone else also becomes more important to each other for mutual support, like Metcalfe’s Law. A densely layered quilt is much stronger than a seam sewn by a single string.

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.

📖 5-min

🤾🏼‍♂️ The Purpose of Your Life Is to Choose a Lifestyle

The purpose of your life is to consciously choose a lifestyle that works for you. This might seem odd. Why would the purpose of your life be to choose a lifestyle and not something more grandiose or full of stoic wisdom like a meaning for your life? The reason is because the concept of a lifestyle determines everything that follows. Lifestyle is a container to put your ideas about life in and find a way to thrive. Your lifestyle is made up of your beliefs, the work you choose to do, your hobbies, who you spend time with, how you see the world, how you earn a living, whether you start a business or not, where you choose to live, your family life, and the balance between work vs. playtime. The key to lifestyle design is to remove “absolutes” to be happy. For example, I’m vegan and sometimes eat dairy to be a badass. It pays to question your lifestyle regularly and break the rules. A lifestyle is a blueprint, not an absolute piece of perfect art that can never ever change.

📖 4-min

😓 What To Do When Negative Emotions Knock on Your Door

Everything from self-doubt, negative self-talk and self-image, to the inability to connect deeply with others, is a partial symptom of a lack of self-love. Any time negative emotions would knock on my door, I’d turn to RAIN to identify the underlying reason. I would Recognise what I was feeling, eg: “fear”. Then I would Allow it and let myself feel the fear. Then I would Investigate and reflect on why I was feeling that way, usually something would click for me, eg: I feel afraid because something in me believes that this failure could threaten my livelihood. Then I would Nurture myself by offering myself what I’d need to receive at that moment… self-love.

📖 10-min

🤏🏼 The Significance of Insignificant Things

The things we love can feel pointless because they’re so small, so insignificant in the grand picture, even though they are also so important, so necessary, so vital, a lifeline. I only have interest in being devoted to the things that make me feel more alive, knowing it isn’t hard to slip into feeling the opposite. I only have interest in holding the willingness to look, deeply, at myself and the world, noticing with open eyes what I find. In naming what many of us may feel the pulse of but haven’t yet found words for. In reaching the people I’m able to reach in my tiny corner of the planet and letting that be plenty, letting that be the work I’m here to do, letting that be my task, even if the person I reach ends up only being my own pulsing heart.

📖 6-min

🥱 Let Kids Get Bored. It’s Good for Them.

Boredom can offer a valuable learning opportunity, spurring creativity and problem solving and motivating children to seek out activities that feel meaningful to them. Guarding kids from ever feeling bored is misguided in the same way that guarding kids from ever feeling sad, or ever feeling frustrated, or ever feeling angry is misguided. Boredom is telling you that what you’re doing right now isn’t working.” Usually that means the task you are doing is too easy or too difficult or that it lacks meaning.

📖 4-min

🗒️ A Quote I'm Pondering On

The best response is often, “You might be right.” The next time someone disagrees with you or criticizes you, just shrug your shoulders and say, ‘you might be right,’ and watch the energy change. If you care about the outcome, focus on what’s right, not who is right. Keep the goal in mind.