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A weekly collection of ideas on living a meaningful, fulfilling and balanced life.

#35: Don’t Try, Intend (& 🔥 My Spotify Playlists)

#victim #intention #perfectionism #selfperception #motivation #discipline

Sep 8, 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 Victim to Survivor
💪🏼 Don't Try, Intend
💠 The Root Cause of Perfectionism
🕵🏼‍♀️ Finding Yourself in the World of Projections
⏰ The Power of Motivation vs. Discipline
🗒️ A Quote I'm Pondering On
🆕 Access to My Playlists (Limited Time)

🤕 From Victim to Survivor

I think that there are two ways of looking at things that have happened to you. You can be a victim or you can be a survivor. Those are two very different cognitive positions. You can’t control what happens to you in either circumstance, but one is very powerful. When people are telling me that ‘I’m doing this because of my childhood’ or ‘I’m doing this because of this,’ I think you’re giving up some amount of power. You’re giving up a lot of power to something outside of yourself, and also, how you’re interpreting that event is not useful to you. There may be a lot of truth to the terrible things that have happened, but those terrible things—you have to shut the door at some point and say, “I am my own man or woman, and I move forward. If you are somebody who uses other events as a reason to self-destruct, you’re ceding power.

📖 3-min

💪🏼 Don’t Try, Intend

When your labor is guided by intention, obstacles do not annoy or dissuade. The cloth will simply go beneath or around, as it must. The potted plant will be moved and wiped behind. The body will assume whatever positions need assuming. The intention ensures this. In any apparent attempt to do a thing, there may or may not be a real intention to do that thing. If you intend to do a task, it will be done unless it can’t be. Trying to do a task means almost the opposite: if there’s a way it can remain undone, it probably will. The tryer fixates on the difficulty of the task, and hopes for relief in the form of success. The intender fixates on success and navigates any difficulty arising on the way.

📖 3-min

💠 The Root Cause of Perfectionism

Perfectionism is actually rooted in a sense of deficit. It's the idea that you're not good enough, and that you need to prove to yourself and others that you are by achieving perfection. But here's the thing: those standards for perfection are often so high that they're nearly impossible to meet. So when you inevitably fall short, you feel like a failure and your self-esteem takes a hit. To compensate, you strive for even higher standards, setting yourself up for even more failure and anxiety. It's a negative spiral that can be tough to break out of. Perfectionists often experience a sense of shame and embarrassment when they fail, leading them to avoid those emotions at all costs. This can result in a tendency to withhold effort, procrastinate, and engage in activities that distract them from facing challenging tasks. Getting things done is more important than aiming for perfection.

🎧 4-min

🕵🏼‍♀️ Finding Yourself in the World of Projections

As I get older, I'm starting to see that finding out who I really am is more about chipping away at things that don't serve me anymore than adding more stuff to my identity. It's like I'm carving out my true self from a big slab of marble. The ideas that I learn and reflect on are like chisels and hammers that help shape me into who I am.

Whenever we interact with someone – whether in-person or online – a gap emerges between who you are, and who you are presenting. This is why the person you are with your boss isn’t the same as the person on the couch watching Netflix. Or why the person you are with your best friend isn’t the same as the person you are with an acquaintance. Each relationship contains a culture of behavior that you oscillate between, which means that you’re constantly presenting a different version of yourself across a wide range of interactions. And the more you have to maneuver between various projections of yourself, the more difficult it becomes to get a handle on what “yourself” means in the first place.
Retain a baseline of equanimity amongst the selves you’re presenting. If you find yourself engaging in behavior that you find questionable in hindsight, then that’s a sign that you’re deviating from who you truly are. When you’re worried about what someone thinks of you, it’s rarely about that person’s opinions of you. It’s about your own opinions of yourself. The goal is to reduce the chances of these undesirable projections from emerging. Whether you do it through self-reflection or through distancing yourself from those that detract from that goal, retaining equanimity amongst these selves gives you the confidence required to ground your identity.

📖 4-min

⏰ The Power of Motivation vs. Discipline

Relying solely on discipline can actually lead to burnout. Discipline often requires a lot of push, while motivation is a pull that comes from within. Highly successful individuals like Olympic athletes are not just disciplined, they are deeply driven and engaged in their pursuits. You have to have that baseline internal hunger to start with. So, find what truly motivates you and stay obsessed, rather than slogging through with discipline alone.

🎧 3-min

🗒️ A Quote I'm Pondering On

You must dictate the game, or the game will be dictated to you.

🆕 Access to My Playlists (Limited Time)

Living in Berlin back in 2014 totally changed the way I experienced electronic music. My ears became more discerning and my taste for unique tracks was elevated. These days, I spend an average of four hours per day listening to music sets on SoundCloud. Whenever I come across a dope track, I bookmark the minute it plays and Shazam it on Sundays. And if I can't find it (which happens most of the time), I message DJs and ask for the track IDs.

Over the years, I've amassed a huge collection of tracks and organized them into playlists based on the names of the dance floors in Berlin. Each playlist takes me back to a specific time and place, reminding me of the unforgettable moments I spent on those dance floors. Today, I'm sharing these playlists with you all, and hope you dig them as much as I do. ⏳ Join the playlists now since all the links expire in 7 days.

Get Access

If this post brightened your day, let me know by tapping the ♥️ below! Enjoy a fantastic weekend and catch you next week.

Amir 👋

Previously on Pursuit: