#37: The Tightrope of Discipline

#Timelessness #EgoIllusion #PersonalProjects #DoingHardThings #Discipline

Sep 22, 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:

⌛ The Aim of Timelessness
👨🏼‍🎤 We Are All Actors - Alan Watts
⚒️ The Power of Personal Projects for Well-being
🧗🏼 Proof You Can Do Hard Things
🪢 The Tightrope of Discipline
🗒️ A Quote I'm Pondering On
🎵 Music I'm Listening To

⌛ The Aim of Timelessness

Just sitting there doing nothing is one of the toughest fights I got each day. So I'm trying to train myself to do nothing by just heading out to my balcony, sitting down on my chair under the sun, and looking off into the distance. I can't go for more than 10 minutes, but I'm giving it a shot.

Perhaps forgetting about time is the wisest thing we can do with it, when we’re able to. I always forget how important the empty days are, how important it may be sometimes not to expect to produce anything, even a few lines in a journal. A day when one has not pushed oneself to the limit seems a damaged, damaging day, a sinful day. Not so! The most valuable thing one can do for the psyche, occasionally, is to let it rest, wander, live in the changing light of a room.”― May Sarton. May we let go of the idea of wasted time when time wasted is often the greatest gift.

📖 5-min

👨🏼‍🎤 We Are All Actors - Alan Watts

How does the concept of ego influence our perception of ourselves? We adopt attitudes from others and learn about ourselves through their responses. From the beginning of life, other people serve as mirrors, reflecting back to us what they think of us and who we are. We all tell each other who we are, and the role we play and the identity we have is a social institution. But going further, there is the ego itself, a feeling that inside us there is an eye center that receives experience and directs action. This is the inmost self. We have been taught that if this is not our soul, it is a function of our body, a chemical sort of efflorescence of the brain, the feeling of "I". But this sensation of being a separate eye, cut off from all other eyes, is an illusion, a pure hallucination. By recognizing the illusory nature of the ego and understanding that we are part of a greater whole, we can find a sense of peace and liberation.

📺 10-min

⚒️ The Power of Personal Projects for Well-being

Personal projects are important for our well-being. Our projects can reveal a lot about our lives, and our well-being depends on the sustainable pursuit of core projects. There are five key features of projects that are relevant to well-being: meaningfulness, manageability, self-expression, coherence, and completion efficacy. Meaningful projects that are also manageable contribute to well-being. A sense of efficacy and perceived successful completion of projects is crucial for predicting various outcome measures like health and happiness. So, we should be aware of having a purpose without the potential for progress. The most important dimension out of personal projects in predicting various outcome measures like health and well-being and happiness is the sense of efficacy, the likelihood that you perceived successful completion of these projects.

🎧 4-min

🧗🏼 Proof You Can Do Hard Things

I recently realized there is a very good reason to take Calculus. It’s to prove you can do hard things. The ability to do hard things is perhaps the most useful ability you can foster in yourself or your children. And proof that you are someone who can do them is one of the most useful assets you can have on your life resume. Our self-image is composed of historical evidence of our abilities. The more hard things you push yourself to do, the more competent you will see yourself to be. If you can run marathons or throw double your body weight over your head, the sleep deprivation from a newborn is only a mild irritant. If you can excel at organic chemistry or econometrics, onboarding for a new finance job will be a breeze.
But if we avoid hard things, anything mildly challenging will seem insurmountable. We’ll cry into TikTok over an errant period at the end of a text message. We’ll see ourselves as incapable of learning new skills, taking on new careers, and escaping bad situations. The proof you can do hard things is one of the most powerful gifts you can give yourself. And if you’re not someone who knows they can do hard things, find a way to prove it to yourself. Build a habit, learn a skill, create something, whatever it is that turns your default stance on challenges from “that seems hard” to “I can figure it out.”

📖 3-min

🪢 The Tightrope of Discipline

Discipline is often touted as a great virtue, as it’s the only way for us to fight the forces of disorder. Attention is a famously fragmented thing, so our ability to unify it is the core tenet of productivity culture. Focus is nothing more than a concerted effort to push back against entropy, and discipline is the glue that holds it all together. Discipline is our way of actualizing a vision we want to attain in the future. It almost always arises as a function of desire, and begins with the end in mind. We wake up early to exercise – even when we’d rather not – so we can become fitter versions of ourselves. We make things for an hour each day – even when we’d rather not – so we can actualize our creative potential. We sacrifice the comfort of the moment so we can build the resilience required for a better future, and anything that focuses on the horizon instead of one’s current position is a byproduct of ambition. Walking the tightrope of discipline is just as intricate as navigating the boundary between the present and the future. Discipline is beautiful when it allows you to make the most of a given moment, but loses its utility when you only think of who you might one day be. Discipline can be used to show up regularly for what matters, but it’s only through acceptance where you can be content with whatever the current moment has to offer.

📖 4-min