#44: The Tenderness of Trying
#requests #sleep #trying #curiosity
👋 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:
🥺 Differentiating Low Cost, High Benefit Requests
🛏️ The Mystery of Sleep - Alan Watts
🪚 The Tenderness of Trying
🗒️ A Quote I'm Pondering On
🧭 Trusting Your Internal Compass
🎵 Music I'm Listening To
🥺 Differentiating Low Cost, High Benefit Requests
When it comes to deciphering requests, it's important to categorize them based on their cost and benefit. The "pass the salt" asks are those that have a low cost to us but a high benefit to the other person. These are the requests we should say yes to without hesitation. On the other hand, the "bake your famous lasagna" asks are those that have a high cost to us but a low benefit to the other person. We should say no to these requests to reserve our time and energy for the "hero's journey" asks. These are the high-benefit requests that have a high cost to us, but the cost is worth it because they make a difference in the world and only we can uniquely accomplish them. It's important to prioritize our time and energy toward these kinds of requests.
🎧 5-min
🛏️ The Mystery of Sleep - Alan Watts
The mystery of sleep is something that has eluded scientists for a long time. It is a way to escape the constant bombardment of awareness and renew the mind. Just as eliminating waste is essential for the body, forgetting is necessary to make room for new experiences. Sleep, and even the more conscious state of topper, can provide comfort and relaxation that is akin to a return to the womb. These states of reduced consciousness are linked to narcosis, which parallels the hooking or fascination with one's own image as seen in the story of Narcissus. To be human is to love the light, but you must also trust yourself in the darkness and let yourself go in the faith that you will arrive back all in one piece.
📺 9-min
🪚 The Tenderness of Trying
The tenderness of trying is woven up in not knowing how it will go, not knowing whether success or failure or some combination will result, not knowing who I’ll be on the other side, not knowing if I’ll embarrass myself or impress myself or confuse myself, not knowing much at all. There is a sense of knowing when we don’t try. There is more to be in control of, more to be sure about, more to be certain of. When I don’t try, the only possible outcome is it not happening; when I do try, it could bring disappointment or discomfort, a crash and burn of experiences I’m not always sure I’ll be able to handle. But what I’m remembering is that trying can also bring complete delight, opportunities to drop in, to connect, to share our gifts or our wonderings or ourselves. And when we choose to do that, something always comes of it, whether in expected or unexpected ways.
📖 5-min
🧭 Trusting Your Internal Compass
The greatest benefit of a nontraditional path is that you have to figure out what you care about. Rather than an employer telling you what you should value, you have to do the hard work of determining what you value for yourself. This may sound self-evident, but in a world where the pressure to chase prestige, status, and money is ever present, it can be difficult to ask whether you are playing a career game you actually want to win. If you are interested in pursuing a nontraditional path, I have two pieces of advice. First, listen to your curiosity. You don’t need a 10-year plan for your career. You don’t need to read a dozen biographies of founders, or reverse engineer successful people’s career paths on LinkedIn. Instead, how might you develop an acute sense of what turns you on? What do you find yourself reading about in the cracks of your day? What are the work tasks that other people find tedious that you enjoy? A strong internal compass is more useful than anyone else’s map.
📖 8-min
🗒️ A Quote I'm Pondering On
Don’t look away. Look straight at everything. Look it all in the eye, good and bad.
🎵 Music Tracks I'm Listening To
🎧 You’ll find mostly Ethnotronica, Organic House, World, Disco, and Organic Electronic here:
Previously on Pursuit:
