#46: Playing to Win vs. Playing to Keep Playing

#technologyvsdevelopment #lifelessons #BeInterestedToBeInteresting #EmotionalCourage

Nov 24, 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:

📱 Impeding Meaningful Connections
👾 Playing to Win vs Playing to Keep Playing
😮 Be Interested
👮🏼‍♀️ Surrendering Emotional Control
🗒️ A Quote I'm Pondering On
🎵 Music I'm Listening To

📱 Impeding Meaningful Connections

Technology has made many aspects of life easier but has also hindered our development as human beings. Development mostly happens against resistance. Interacting with the world and other people is crucial for human development. Technology makes certain aspects of human development easier but less developmental. Diminished development leads to loneliness, anxiety, and depression. The current world fails to develop individuals and keeps them disengaged.

When humans experience resistance, frustrations, and friction, they often turn to technology as a solution. Using technology, such as social media, can make us less human and less capable of handling misunderstandings or lack of attention. College students prefer texting over talking because it gives them more control over the message and reduces the amount of information exchanged. The quest for control contradicts the desire for real relationships, which require vulnerability and improvisation. Opting out of vulnerability and control ultimately leads to a lack of meaningful relationships.

🎧 Listen - 56min

👾 Playing to Win vs. Playing to Keep Playing

The concept of finite and infinite games is important to understand in life. One can choose to play to win or to keep playing, depending on the mindset adopted. Finite game players tend to be competitive and focused on winning, while infinite game players tend to be more generalist and enjoy playing for the sake of playing. It's important to recognize that one is always choosing to engage in a game and follow its rules. Finite game players tend to feel like they have to keep doing certain things to stay within the boundaries of the game, but they are ultimately just choosing to do so. All limitations in life are self-limitations, and we give power to rules and boundaries by continuing to follow them. It's worth questioning what boundaries and rules we are honoring and giving power to in our lives, and recognizing that we have the freedom to choose whether or not to play the finite games we find ourselves in.

🎧 Listen - 36min

😮 Be Interested

I put this advice into practice on a date a few weeks ago. I genuinely tried to show interest in my date by asking her lots of questions. Although she did not show interest in me, I believe I did my part to make her feel that she is interesting.

One way to be interesting is to be interested, so when telling someone something you think is interesting, make sure to show them why you find it so compelling, and your enthusiasm will become contagious. Interesting people are also interested people. They’re curious about the world, open to new ideas and connections, and fun to be around and talk to.

📖 Read - 3min

👮🏼‍♀️ Surrendering Emotional Control

The truth is that something happens the moment you stop resisting your feelings: they start to change and move through you more freely. A stuck emotion that has been with you for years can transform in just a few minutes—if you commit to feeling it fully. Practice paying attention just to the sensations and leaving the thoughts about them alone for a little while. This is a courageous act, because it means finally feeling all the things you previously avoided. It’s the courage not to know what will happen next, to let go of control and allow the unfamiliar to emerge and evolve however it will. It’s the courage to be seen and witnessed in your emotions, and to experience them while still participating fully in all the activities of work and life.

📖 Read - 9min

🗒️ A Quote I'm Pondering On

Observing from the outside, we speak of people having taste as if it were some static possession, but from the inside, authentic taste is a practice, in flux, forever being shed and redefined.