#95: Stop hiding from your power
#Resilience #SelfDiscipline #Attachment #SelfExpression
👋 Welcome to Pursuit, where we explore the art of living well. My name is Amir, and each week, I go over 10 hours of content about personal growth and mental well-being, bringing you four insights and thought-provoking perspectives from leading thinkers. I hope to have a tiny impact on your life and inspire you with the tools to lead a more fulfilling life. Join us on this journey of continuous improvement and discovery.
This week’s discovery:
🔥 Walking through the fire
🌊 Forgetting who you want to become
🤗 Understanding early bonds
🫥 Stop hiding from your power
If you’re interested in listening to this week’s newsletter, you can follow Pursuit’s podcast on Spotify or other popular podcast platforms. Here’s this week’s episode:
🔥 Walking through the fire
I'm currently going through a tough time in my life with work, projects, and commitments. I feel I'm struggling to find time to rest and I'm constantly pushing everything forward without dropping the ball. This morning, when I re-read these snippets from Nix, it was a great reminder that while change is difficult at first, you eventually adapt to it and things return to normal. What is life without challenging yourself to grow and risking failure?
Sometimes I can’t pre-empt what to do before things get hard. It’s only when things get hard that I learn what to do through the process. I’ll make a few costly mistakes, and continue to live intensely in the balance. But I’ve made peace with the overarching need for endurance and patience with myself regarding tackling hard things: I’m crawling before I’m walking. I’m walking before I’m sprinting.
Fail early, fail often, stand up for what you need and want, and if you communicate from a place of honesty and trust, hard truths will continue to be hard, but loving. Every misery, every victory is owned by you, and that responsibility is your greatest burden and volition.
🌊 Forgetting who you want to become
I have a funny relationship with discipline. All my friends always praise me for my discipline and ability to do hard things when I don't feel like it. But they may not be aware of the dark side of it - how it can imprison you in things you must do no matter what, just to prove to yourself that you can. When I feel trapped like that, I remind myself that the reason I like discipline is that I love the identity of someone who can go upstream and do hard things. And if one day I don't show up due to legitimate reasons in life, I still have that identity. It's not going anywhere.
The reason people struggle with self-discipline is because they get distracted from what matters. They forget who they want to become. They forget what they are capable of. They forget the impact they want to have. You aren’t disciplined because you aren’t the person who would seamlessly achieve the goal they set out to achieve. Someone whose true identity is a bodybuilder doesn’t have difficulty eating healthy and going to the gym. They just do it.
🤗 Understanding early bonds
Think about how your childhood experiences shape your adult relationships. That constant dance between parent and child - the requests, responses, and reactions - creates patterns that echo throughout our lives.
From our earliest moments, we're completely merged with our caregivers, usually the mother. There's no "me" versus "them" - it's all one experience. Around 18 months, something magical happens. We start developing language and realizing we're separate beings. We begin asking the big questions: Do I matter? Are my needs important?
Here's something surprising: research shows that caregivers only need to meet their child's needs about 35% of the time to create secure attachment. So perfect parenting isn't necessary for healthy development.
But when this attachment process gets disrupted, children develop survival strategies. Some explode with rage, while others shut down completely. These aren't just childhood phases - they become blueprints for adult behavior. When our needs aren't met, we either lash out or withdraw, just like we did as kids.
🫥 Stop hiding from your power
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?' Actually, who are you not to be? Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do… It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.
And if you don’t know where to look to find your gifts: notice what you are inspired by. Notice who you admire. Our sources of inspiration are our guides. They take us towards our magic. They show us where to look to find our gifts. The inexplicable resonance we feel with people, places, things, and art is the universe winking at us, a flicker of our magic catching our eye.
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🎵 Discovery for your ears
You’ll find mostly Ethnotronica, Organic House, World, Disco, and Organic Electronic here:
🎧 If you appreciate the music I carefully select and haven't followed my Spotify playlists yet, now is the perfect time to hit that follow button and join me on this musical journey! 🎶
🌒 Pano: Danceable and electronic obscure songs
🌓 Sisy: Ethnotronica and organic house
🌑 Berghain: Dark, minimal techno and tech house
🌕 Heide: Groovy soul and disco house
🌞 Sonntag: Afterhours shit
🌎 World: From Latin jazz to Turkish psych
🌚 Super Slow: For your intimate moments
Previously on Pursuit:
