Life without force
Learn how tiny habits outlast willpower, why choosing love means moving without force, why deliberate awe renews us, and how reframed conflict can become a path to deeper understanding.
October 18th, 2025 - Issue #140 - read online
👋 Welcome to Pursuit—your weekly pause for intentional living, self-discovery, and inner clarity. My name is Amir, and every week I share four carefully chosen ideas to help you design a more fulfilling life.
This week’s reflections:
🕯️ Habit keeps the flame
🌊 Life without force
🤯 Do you have enough awe in your life?
💬 Conflict is a route to deeper understanding
🕯️ Habit keeps the flame
We like to think achievement comes from endless discipline. It rarely does. What shapes a life is habit.
When someone shows up at the gym or eats well day after day, you are not watching superhuman willpower. You are seeing a routine that has become automatic. Discipline matters at the beginning. It lights the match. Habit keeps the flame.
Trade lofty intentions for small, repeatable actions. Choose moves so simple you cannot fail, then repeat them until they feel like breathing. Over time the routine carries you. Goals become byproducts of what you do without thinking.
🌊 Life without force
The purpose of human life is not to win or lose, but to learn who you are. To look around and say what is this about, what can I learn from this, and why have I allowed it to come into my life? Everything without exception in the human world is an educational tool to recognize that in every given moment in your life you have not only the right but the responsibility to perceive where there is fear and when there is love. And to choose love. Until you know your own holiness you cannot love another. What is the indicator that you are truly in love with who you are? Allowing your life to be what it is without force. The moment you recognize that you are worthy of the garden of eden, you are worthy. And so is everyone else. You cannot push people into the garden of eden from the outside. You can only open the gate and invite them. So you must get there first.
What feels forced in your life right now. If you keep telling yourself you should do something but never find the energy, pause. Ask whether this is a true desire or a borrowed script. Is it your voice or the culture’s. Sit with the difference. When the impulse is yours, motivation arrives as a pull rather than a fight.
🤯 Do you have enough awe in your life?
Awe can help us be less stressed, less materialistic, and less isolated. There’s evidence that awe is good for our physical health, too; one study reported that people who experienced the emotion more often had lower levels of cytokines, the proteins that cause inflammation. Awe might also contribute to a more harmonious society. When researchers exposed one group of study participants to an awe-inspiring view of towering eucalyptus trees, and another group to a neutral scene of a building, those who admired the pretty view were more likely to help a stranger pick up something they had dropped afterward. Another study found that awe made people less aggressive.
When was the last time you felt awe. If you have to think, it has been too long. Go somewhere that humbles you. A night sky far from the city. A room in a museum that stills your breath. Put it on the calendar and stand somewhere that makes you quiet.
💬 Conflict is a route to deeper understanding
Conflict isn’t an accident; it’s something we build together. Every disagreement follows an arc, starting small and expanding through emotion and misunderstanding. How we respond has less to do with the moment itself and more to do with what we learned long ago—whether anger was punished, silence was safety, or honesty was allowed. Those early lessons shape the choreography we default to: pursuing, withdrawing, or doing one while the other flees.
When we pursue, we often chase clarity but end up driving the other person away. When we withdraw, we preserve peace at the cost of connection. Both loops leave the real issue untouched. Learning to pause the pursuit or break the silence changes the entire rhythm. Conflict becomes less about winning and more about staying in relationship, even when emotions run high.
Beneath most fights lie three unspoken questions: Who holds power here? Can I trust you? Do you value me? We argue about lateness, chores, or tone, but what really hurts is the fear of being unseen, unheard, or unimportant. Repair begins when we move past proving our point and toward curiosity—asking what truly stung, acknowledging it, and setting boundaries where needed. That is how conflict becomes not a rupture but a route to deeper understanding.
🎵 Music I’m listening to
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
🦥 Slow rave: Sleepy techno for tired danced
🌎 World: From Latin jazz to Turkish psych
🌚 Super Slow: For your intimate moments
Previously on Pursuit:
