What you won't become costs you everything
Fear of your own light keeps you small; choose to shine. Let some chaos in to find your edges. Happiness is equanimity. Do what you avoid; reliability wins.
November 8th, 2025 - Issue #143 - 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:
🌌 What you won’t become costs you everything
🤯 The sanity of losing control
⛰️ Redefining happiness on the climb
🔑 What you avoid is what you need
🌌 What you won’t become costs you everything
We fear our highest possibilities. We are generally afraid to become that which we can glimpse in our most perfect moments, under conditions of great courage. We enjoy and even thrill to godlike possibilities we see in ourselves in such peak moments. And yet we simultaneously shiver with weakness, awe, and fear before these very same possibilities...If you deliberately plan to be less than you are capable of being, then I warn you that you’ll be deeply unhappy for the rest of your life. You will be evading your own capacities, your own possibilities.
Sometimes you don’t give your full energy to something because you’re afraid of what will happen if it works out. You’re afraid of seeing what you’re truly capable of. You’re afraid of realizing your full potential goes far beyond the limiting stories you’ve been telling yourself. You’re afraid of never being able to go back to the safety of those stories. But to fear your own light is to live in the dark—and that’s not where you belong. Embrace the fear. Embrace your highest possibilities. Shine that light.
🤯 The sanity of losing control
We often seek control, yet it’s in chaos that we truly discover ourselves. Losing control can feel terrifying, but it’s also exhilarating—revealing parts of ourselves we never knew existed.
There’s a hidden value in occasionally letting yourself go “a little insane,” stepping beyond comfort into the unknown. This could be through intense work, spiritual practices, or pushing physical limits. By confronting overwhelm, we find our edges and learn deep acceptance.
Peace isn’t the absence of chaos—it’s the willingness to embrace whatever arises, without judgment.
⛰️ Redefining happiness on the climb
As you ascend in life, something curious happens: your awareness of the distance between the peaks and valleys sharpens. You might think success brings more happiness, but the connection isn’t so simple.
In fact, it’s worth questioning whether success and happiness should even be the same thing. Most people, when they say they want to be happy, don’t mean they want to live in constant joy. If you press deeper, it becomes clear: what they really want is freedom from suffering.
Happiness isn’t endless laughter, nor the fleeting pleasure of a late-night cookie. It’s often just the quiet hope to avoid pain without purpose. And when asked to define it clearly, most realize—they can’t.
Maybe true happiness isn’t about chasing a feeling at all. Maybe it’s about understanding that life’s peaks and valleys will always coexist—and learning to move through both without needing to eliminate one or cling too tightly to the other.
What I’m trying to say to you is, whether you’re at a peak or a trough: most feelings are recursive. They end and they begin. If you’ve felt it once you’ll feel it again. All the joy and delight. All the loneliness and rootlessness. If I’ve lost once I’ll suffer loss again. If I’ve loved once, no doubt I’ll love deeply again. To orbit gently across these cycles with humility, with an open heart: that’s the game.
🔑 What you avoid is what you need
You’ll achieve much more by being consistently reliable than by being occasionally extraordinary. You can get pretty damn far in life by just being someone that people can count on to show up and do the work. There’s nothing more dangerous than the person who shows up every single day even when the rewards are uncertain. The one who can tolerate the most uncertainty is the one who will eventually win. The answers you seek are found in the actions you avoid. Every single thing you want in life is on the other side of something you don’t want to do. The body you seek is found in the workouts you skip. The relationships you seek are found in the hard conversations you delay. The success you seek is found in the hours of execution you avoid. The answer is found in the action. Remember that.
🎵 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:
