Helloooo Life Examiners,
I’m feeling a little extra pep in my step this fine Friday morning after a great first week of Write of Passage. The founder David Perell also now knows I exist and said I have game so allow me a proud fanboy moment :)
If you have any interest in writing his podcast has pound for pound the best guestlist I’ve ever seen (Marc Andreesen, Tim Ferriss, Mark Manson, Chamath, Howard Marks, the list goes on).
The first exercise we did was to write about the following prompt:
What’s a rule you live by?
Weekly Wonderings and Wisdom
I believe that very little of our experience in this world has to do with the objective reality around us. It’s not the actual substance – the physical stuff in our environment, the people we run into, situations we encounter so much as our subjective interpretation that ultimately determines the quality of our life.
I see it as we have all these raw data inputs we’re constantly taking in through our senses and then there’s this transformation engine that ingests them, runs them through our subjective filter, and outputs a digestible format for us to make sense of.
This all happens whether we’re aware of it or not. It’s unconscious. But that’s not to say we can’t consciously intervene.
Rather than sitting back and letting life happen to us, it’s possible to play the role of a mechanic and tinker with that little engine to ensure it’s creating outputs that serve us. Through rigorous inquisition into our true selves and the nature of this world around us, we can take whatever raw inputs we receive and turn them into something beautiful.
I think about Man’s Search for Meaning a lot. If Viktor Frankl can find purpose in suffering from the most hellish of realities, who am I to say my current situation is “bad”?
So irrespective of circumstance, if it’s possible to find meaning in it, why not garner a visceral love for what Fate has brought before us if we have the agency to do so?
Thought of the Day
Filling up your to-do list, booking up your calendar, working all day is lazy.
Real productivity is narrow, focused exertion.