#106: authentic being
👋 Welcome to the 106th issue of Out of Curiosity, a weekly newsletter promoting ideas to help get 1% better everyday.
My name is Reza, and every week, I go through nearly 100 pieces of content (from books and podcasts to newsletters and tweets), and bring you the best in this newsletter.
The paradoxical result of surrendering control over the uncontrollable is that I feel more in control than ever. Because we are never in control of everything. And when we spread our attention across everything, including what we cannot control, it feels much harder to accept what is happening.
Among his various possible beings each man always finds one which is his genuine and authentic being. The voice which calls him to that authentic being is what we call ‘vocation.’
But the majority of men devote themselves to silencing that voice of vocation and refusing to hear it. They manage to make a noise within themselves … to distract their own attention in order not to hear it; and they defraud themselves by substituting for their genuine selves a false course of life.
Tightness erodes clarity. Tightness reduces expansion. Tightness broadens fear, scarcity, and the feeling of being powerless. Tightness keeps me wound in my own Small Self, forgetting entirely about everything that exists beyond the tightness.
Tightness looks like turning away from reality. It looks like worst-case-scenario, all-or-nothing thinking. It looks like ‘What if this doesn’t go the way I want it to?’ and ‘I don’t think I can handle this’ — like worry embodied. It looks like self-doubt and rumination, catastrophizing and smallness. It looks like forgetting about my body and only listening to my brain.
👋 Until next week,
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