#38: a chance to transform
👋 Welcome to the 38th volume of Out of Curiosity, a weekly newsletter promoting ideas to help get 1% better everyday.
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 together with what I publish on my blog and podcast.
In this issue:
🤓 The pros and cons of cohort-based online courses
📢 21 ways to market your work without using social media
🎧 The gift of silence
❓ 10 questions that changed my life
🤓 The pros and cons of cohort-based online courses
On the podcast this week, we shared our views on the cohort-based online courses that we've gone through over the last year. We also rated each out of five!
Specifically, we covered:
📢 21 ways to market your work without using social media
Include your product or service in your email signature
Teach a free class in your community (or online)
Write articles/essays/blog posts
🎧 The gift of silence
Beethoven’s diminished hearing limited the influence of “prevailing compositional fashions.” Whereas his earlier work was “pleasantly reminiscent” of his instructor, Josef Haydn, his later work was spectacularly innovative.
Deafness freed Beethoven as a composer because he no longer had society’s soundtrack in his ears.
It’s also clear to me that much of my deepest work came from periods of relative disconnection; when I was living a life defined largely by the demands of my young family, a big stack of books, a deep leather chair, a few hours a week in front of new students on an old university campus, and endless miles walking and thinking.
You can’t really hear yourself until you’re able to turn down the volume on everyone else.
❓ 10 questions that changed my life
Can you really control that?
What are you optimizing for?
Are you reacting or responding?
Are you thinking in decades or years?
Are you earning trust?
Why don't you get straight to the point?
Why do you take things so personally?
Are you seeking the truth or do you want to just validate your beliefs?
If you pour a handful of salt into a cup of water,
The water becomes undrinkable.
But if you pour that salt into a river,
people can continue to draw the water to cook, wash and drink.
The river is immense and it has the capacity to receive, embrace and transform.
When our hearts are small,
our understanding and compassion are limited...
And we suffer.
We can't accept or tolerate others, or their shortcomings...
And we demand that they change.
But when our hearts expand, these same things don't make us suffer anymore.
We have a lot of understanding and compassion and can embrace others.
We accept others as they are...
And then they have a chance to transform.
Until next week,
Reza
