#69: showing up

Apr 14, 2023

👋 Welcome to the 69th 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.

In this issue:

👏 Who do you admire?

📚 The Greatest Salesman in the World

🙋‍♀️ Lessons on showing up

🗣️ Rules for clear communication

🙇‍♂️ Not the best

👏 Who do you admire?

The selection of people we choose to inspire us, the closeness we invent, is one of life’s most important choices. Who you interact with on an intellectual, spiritual, or physical playing field shapes you irrevocably.
All proximities turn into intimacies if you let them go unchecked long enough; Then, inspiration is a deliberate form of intimacy. What we engage with, we internalize.

→ Starting from Nix | 7-min read

📚 The Greatest Salesman in the World

Wealth should never be your goal in life. Your words are eloquent but they are mere words. True wealth is of the heart, not of the purse. Wealth is good when it brings joy to others. And so long as I can laugh never will I be poor.
I will form good habits and become their slave.
I determine to render more and better service, each day, than I am being paid to render. Those that reach the top are the ones who are not content with doing only what is required of them.
My dreams are worthless, my plans are dust, my goals are impossible. All are of no value unless they are followed by action.
Within me burns a flame which has been passed from generations uncounted and its heat is a constant irritation to my spirit to become better than I am, and I will.

→ reza.so | 3-min read

🙋‍♀️ Lessons on showing up

You can make a first impression long before you meet its recipient, and the best way to do that is to show up regularly, even if you think that no one is watching.
Friction is at its highest at the start of any endeavour. To alleviate this, do one simple action that makes the beginning as frictionless as possible.
External motivation is a great tool for kickstarting a new routine, but can become a burden once the thrill wears off. What was once a cheerful check-in on someone’s progress can become a thorny pressure on one’s side if the habit is failing to hold. Ultimately, any commitment to showing up has to come from within. It has to stem from a fundamental belief that this routine or habit will make you a better person, and that regularly acting on this belief is the only way to manifest that vision.
I run every morning for one reason: It makes me a clearer thinker. I don’t do it because my watch is telling me that I burned 500 calories or someone extolled its benefits to me on some podcast. I do it because it reliably dispels whatever fog I had in my mind, which allows the rays of clarity to take its place.

→ More To That | 5-min read

🗣️ Rules for clear communication

Limit your conversation points to no more than three, allowing you and your partner to focus on the thought at hand while avoiding disruptive additions.
Use metaphors. Metaphors work by building on existing neural patterns established from previous learning. Those existing patterns then help create new neural networks for incorporating the new information.
Use repetition. Anytime you repeat something, it signals that this information is important, so pay attention. It’s why song, speech, and soliloquy writers use repetition so liberally.
The true heart of communication is connection. Ultimately, we have to build a connection deep enough for communication strategies to work. These connections then help you understand when you need to slow down, repeat a key idea, or explain things from another angle.

→ Big Think | 5-min read

🙇‍♂️ Not the best

My questioning of my work bypasses an important truth: no one else can do my work because no one else is me. And no one else can do your work because no one else is you. When I write, I write with my entire being: my lived experience and history, my genes and blood, my vision and longing, my grief and hope, my path and where I come from, my vantage point and opinion, my heart and soul — things only I have that cannot be replicated.
If being the best, being unique, and being ranked as superior are the only things that make creating worth our time, we’re putting ourselves in quite a bleak bind, because those things often won’t be the case. Yet when we choose to show up for our work, our art, our callings, our passions, our creations, and our gifts anyway, we put more goodness in the world.
We’ve been so conditioned to view what we do in comparison to others, to rank it and place it into a better or worse category, to find its value not in how it makes us and others feel, but in how individually unique and superior it is. We easily forget that what we create is part of a web. And when we choose to show up for our work, we add to the web in a way that makes life more full, more rich, more beautiful.
What you make, share, create, and do doesn’t need to be extraordinary for it to matter. What you have to say doesn’t need to be mind-blowing for it to be needed. You choosing to show up to the work you’re called to create is enough. Your own pleasure, fulfillment, and joy from doing it is enough. Your inner nudge to do it is enough.

→ Human Stuff | 7-min read