#34: becoming your best self
👋 Welcome to the 34th 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:
😌 Becoming your best self
📝 How to find topics to write about
🌞 The false promise of morning routines
✍️ A few thoughts on writing
💬 Not everything has to be a product
😌 Becoming your best self
In the 2nd episode of the podcast, I spoke with Nina Iordanova. She's the Cofounder and CEO of Hello Iris, a platform that provides guided meditations based on different personality types.
We covered quite a few topics from career transitions to long-lasting habits, building a company in public, and of course meditation and mindfulness.
Before I can become the person I want to be, I need to meet myself where I'm at, and acknowledge that that's where I am.
So maybe the way I want to feel is I don't even care about this thing. But the way I actually feel is, yeah, I'm super disappointed. And I was counting on it. And it makes me question my self worth. And that's where we are. And on top of that, I don't want to feel this way. And I have to just kind of accept that those two things are both true.
And so I think that was the first layer for me to being like, okay, so let me deal with these feelings. Let me accept that they're there. And also understanding that, oh, I do have a lot of fear. Actually, my assumption was that I didn't. But I actually do and where does that come from? And how can I understand that? And how can I see where it's coming from, so that I can actually deal with it and then kind of move on, instead of just pretending it's not there. When it's really 80% of what I'm thinking about or trying not to think about.
📝 How to find topics to write about
In the Season 2 kick-off episode of It's Gotta Be The Mic, Nate and I bounced off thoughts on finding ideas and inspirations for writing, or other creative outputs for that matter.
Going forward, we're experimenting with double clicking on a specific topic in each episode, rather than covering a few at a time (more depth, less breadth). We also have a number of exciting guests lined up for the upcoming episodes.
🌞 The false promise of morning routines
You don't need to start the day with a cold shower and an extensive yoga session to be successful!
Waking up at 3:30 to run a marathon, and then there’s the green juice and the hour-long meditation session—and for those of us who have normal lives that involve kids and commutes and things like that—you are not going to do that.
✍️ A few thoughts on writing
So much wisdom distilled in this short article by Morgan Housel.
Whoever says the most stuff in the fewest words wins.
Most good writing is a byproduct of good reading.
Good ideas can’t be scheduled. They come randomly, usually after you read something that connects the dots to an unrelated thing.
If you have an idea but think “someone has already written that” just remember there are 1,010 published biographies of Winston Churchill.
💬 Not everything has to be a product
A great interview with poet and visual artist Rachel Eliza Griffiths.
I create things every day but it’s not about everything having to be a product or for somebody else’s experience. I would like to believe that my inner life is a spectrum of progressive transformations and experiments, rather than overly transactional.
For me, creating and sustaining a private space where I allow myself to rest, to read, to cook, to play music, and to risk new turns of language and imagery where I have no idea how to be wrong or right, is part of the calling.
And the irony is that you don’t actually serve anyone else by suppressing your true passions anyway.
More often than not, by doing your thing – as opposed to what you think you ought to be doing – you kindle a fire that helps keep the rest of us warm.
— Oliver Burkeman
Until next week,
Reza
