Humans are smart because we have evolved to connect with other brains.**
Matthew Syed

If you read books on different topics an different genres at the same time, your brain can’t help but find weird connections between them.^
Austin Kleon

I’m not claiming to be smart,
But I do hope to be smarter through being
open to others for the sake others.

Every morning, I am met
by a random group of writers and thinkers,^^ and
I never know what’s going to emerge.

*The bookshelf doesn’t have to be a physical one; it can be digital, visual, audible.
**Matthew Syed’s Rebel Ideas;
^Austin Kleon’s blog: Letting books talk to each other;
^^I have a shelf of twenty eight open books at the moment, which shuffle as I read from about four of these each day, together with around three or four blogs. Today’s randomly included Richard Rohr, Matthew Syed, Bina Venkataraman, Adam Kohane, Seth Godin, Gabe Anderson, Deepak Chopra, and Austin Kleon. When ideas are coming together within us, we are shaping our permission to do something – we don’t have to wait (something that spills over into tomorrow’s blog).

To tell great stories as fast as possible. That’s my jam.*
Hugh Macleod

Be a monomaniac on a mission to be truly great at something difficult. Pick one thing and send the rest of your life at getting deeper into it. Mastery is the best goal because the rich can’t buy it, the impatient can’t rush it, the privileged can’t inherit it, and nobody can steal it. You can only earn it through hard work. Mastery is the ultimate status. Striving makes you happy.**
Derek Sivers

Identifying the thing we want to do –
The must to work at and deliver to others – will
leave us feeling alive and
emitting power-stations of energy;
We’re thrilled to have found something
so meaningful and satisfying, but
what we do won’t be for everyone:
We must find those it is good for.

You’re either the person who creates energy. Or you’re the one that destroys it.^

*From a Hugh Macleod tweet;
**Derek Sivers’ How To Live;
^Ryder Carroll’s The Bullet Journal Method.

It takes an initial tender vulnerability (“wounding”) to defeat our ego and to open us to full consciousness – which must include the scary unconscious.*
Richard Rohr

Rather than ignoring the negative emotion of regret – or worse, wallowing in it – we can remember that feeling is for thinking and that thinking is for doing.**
Daniel Pink

You don’t have to turn away from the pain.^

Notice where it places itself.^^

Does it have a shape, a colour, a texture?

Listen carefully: What is it trying to tell you?

What do you want to ask it?

Now you’re thinking; soon you’ll be doing.

*Richard Rohr’s The Tears Of Things;
**Daniel Pink’s The Power of Regret;
^The Ego does not want to give up its pain; Eckhart Tolle names this “the Painbody”;
^^Noticing helps us to move from being the victim to being an agent.

Make visible what, without you, might perhaps never have been seen.*
Robert Bresson

Ego breaks open – then you see what you really are.**
Ram Dass

Beyond Ego there is Self,
Beyond independence there is interdependence,
Ego is necessary, but is not our continuing journey,
The greatest adventure comes through the connected Self.

*Ryder Carroll’s The Bullet Journal Method;
**Victor Strecher’s Life On Purpose.

Drawing isn’t such hard work but seeing is.**
Tom Vanderbilt

You can’t see what your group can’t see.^
Richard Rohr

Seeing is for life,^^
It is an infinite game skill –
Seeing what is
rather than
what we think there is:
Everything we are
is a potential filter for seeing
the world –
It will take
the whole of our lives
and a lot of effort
to see things clearly;
For this I need your help

*This is always more than visually seeing;
**Tom Vanderbilt’s Beginners;
^Richard Rohr’s The Tears of Things;
^^Art is primarily about seeing, providing a metaphor for life: the better our seeing, the better our living – not in comparison with others but for the sake of others.

laconic: /ləˈkɒnɪk/ Laconic is an adjective that describes a style of speaking or writing that uses only a few words, often to express complex thoughts and ideas

Let them wish you talked more. Let them wonder what you’re thinking. Let the words you speak carry extra weight precisely because they are more.*
Ryan Holiday

The willingness to
speak necessary words and make haste
towards silence is
an invitation to conversation.

*Ryan Holiday’s Discipline is Destiny.

The creative process is not a part of one’s life but life itself and all that it throws at you. For me, it was like the creative process, if we want to call it that, found its real purpose.*
Nick Cave

The linear way is wildly out of sync with the lives we live today.**
Anne-Laure Le Cunff

In a Mindful Doodling session
I offered at a local university only yesterday,
One of the participants shared how
they thought their first doodle
should be perfect but it was scrawl.

I loved this word as soon
as they spoke it;
When we’re beginning something, or
playing with an idea, or trying to
come to terms with something
life has thrown at us,
Our first attempts will nearly always
feel like scrawl,
But it’s how creativity begins, and
beginning is more than half a win.

*Nick Cave and Seán O’Hagan’s Faith, Hope and Carnage;
**Anne-Laure Le Cunff’s Tiny Experiments.

As in the case of lines, you are likely to stop when you are no longer sure you should go further – at the rear edge of the region of uncertainty.*
Daniel Kahneman

Categories too often become where thought goes to die. That is, where there’s a widespread tendency to act as if once something has been categorised, no further consideration is required. But, often, it is.**
Rebecca Solnit

What are we completely certain of?

Great institutions crumble,
People surprise us, this way or that,
Nature is far smarter than we once thought,
And this is not the future we imagined
fifty, twenty, or even
ten years ago.

Only through exploration and discovery of
the people we have the potential to be – and we have
no idea what our limits may be –
Will we be able to navigate the brisk uncertainty, rather than
shrouding ourselves in dusted, airless certainty-cum-categories.^

*Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow;
**Rebecca Solnit’s No Straight Road Takes You There;
^I primarily write this to myself.

This is your invitation into dialogue – not merely to observe reality, but to co-create it. Step forward now, speak and listen, ask and answer, and watch as the sacred unseen becomes known.*
AleXander McManus

Our job is not to control our idea; our job is to figure out what our idea is (and want to be) – and then bring it into being.**
Steven Pressfield

This is not how it has to be,
Nor can it be how we want it to be, but,
Perhaps there is something-other wanting to
emerge, and, if we bring our
imagination, playfulness, openness, gentleness, and humility,
It will appear.

*AleXander McManus’ Blue Moments;
**Steven Pressfield’s Do The Work.

To find our ‘life paths,” we’ve got to first accept a few myths about life paths: 1. A life path isn’t a get-out-of-suffering-free card.  2. Just because you choose a life path, it doesn’t mean you’re locked into that for a day longer than you want to be.  3. Not choosing a life path is choosing a life path – but it’s not a great one.*
Campbell Walker

We’re always on a path,
Even when we think we aren’t,
We are;
How then to make sure we’re on
great one? –
Passing on the wisdom of a Yaqui shaman,
Carlos Castaneda counsels,
Be sure to follow a path with a heart:
It is where we will find life.

The beginning of your path already exists within you, like
Dorothy setting forth on the yellow brick road,
You can identify the beginning through
your talents, energies, and values, and
follow where they lead.**

*Campbell Walker’s Your Head Is a Houseboat;
**Let me know if I can help: geoffrey@thinsilence.org.