This week was busy, busy, so this week’s post is short and sweet - just some thoughts from podcasts i’ve been listening to on my commutes and a free-flowing stream of consciousness, so here’s to being even more scattered and clunky than usual.
The Knowledge Project, my favorite podcast on decision-making, never ceases to captivate me, and this week, there were a couple of quotes that have been on my mind since Sunday. TKP has a Sunday newsletter to which I highly suggest subscribing. An 8:30 AM strength workout and this newsletter over coffee have been my Sunday morning rituals ever since I walked out of a church for the last time. Isn’t it funny I had no idea it would be the last time (likely be - I like to allow for any future versions of myself).
Studies have shown that 90% of error in thinking is due to error in perception. If you can change your perception, you can change your emotion and this can lead to new ideas. Logic will never change emotion or perception -Edward de Bono
I had an experience recently where I was reminded that I am too big for most people. My personality, my thinking, my questions, my philosophies (Thank you Sag Sun and Sag Moon). And it makes me all the more grateful for my amazing husband who loves me for me. All my small thoughts, big ideas, and candor rhetoric, and he puts up with them. Ideas and topics most people just don’t hold space for - and that’s OK. My mom and I share this wound; we have a very difficult time building our inner circle, and once you’re in, you’re in. I am finding as I age that some of those in my inner circle wouldn’t necessarily do the same for me what I would do for them. It breaks my heart. I rode home crying but R was there. Not fully understanding why I was hurt but holding space for me.
This “too-bigness”... I don't know how to harness it. Perhaps I am trying with this blog. I was chatting with my sister about another TKP podcast interviewing a venture capitalist who said “7s kill companies” - in her interview process, the board has to score the applicant as an 8 average or higher (scale of 1-10). She claims that obviously the 4s of the company are just there to earn their wage, punch in/punch out, and that the 8s, 9s, 10s of the company are bringing not only stellar performance, but also creative thinking and valuable culture. The 7s kill companies because they show promise for growth, or teasing glimmers of potential, but they just don’t quite make it. They don't quite reach the level of output and rigor you are anticipating. I am a 7. I recognize my 7-ness in all of my hobbies and habits. I’m deeply committed to ideas and pursuits but sometimes the follow-through is half-assed. I consider myself disciplined but I don’t like to be uncomfortable, so I make excuses about how I need more sleep. What am I creatively adding to the world? I feel like all I ever do is take from it. This is the primary reason I am always led back to yoga, back to my mat.
My sister lovingly tries to reassure me that I am a 9 (she perceives me as the older sibling/over-achiever, which may be true to the extent of making good grades and staying out of trouble, but I procrastinate and am paralyzed by complacency and numbed by instant gratification just like everyone else). I tell her that in my job, I am content to be a 7 - it aligns with my hours and my salary; I don't work for a start-up, I’m not a founder, I don’t own my own business - or, perhaps I’m not any of those things because I am a 7. I’m not trying to be defined by my career (over the past year I’ve found a lot of freedom in letting that go, and instead, sought balance and fulfillment in being a multifaceted human). But is the alluring concept of balance keeping me from really throwing myself into something? I know I have minor successes in things, I’ve checked a lot of boxes (without actually having to work that hard), people generally like me and rely on me at work, I am a great listener, very observant, not a “people-person” but always make a good impression. I’m intuitive - that’s my strength. But harnessing intuition is a dangerous game, bringing me back to my “too-bigness.” 8s, 9s, and 10s are too big but they know what to do with it, how to play it to their advantage. I just appear ruled by my emotions and immature, too lazy to expand my vocabulary and too afraid to take big leaps (both symptoms of the addiction to comfort).
And I’m not saying that my “too-bigness'' makes me special. I think everyone has this too-bigness. I believe everyone has fountains of experiential knowledge that they don’t consider personal equity. It takes awareness to recognize the ways you create value, to have vision; I think it also usually takes someone objectively seeing you for what you are and pointing out maybe what you don’t see in yourself, someone like a mentor. It also helps to have those who know you subjectively, seeing you in your shiny potential and encouraging you the way that my sister did. This is the power of community.
@RichRoll posted on Instagram recently, talking about commitment, working hard, and exploring your passion:
...i can absolutely guarantee that you will become deeply acquainted with who you truly are...because this purpose, beauty, and satisfaction you desperately seek lies not in accomplishment, but rather in the experience of striving towards it with everything you’ve got.
My fondest memories in life are always from the seasons of challenge I've experienced, but only in the challenges I fully embraced and pursued. The challenges I fought in college with resistance and deep resentment only led to depression, but the challenges I faced as a summer camp counselor in Alabama heat and mud, as a cross country runner pushing my pace, as a wife seeking partnership without sacrificing autonomy - those experiences pushed me to become myself. They stretched me. New projects come along at work and I greet them with suspicion and dread when I could perceive it as opportunity and variety. To apply de Bono’s quote here, I am working to change my perception (of just about everything) in hopes of changing my emotions, and then my actions. Because logic (aka self-preservation) tells me to stay comfortable; stay still and no one will notice you and you will be safe.
But we know that’s an illusion. Time to shake some shit up.