This is a newsletter where you get three mind-boggling ideas that help you become a better person, every Saturday.
And these insights don’t come from random “mind-boggling quotes” searches on the Web, mind you, but from (mostly) books, podcasts, articles, videos. And I share only what I find revelatory. So, please share with your loved ones, if you find this stuff valuable.
Here are this week’s insights:
1. Be an amateur.
The word “amateur,” [Sarah Lewis] pointed out, did not originate as an insult, but comes from the Latin word for a person who adores a particular endeavor. “A paradox of innovation and mastery is that breakthroughs often occur when you start down a road, but wander off for a ways and pretend as if you have just begun,” Lewis wrote.
As you become an expert you build fences where there used to be paths because you can’t walk them at the time as a non-expert. Then you forget that there even are any other paths. You get used to walking on the same old ones and become rigid.
You trap yourself.
Have curiosity and foolishness of an amateur, and caution and knowledge of an expert. So that if your foolishness leads to something good, you can know how to take advantage of it.
2. Seek to fail.
He did not notice that he was making no progress by means of these endeavors, because he met with no resistance that might serve as a support on which he could rest or against which he could apply his powers, in order to cause the understanding to advance.
Did you ever think of failures as good omens?
Without friction, resistance, nothing moves forward. If you’re failing, it means you’re doing something. That you’re not still, but moving. And the motion of failure is never backward, you always gain something.
That is why you should seek to fail. Push yourself.
3. Cape Cogitationes.
Seemingly insignificant thoughts are important. It’s important to word-ize them before they escape your attention or are forgotten.
Sometimes you think and don’t even notice you’re thinking. For thoughts are quick, and they don’t always come to you as words. They also come as ideas, feelings, memories, images, etc. or combinations of these.
You can’t be sure which of your thoughts is something that no one ever knew before, or something you never thought seriously about.
Don’t let them pass you by, seize them.
Check out the article I published recently: Should You Read Nausea?
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