⭐️ Quotes

Love is the most dangerous feeling in the world... but still the happiest one you can ever experience. Totally worth it.

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Every problem you encounter is an opportunity to improve:

• Stuck in traffic? Practice patience and making the most out of mundane situations
• Tough problem in business? Practice critical thinking, creativity, and developing new strategies
• Feeling stressed? Practice controlling your emotions and calming your mind

Be positive and look to draw advantage from every experience.

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📜 Articles

​How to Rest Well​

In our modern society, taking a break is often seen as a weakness. We're encouraged to go go go, always working on the grind. But such a heavy work style isn't how our ancestors thrived, nor is it supported by psychology studies. Taking a good break is a skill that will allow you to live a more creative and joyful life. Here's how you can practice and improve your skill of resting (picked out the best ones from the article):

• Take rest seriously -- Integrate break times into your schedule to give rest a top priority in your life. Rest is so important to your well-being; it needs to be a core part of your daily life just as your other important commitments and responsibilities are
• Establish clear boundaries -- If you're going to set aside time to rest, then it's important to actually rest during that time. When you're taking a break, avoid reading the news, checking your email, or browsing social media; they'll only make you feel more tired. Instead, you should aim to quite literally do nothing
• Treat rest as a skill -- If you've been on the grind for a while, then you can't expect to be able to rest well on the first try. But that's not a big deal when you treat rest as a skill. You may be starting at level one, but you can improve your resting skills with practice. With enough time and effort, you'll get amazing sparks of energy from even small breaks
• Practice deep play -- The parts of working you might enjoy the most are the feelings of engagement and productivity--you can still do that with play too. Taking up an engaging hobby that you love is a great way to rest: biking, painting, writing, reading, hiking, or anything else that you're passionate about. You're still doing something "productive" while resting and recharging at the same time
• Encourage others to rest with you -- Once you've gotten good at taking your own rest, it's great if you can get those closest to you on board too. You spend a lot of time with them, so it'll be easier to rest when you're all on the same page. Plus when you rest together, you'll inspire each other to rest even more

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​Other People Don't Think You're a Mess​

We often overestimate how harshly other people judge us. In fact, psychology studies of vulnerability show that we often perceive showing our own vulnerability (in the form of expressing our feelings and being honest) far more negatively than other people see it. It's not healthy to overestimate like that because it leads to too much blame on yourself and a fear of taking risks or seeking help.

The best way to break that negative thinking is to develop self-compassion. Realize that you are a mortal person and that mistakes, failures, and constant learning come with the territory. It's nothing to be ashamed of and in fact should be a signal to you that you can improve your situation by seeking help.

A great tip the article offers is to "treat yourself as you would a loved." If a loved one came to you for help, you wouldn't be harsh or overly critical to them; you would be patient and look to see where you can help them. You should have that same empathy with yourself.

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📚 Books

​Tao Te Ching​

Tao Te Ching is a manuscript written by Lao Tzu, a writer and philosopher who worked as a record keeper in the court of the Chinese Zhou Dynasty in the 6th century B.C. His book Tao Te Ching marked the founding of the philosophy of Taoism.

Taoism is a guide for living with balance and integrity. Do your best to take action and put in the effort to achieve your goals, but also embrace the spontaneity and flow of life that make it beautiful.

The book's lessons are best captured through quotes. Here are the best parts along with my own reflections on them:

Do not be discouraged by where your journey is starting from. Instead, be encouraged by the incredible destinations that your journey can take you.

• A beautiful home starts with a single brick
• A fit body starts with a single rep
• A life of love starts with a single positive choice

Think of the work you do as water and your maximum energy as a glass. You wouldn't fill a glass of water to the brim, otherwise, you'd spill! In the same way, don't overexert yourself in your work. Stop at 80% to take rest and have better long-term productivity.

Stillness inside > grandeur outside. Mastery of yourself > skill in external things.

Acting boldly keeps you steady as your movements are sharp and crisp. Concentrating your efforts maintains your balance as your energy is focused and undistracted. Choose your direction wisely, then commit to it and go forward with strong force.

Small things are not so small when projected to a large scale. A small, positive action repeated consistently over many years can totally change your life for the better. A small, negative action repeated consistently over many years can totally destroy your life.

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🎥 Videos

​Obama Discusses Managing Stress​

A great practical video with Barrack Obama about how he managed stress when he was President of the United States. He describes how we live in a fast-paced, information heavy world. We hear every tiny piece of news from all around the world and it tends to be the negative stories that spread. With all that negativity being so prominent, you might grow to see the world as mostly bad, which is paralysingly stressful.

Obama says the key to managing stress is to "take the long view on things." When you take the long view, you realize that not everything needs to be solved today. In most cases, the immediate problem isn't going to matter in 5, 10, or 20 years. The best thing you can do is keep your eye on the ball, focusing on what your next step is:

• What can you do to improve the situation?
• What can you do to move forward?
• What can you do to stay in line with your long-term goal?

This way you're able to make progress in the immediate time frame, while not getting rattled or stressed out about the details.

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​Effective People Think Simply​

Kathleen Eisenhardt explains the benefits of simplifying your life. You're probably living with a lot of complexity in your life: social media, cell phones, emails, notifications, endless to-do lists, bucket lists, obligations, and responsibilities. If you can find a way to reduce that complexity, then you can become a lot more effective.

Through studies of top companies, Eisenhardt found that the most effective organizations don't have too many rules that overcomplicate their workflows. At the same time, they don't have no rules at all as that would make things chaotic. What they do have are a few simple rules to give them guidance, while executing in a flexible manner.

Eisenhardt proposes three steps to come up with such rules:

1. Define your objective -- It will give you a target to aim at; this one is usually pretty easy.
2. Identify the bottleneck process -- Find the step in your process that's slowing you down the most. Maybe it's lack of sleep, poor technique, restricted budget, suboptimal work environment, or whatever else. Identifying it will give you the most bang for buck in terms of solving it
3. Develop the final rules -- Look back at your own experiences and identify the rules that helped you clear similar bottlenecks in the past. Oftentimes, we are already carrying enough experience to know what works, but the experience was more adhock and random. When you actually slow down and analyze the past, you can identify the rules you need to implement that will get you to your goal faster

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🖼️ Beautiful Picture

The beauty of the mountains and stars.

Photo by eberhard 🖐 grossgasteiger on Unsplash​