The very shortcomings which make others difficult and unbearable mean less in yourself. You do not see them, and when you speak of other people having these drawback, you do not notice that you are describing yourself.
~ Jean de la Bruyère
slip:4a1149.
It is so much simpler to bury reality than it is to dispose of dreams.
~ Don DeLillo
slip:4a1113.
There is a part of you that will *become* your job/profession.
~ Toby Nagle from, 20 years in
slip:4uwoye1.
That’s number 7 from his 10-point listicle.
Also: I’ve taken to using the word “listicle” only when I mean it as a compliment. Versus, my perception that everyone else means it as derogatory. I think that being able to organize one’s writing into a coherent, ordered list of things all of which are on roughly equal footing, shows a significant level of comprehension and integration. Most short writings which have a numbered list of points are crappy click-bait, and people rightly derogate them. This is not that, so there. (English is a mess, but ain’t finger-painting fun?i)
ɕ
Wealth is not about having a lot of money; It’s about having a lot of options.
~ Chris Rock
slip:4a1148.
Do not be embarrassed by your mistakes. Nothing can teach us better than our understanding of them. This is one of the best ways of self-education.
~ Thomas Carlyle
slip:4a1112.
The aims of safety-ism were noble. They saw that young people were experiencing greater amounts of anxiety, stress, and depression than previous generations and sought to remedy their angst by protecting them from anything that could potentially harm or upset them.
~ Mark Manson from, Trigger Warning: Reality Hurts
slip:4umati1.
It always seemed obvious to me that wasn’t going to work. When I find something which triggers me, that’s a problem with me; That points me towards something I can improve upon. The problem is not the problem. The problem is my attitude towards the problem.
ɕ
On Castbox.fm — Adam McClellan | Double Your Profits, Double Your Fun
How can Parkour coaches and gym owners enhance their programs and business practices to better serve their clients and staff while addressing unique challenges?
A coach explores the challenge of bridging personal values with the priorities of clients.
What’s the path that my students and their parents, if they have them, are going to walk through and make that really easy for them to do? It might start as just starting or beginner program. And then there might be another choice, take this path, or that path. Here’s the value in one, here’s the value in the other, but let them decide, give them the freedom to choose.
~ Adam McClellan (3:42)
The conversation addresses challenges faced by Parkour coaches and gym owners in aligning their values with those of their clients. It emphasizes understanding that parents often seek benefits like confidence, discipline, and community for their children, beyond athletic skills. Strategies for effectively presenting program options to clients and balancing simplicity with flexibility are also discussed.
The discussion explores broader topics such as staff management, including gaining buy-in for new initiatives and recognizing individual strengths within the team. Insights are shared on leadership, trust-building, and leveraging the collective wisdom of experienced professionals to guide conversations and decision-making.
Takeaways
Understanding client priorities — Recognizing that clients may value outcomes like confidence, discipline, and community over purely athletic development.
Balancing simplicity and choice — Creating guided pathways that provide clear options without overwhelming clients with too many choices.
Implementing upgrade programs — Offering higher-value, optional services as a way to grow the business without alienating existing clients.
Gaining staff buy-in — Addressing the challenge of aligning staff perspectives with the goals of new initiatives and higher-priced programs.
Trusting team members — Encouraging leadership through identifying and developing individual strengths within the team.
Shifting presentation strategies — Adopting a flexible and discussion-driven approach to group sessions, allowing collective wisdom to guide outcomes.
Bridging knowledge gaps — Helping clients and staff see the value of programs through tailored explanations and processes.
Navigating pricing challenges — Exploring ways to offer premium services without making clients feel pressured or alienated.
Adapting leadership styles — Understanding that effective leadership involves trust, delegation, and allowing room for learning through mistakes.
Leveraging group insights — Recognizing the value of collaborative discussion for solving complex problems and generating new ideas.
Addressing misconceptions in coaching — Acknowledging that coaches may need to adjust their expectations to align with client priorities and perceptions.
Resources
Parkour Generations — A global organization promoting Parkour through classes, events, and community.
adam.mcclellan@parkourgenerations.com
(Written with help from Chat-GPT.)
ɕ
Being self-reliant is critical. To make yourself less dependent on others and so-called experts, you need to expand your repertoire of skills. And you need to feel more confident in your own judgement. Understand: We tend to overestimate other people’s abilities—after all, they’re trying hard to make it look as if they knew what they were doing—and we tend to underestimate our own. You must compensate for this by trusting yourself more and others less.
~ Robert Greene
slip:4a1111.
The first time I rode one was nearly a decade ago, in Kyoto. The electric bike I rented was huge and unwieldy, but that tug of its motor never left my mind. I went to climb a hill and it felt as if a giant had gently placed his hand on my back and pushed me forward. That stupid smile has been on my face ever since.
~ Craig Mod from, Electric Bike, Stupid Love of My Life
slip:4ucaea1.
With that name, this guy is clearly awesome, right? If you want to go down a fun rabbit hole, do some searching for “how popular is” and “usage of” with your first name. Yikes, statistics. But I also like this piece because it’s about bicycles. In particular, it’s about electric bicycles which I have been very intentionally ignoring the existence of, for fear of developing a yearning for another bicycle. *ahem* I digress.
What I really love about Mod is that a few years ago he took down everything he was doing, which was all free to read with a “hey please support me” …and he said, “hey guys, please support me, I’ll go write and photograph and I share it with you.” And it worked.
ɕ
If you want to be a clever person, you have to learn how to ask cleverly, how to listen attentively, how to respond quietly, and how to stop talking when there is nothing more to say.
~ Leo Tolstoy
slip:4a1146.
Reading time: About 5 minutes, 900 words
Get 7 for Sunday in your inbox. → Subscribe here.
This issue is https://7forsunday.com/29
The old and the very young have always held sway for me because of bald and unerring candor, and the lack of affectation. They had either stopped posing or had not yet learned to pose.
~ Mylinh Shattan, from “Old Age is Not for the Young”
slip:4uteaa2.
Intentional or not, I’m awarding style points for the innuendo which Shattan’s use of the word bald brings to that first sentence. Beyond that this piece is the epitome of fusing a personal story with an overview of a book. I’ve not done that often—if at all, sorry, I’m too lazy even to search—in short-form as she has.
But in classic “this stuff is me doing my personal reflection with the garage door up” style, it occurs to me that I do do it a lot in micro-form. Basically every one of these my missives combines something I found lying about, a bit of commentary about it, and then my personal thoughts or stories. Am I draw to other writing which is of similar form? Am I unintentionally writing within some genre whose name I know not? Am I crazy? Am I insane? (Am I the victim of evil doers out to destroy me? Perhaps. I don’t know what it is— a deep-fried feeling I guess.)
ɕ
Advice is like being handed a large amount of foreign currency. What do you do with it?
~ Rhik Samadder
slip:4a1145.
Just as a well-filled day brings blessed sleep, so a well-employed life brings blessed death.
~ Leonardo da Vinci
slip:4a1110.
It was the briefest slice of light, a telltale shimmer, that revealed you. It glinted up your thread, running down from the ceiling to the lamp sitting incongruous in the middle of an unpacked living room. Did you stow away in that lamp, riding rough in the back of the moving van, those three long evening hours? I hope you did. You deserve this space as much as we do.
~ Peter Welch from, To the Tiny Spider That Came With Us From Brooklyn
slip:4usito1.
I don’t want to say I aspire to write as well as Welch. (I do. Just don’t want to say it.) I stumbled on his stuff pretty late in his writing arc. This piece makes me happy. Go ahead, click, it’s not too long. Perambulate through it. The more you perambulate, the better will be the ending.
…unless you don’t like Welch’s writing. Then ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ move along. Nothing to see here.
ɕ
If you’re a pole vaulter, you need a long runway to pick up the speed required to plant the pole and flip over the bar. Odds are you are not a pole vaulter. You don’t need a runway of context, justification, and general flim-flam to be curious. It’s not really about you. Save everyone the time, and just ask the question.
~ Michael Bungay Stanier
slip:4a1144.
A coward flees backward, away from new things. A man of courage flees forward, in the midst of new things.
~ Jacques Maritain
slip:4a1109.
Friends’ mouths vanished. I roamed shops and streets suddenly filled with featureless people, their speech now as indecipherable as that of Charlie Brown’s invisible schoolteacher: wah wah wah wah wah. Whenever I saw the masks and thought of all they had erased, I felt dismay.
~ Rachel Kolb from, How Masking Changed My Experience of Being Deaf
slip:4uteie7.
I read lips quite well thanks to lifelong hearing impairment. When I was intensely working to learn and use French, it took me a while to realize that my subconscious lip reading was causing me trouble. Somehow, someone speaking French caused this subconscious stress from some part of my visual processing brain. I really don’t have words to describe it. I did not realize any of this, until I noticed I had developed a habit of not looking at people when they spoke French.
Obviously, masking affected people who rely to any extent on reading lips. But during our Era of the Masks I’ve been wondering how much the loss of visual information effects everyone. Everyone reads lips. And suddenly you’ve lost that visual comprehension component. Even if it’s subconscious, that’s going to effect us.
ɕ
A degree on your wall means you’re educated as much as shoes on your feet mean you’re walking. It’s a start, but hardly sufficient. […] Just as you can walk plenty well without shoes, you don’t need to step into a classroom to understand the basic, fundamental reality of nature and of our proper role in it. Begin with awareness and reflection. Not just once, but every single second of every single day.
~ Ryan Holiday
slip:4a1143.