Mwah wah wa wah wah →

Published April 19, 2023  ·  All posts on Apr 19  ·  ,

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

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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.

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Jimmy Davidson | Inescapable Fundamentals of Business →

Published April 18, 2023  ·  All posts on Apr 18

On Castbox.fm — Jimmy Davidson | Inescapable Fundamentals of Business

What are the challenges and strategies involved in building a successful Parkour-based business?

Identifying a niche and understanding your audience transforms Parkour teaching into a viable business.

If you are trying to sell to everybody, you end up selling to nobody. So you really need to understand what a niche is like, what is the very hyper specific area and group of people and specific avatar that you’re trying to sell to?

~ Jimmy Davidson (3:31)

The conversation explores the challenges of running a Parkour-based business, emphasizing the critical nature of understanding fundamental business principles. Jimmy shares insights about how entrepreneurs often lean on their Parkour experience but struggle to apply it to business challenges. Key topics include the importance of defining a niche, understanding the target audience, and recognizing one’s knowledge gaps.

The discussion also touches on the larger mission of spreading Parkour and the joy of movement to a million people. There is a clear focus on maintaining alignment with this goal while scaling the business and supporting the broader Parkour community. Jimmy acknowledges the tension between pursuing mentorship and staying dedicated to their existing business endeavors.

Takeaways

Understanding fundamental principles — Running a business requires mastering basic skills like sales and identifying a target audience.

Acknowledging unknowns — Entrepreneurs often face challenges because they don’t know what they don’t know.

Defining a niche — Trying to appeal to everyone can dilute the effectiveness of a business.

The role of mentorship — Supporting other entrepreneurs can extend a shared mission without diverging from core goals.

Mission-driven business — A clear purpose, like teaching a million people Parkour, can guide decision-making and strategy.

Resources

Fix This Next — by Mike Michalowicz, on identifying and solving business needs in order of priority.

Freedom in Motion Gyms — Parkour gym business with locations in Southern California.

@jimmydavidsonpk on Instagram, and Jimmy@freedominmotiongym.com

(Written with help from Chat-GPT.)

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Thank you →

Published April 18, 2023  ·  All posts on Apr 18  ·  , ,

When someone reveals something that they’re struggling with, or something painful that happened to them, I often find myself saying, “I’m so sorry, thank you for sharing that with me.” Let’s acknowledge that you’ve just said something, that there’s nothing I can say that’s gonna lift that pain. By saying that, you’re focusing the conversation on what they’ve disclosed to you. You can also talk about how you’re talking about it. You can say, “I don’t know what to say right now. But I just want to tell you, I’m really sorry to know that.”

~ Anna Sale

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Discipline →

Published April 17, 2023  ·  All posts on Apr 17  ·  , ,

To create a meaningful work of art or to make a discovery or invention requires great discipline, self-control, and emotional stability. It requires mastering the forms of your field. […] When you look at the exceptionally creative work of Masters, you must not ignore the years of practice, the endless routines, the hours of doubt, and the tenacious overcoming of obstacles these people endured.

~ Robert Greene

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Firsthand →

Published April 17, 2023  ·  All posts on Apr 17  ·  ,

Everyone is heavily influenced by what they’ve experienced firsthand, because what you’ve experienced is more persuasive than something you read about.

~ Morgan Housel, from Rare Skills

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That’s one small insight from a bunch in an article nominally about finance. Most of the others also apply to life generally. What’s that old saw from Twain? Something like, “holding a cat by the tail, you’ll learn something through experience that can be learned no other way.” I find it fascinating that, although I’d wager none of you have done that with a cat, we all have a good idea of what we’d learn in the doing.

Related, I once managed—mostly successfully—to wrangle a 6-foot iguana which had horrifically befouled itself, into a warm, steamy shower enclosure, myself remaining outside. It occurred to me to use long oven mitts, to grab from behind, and to keep her oriented so her thrashing tail swung in a plane not including any of me. Through that experience I learned a lot about an iguana’s claws, the true range-of-motion of that body plan’s limbs, and the level of focus and determination she had from millions of years of evolution. We also developed a new relationship: me, wary. Her, indefatigable drive to some day murder my pasty, clawless ass.

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April 16, 2023 — #28 →

Published April 16, 2023  ·  All posts on Apr 16  ·  

Reading time: About 6 minutes, 1100 words
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This issue is https://7forsunday.com/28

Lucky →

Published April 16, 2023  ·  All posts on Apr 16  ·  

What helps luck is a habit of watching for opportunities, of having a patient, but restless mind, of sacrificing one’s ease or vanity, of uniting a love of detail to foresight, and of passing through hard times bravely and cheerfully.

~ Victor Cherbuliez

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A form of movement →

Published April 16, 2023  ·  All posts on Apr 16  ·  

If you do not have a movement practice or access to a good movement teacher, then finding a physical practice that you enjoy and makes you feel empowered is a good place to start.

~ Soisci Porchetta from, «https://www.humanpatterns.net/blog/2018/10/3/why-we-should-all-have-a-form-of-movement-practice»

You already love moving, (or nothing I write is going to convince you.) The only question then is where are you in your journey? Are you in the age of roots, fire, water or air? It’s very important to realize there are going to be major transitions in one’s journey through life. I consider myself typical in that movement played a huge role when I was young. There was a significant period in my 30’s where I lost the plot. I was lucky that I didn’t lose touch with movement for too long. Looking back from 20 years on, I believe that I was trying to hold onto an identity.

At the time, what I was doing was a big part of who I saw myself as. I didn’t understand that who I am, was going to change—is supposed to change! Naive, I denied the feelings which were suggesting I change. As I said, it turns out I was lucky.

As is often the case: No takeaway. Just food for thought.

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Ridiculous →

Published April 15, 2023  ·  All posts on Apr 15  ·  , ,

The moral? That there is no greater homage we could pay Proust than to end up passing the same verdict on him as he passed on Ruskin, namely, that for all its qualities, his work must eventually also prove silly, maniacal, constraining, false and ridiculous to those who spend too long on it.

“To make [reading] into a discipline is to give too large a role to what is only an incitement. Reading is on the threshold of the spiritual life; it can introduce us to it: It does not constitute it.”

Even the finest books deserve to be thrown aside.

~ Alain de Botton

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Outstandingly creative →

Published April 14, 2023  ·  All posts on Apr 14  ·  , ,

What makes the difference between an outstandingly creative person and a less creative one is not any special power, but greater knowledge (in the form of practiced expertise) and the motivation to acquire and use it. This motivation endures for long periods, perhaps shaping and inspiring a whole lifetime.

~ Margaret A. Boden

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