Horsemen

When you recognize that it is actually impossible to do work tomorrow, then you know to stay with your work until something starts to take form. Today is the only day you can ever work, and once you see this truth, he is defeated.

~ David Cain, from The Four Horsemen of Procrastination (and how to defeat them)

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Is Burnout one of the Horsemen? Because that’s the one who defeats me every day.

If I could just convince myself that today was enough.

I’ve not the slightest idea what work-life balance is.

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Social network or social media?

The Lesson: This first insight is in truly learning that social media is much more of a mindless habit — and a very strongly ingrained one — than a pleasurable or fulfilling activity. We do it out of compulsion rather than intention.

~ Brett McKay from, A 4-Week Social Media Fast & 4 Lessons From It | Art of Manliness

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Back when we invented all this online bru-ha-ha, they were called “social networks.” I think we should still be using the word network rather than media, because then it would remain clear: A healthy community necessarily has a network of people, but a network of people is not sufficient to create a healthy community.

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Look at that

In outer space you develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it. From out there on the moon, international politics looks so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, “Look at that, you son of a bitch.”

~ Edgar Mitchell

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Lynn Jung: Training, recovery, and goals

How does moving to Brighton and experiencing injury influence an athlete’s approach to training, recovery, and personal growth?

Lynn Jung discusses Brighton, what it means to her, and how moving there affected her life. She unpacks how she approaches training, her movement background, and her journey of injury and recovery over the past few years. Lynn shares how she came to freerunning, her current projects, and her involvement with Storm Freerun and xDubai.

Then I moved to England where I didn’t know anyone other than my boyfriend which I think is a very hard situation to be in because you don’t always just want to spend time with one person. You need to have a broader network of people which was hard to build up first.

~ Lynn Jung (13:30)

The conversation focuses on Lynn Jung’s experiences moving to Brighton and how it shaped her personal and professional life. She shares how the move initially brought challenges, such as building a social network and dealing with the absence of indoor Parkour facilities. Despite these hurdles, Brighton eventually became her home, supported by a community of Freerunners who shared her lifestyle.

Lynn also reflects on the impact of injury, describing her recovery process and the mental shift it required. She explains how her injury led her to explore other physical activities like yoga and diving, broadening her understanding of movement. Professionally, Lynn discusses her involvement with Storm Freerun, her commercial work, and plans to develop skills in filmmaking and photography. Throughout the conversation, she emphasizes the importance of community, resilience, and adaptability in navigating her athletic career.

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Evaluating self-criticism

The critic as an amateur hack | Seth’s Blog

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My first thought was that my worst critic is myself. It strikes me that Seth’s comments apply equally to the me-voice in my head. Criticising myself is literally zero-effort; Much easier even than someone posting a critical comment somewhere.

I’ve never been much for cheesy self-affirmations. (“I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggone it, people like me.”) But I suspect weighting my self-criticism more in line with the effort required to make it would be useful.

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Were mistakes made?

The biggest factor in getting something to go from hard to easy is normally exposure. The more you encounter something, the less intimidating it gets. Your emotional relationship changes. There’s less uncertainty, your skill in dealing with it improves, your resentment for it fades, your craving for ease or salvation disappears. It has become easy.

~ David Cain from, How to make hard things easy

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That is so obvious, yet it’s so worth repeating.

What lies outside your comfort zone? Growth.

Yes, there are other things beside growth, outside your comfort zone: Fear, danger, and mistakes, for example. Irrational fears you know you should work through. Danger you know you should avoid. But what about mistakes? When’s the last time you made a mistake?

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Are you self-aware

The following is from Bruce Lee’s hand-written essay entitled, The Passionate State of Mind, which I discovered in the Artist of Life by J Little.

To become different from what we are, we must have some awareness of what we are. Whether being different results in dissimulation or a real change of heart—it cannot be realized without self-awareness. Yet is is remarkable that the very people who are most self-dissatisfied and crave most for a new identity have the least self-awareness. They have turned away from an unwanted self and hence never had a good look at it. The result is that those most dissatisfied can neither dissimulate nor attain a real change of heart. They are transparent, and their unwanted qualities persist through all attempts at self-dramatization and self-transformation.

~ Bruce Lee

I wish I had read that 20 years ago. But I suspect I wouldn’t have understood it the way I do now. I only understand because of the path I’ve taken through my life.

Bruce Lee was not an Exceptional Philosopher; Please stop quoting, “be water my friend,” as if it’s the ultimate grain of wisdom for the ages. Rather, I suggest that Bruce Lee was an Exceptional Person because he asked questions and he followed those lines of enquiry wherever they led, often inward into his thinking, beliefs and goals.

Are you self-aware enough to ask, “am I satisfied with myself?” and what are you going to do with the answer?

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Silence is sedition

… I wasn’t surprised to read that nationwide survey by the Chicago Tribune in which half of the respondents said there should have been some kind of press restraint on reporting about the prison abuse and just as many said they “would embrace government controls of some kind on free speech, especially if it is found unpatriotic.”

Imagine: Free speech as sedition.

Tell your students: Silence is sedition.

~ Bill Moyers from, ‘Journalism Matters,’ March 30, 2000 | BillMoyers.com

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I am not a journalist.

Having read this article by an actual journalist, I am left wondering:

What did we abandon that seems to have killed—or if you feel inclined to be positive in your assessment—seems to be killing journalism?

I don’t think the journalists are gone. I don’t think real publications are gone. What is gone?

You stopped reading.

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Think for oneself

A man who does not think for himself does not think at all.

~ Oscar Wilde

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Feeding the mind

I wonder if there is such a thing in nature as a FAT MIND? I really think I have met with one or two: minds which could not keep up with the slowest trot in conversation; could not jump over a logical fence, to save their lives; always got stuck fast in a narrow argument; and, in short, were fit for nothing but to waddle helplessly through the world.

~ Lewis Carroll from, Feeding the Mind: Lewis Carroll’s Rules for a Fine Information Diet and Healthy Intellectual Digestion – The Marginalian

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What an interesting metaphor! Can a mind be overfed? Can a mind undergoing regular, additional exercise require more feeding? Are there different diets—composition of the nourishment, not strategies to lose weight—for the mind?

Am I the sort of person who takes seriously the specifics of nutrition and exercise of the mind?

What would “junk food” be for the mind? What would “comfort food” be for the mind? What’s the equivalent of quadrupedal movement for the mind? What would over-training be for the mind?

…and why do I have the urge to dump out the “cabinets” where I store my mind’s nourishment in order to reboot my mental diet?

No answers today. Only questions.

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