🌌 Weekly Wondering 2022-W46
A deep reset, eating peppers for personal growth, and doing nothing
Welcome to another edition of Weekly Wondering, a sacred time where I share the resonating links, reflections and learnings from my past week to influence your next one ;)
Inspired by Vye’s naming convention for his own personal newsletter, I’ll start doing the same hehe
A lot has happened recently, so let's dive in!
✨ In My Life
Ending the conflict between traditional job security and creatorpreneurship
The internet has given anyone the opportunity to have the world as their audience, and the possibilities of that level of reach are limitless.
For the past few weeks, I've been priming my mindset to comfortably transition into this mysterious path and career, going all-in on content creation at the scale of a startup.
But then I got an unexpected offer for a new developer internship for SAP, which provides a stable income and status for the next 8 months.
I thought I bombed the interview as they had to continuously probe me in the right direction and I didn't personally give it my all, but I guess my previous experience salvaged my application?
And so, I was in quite the pickle.
Within 24 hours of receiving the acceptance email, I had to make a decision dictating the priorities of my next 8 months.
I could continue my resolve and go all-in on content creation via two different channels, or focus on those on top of my internship in a part-time fashion.
I considered half-assing the internship without any fear of being fired, but my coworker suggested that my low performance would harm my self-esteem.
In the end, I decided to think long-term by asking some questions.
Which provides the best financial stability?
Would I really be able to sustainably live off of being a creator for the rest of my life?
Which provides me the best opportunities for growth and learning?
If I put in the effort, it could be a near-guaranteed full-time position, which would help alleviate some mental burden during the ongoing recession.
But if my plan is to do something entrepreneurial as my life's purpose, then wouldn't it be a waste of time to climb corporate ladders and work as an employee? And who's to say that my true passion lies in programming?
Despite all this, I have no concrete resolve on why I chose to accept the internship, but two other things came to mind.
I'm a heavily introverted person.
Having a forced social environment like work allows me to not neglect this part of my life, meeting new people that I normally never would if I had the choice to.
It's also been my main social circle for the past few months, so I'm not sure if I would feel lonely at the end of it all.
Next is the relationship I want to have with content creation.
Relying on my brand for survival and my primary income provides an ambitious necessity to get work done, but at the same time, it can also ruin the satisfaction derived from it.
It would turn into a money-focused activity, which would reflect on my content and channel persona.
As it stands, the prescribed way to grow your brand is to follow systems and frameworks to imitate successful content, which goes against arguably my favorite part about content creation, being able to explore and experiment with self-expression.
And so, I've decided to succumb to a corporate lifestyle, but with a heavy emphasis on content creation.
I enrolled in Part Time Youtuber Academy and Ship 30 for 30, and am starting to reach out to more creators.
Which conveniently segways into...
Cold outreach
If I'm going to take content creation seriously, I'll need to find more people to talk about it and grow with.
Aside from these upcoming courses, I've also been messaging creators larger than me that I admire.
All to no success 😎
It was offsetting at first due to my codependent nature and shattering of my bold visualizations, but stoicism and exposure have made it easier to tolerate.
But on the flip side it revealed a new weakness: my horrendous networking and traditional socialization skills 🤪
And so I guess that's going to be something new I'll try to work on, diving deep into books like How to Win Friends and Influence People and The 48 Laws of Power.
It was a nice wake-up call from my unexpected fortunate opportunities with Tiago Forte and Andrew Kirby.
For the sake of pushing myself out of my comfort zone in the hopes of meaningful discussions and potential collaborations, I'll continue pushing onwards!
🔗 Links to Thinks
The Deep Reset
I'm a huge fan of Cal Newport's books
As of recently, I've been admiring his YouTube videos as he dives deep into all things productivity and life-fulfillment related.
He talks about the evolutionary progression of how we perceive work, how it's turned from a simple means to an end (think of traditional assembly-line factory workers in the industrial revolution) to something that also provides immense fulfillment and purpose.
And somehow, he manages to conceptualize my current dilemma on work and living a fulfilling life through the idea of a "deep reset", an internal reconfiguration of your life to amplify the small number of things you want to experience that you value and minimize the things that get in the way.
In a deep reset, you attend to life aspects and philosophies such as:
Work simplification (labor, hours, etc)
Financial Independence Retire Early (FIRE), to bring down the cost of living so you can still survive with less work
Intentional relocation to support your desired lifestyle
Deep community involvement
Deep play and self-development
I feel like the list is a comprehensive roadmap for life balance, and will probably use it as a reference when setting priorities.
When assessing my own life the past year, I've been heavily focusing on FIRE and self-development, so it makes sense for me to start outreaching out to new creators (deep community involvement) and thinking so much about my career path (work simplification + FIRE)
🚀 Actionable Tingz
Writing a thread a day on Twitter
I missed Friday, but am trying to do this so I can:
brainstorm content for potential videos
get used to consistently writing
start resurfacing the content of my vault more often, been teaching about the second brain methodology a bit too much that I haven't been able to do it much myself 😅
If you want to see my unpolished thoughts, you can follow here :)
Seeking mindfulness and discomfort through peppers
The CEO of the company I'm interning for finds pleasure in seeing his employees suffer.
One day, he came in with a mysterious plant and placed it behind my desk before entering his office.
Upon further inspection, it was a gift of death.
Instead of some new office decoration, it was riddled with the hottest peppers in the world: Carolina reapers and ghost peppers, which are both over 1 million Scoville (a jalapeno is only 8,500-10,000 😵).
Somehow we managed to find a less spicy pepper, a habanero, which is still 10-30x spicier than a jalapeno at 100k-350k Scoville 😭
We split it between the two of us.
To test the waters, I took a small piece, smaller than a tic-tac, and started chewing on it.
Upon my first piece, tears started streaming down my face.
It was unlike any spice or pain I'd experienced.
There was no milk, so all I could do was tolerate these fiery sensations.
But that's when a silly realization came to fruition:
What a perfect time to practice acceptance and mindfulness!
I tried to tap into my inner Marcus Aurelius, observing the spiciness as a mere feeling I was experiencing.
Instead of waiting for it to end, I accepted its complete dominance over my taste buds and throat.
Of course, the feelings didn’t go away, but the additional pain I experienced from mentally resisting it was nullified.
Eventually, it faded, and the spice level was tolerable enough to focus on going back to coding 😅
But it didn't end there.
My self-discipline has been deteriorating, and I think most of it has to do with my rising preference for effortless and hedonistic activities.
So what better way to overcome it than by seeking discomfort?
I took larger bites as I approached the spicier part of the pepper.
Each peak spice level continued increasing, and at times I questioned why I did this to myself.
But I persevered.
Deliberately choosing to pain myself and get accustomed to inconvenience.
Out of everything I've done the past week, it's probably been the most frictionful thing I've accomplished.
Even though it provided no tangible benefit other than a story to tell, I feel like it was a good step to tap into the power of a crucial mental trait: acceptance.
So, what’s your pepper-eating experience going to be this week?
🤔 Food For Thought
Lowering your bar for reaching self-actualization
Maslow's hierarchy of needs is a pyramid that outlines the different levels of needs a person has.
It starts off with more primitive requirements that support physical survival, then slowly progresses to more mental and spiritual kinds of health.
I claim to be on the path to self-actualization, but if you were to look at my life then my foundation of the levels would be rather questionable.
Physiological is a given or else I wouldn't be typing this out.
My safety is fine, but I don't necessarily have good health considering my eating habits and fitness frequency 😅
I also live much more frugally than people usually do in my age demographic, living a more minimalist life.
I cut off most of my friends with a typical INFJ door slam, and I've put relationships on the back burner of my priorities.
My self-esteem and confidence are subpar, especially in terms of social capabilities as I've shut myself in 😭
But despite the above, I feel like most of my attention can be sustainably focused on self-actualization.
Maybe in a sense, by putting so much focus on the top, then you unconsciously also work towards further refining the bottom.
😤 My Ramblings
On my way back from a cousin hangout, I was waiting at a bus stop underdressed in the cold, hands freezing and an hour to kill during midnight.
Here was my stream of consciousness during that time just exploring the ideas of a book I was reading during:
so I've been reading this book called how to do nothing and in it, the author claims that, in the attention economy were living in right now where we have the ability to spend all of our waking and just total hours in a day on productive work, it's even more important to learn how to do nothing
kind of as a break from it all, to release the tension of deadlines and survival expectations and just to admire the surroundings that we tend to neglect as we focus on the future and our goals
instead of the interconnectedness of the internet they suggest to admire nature and our local surroundings
that spending this time doing nothing helps us truly be present,
being someone who has lots of goals and likes to plan their whole day from start to finish with productive tasks, I would say that I've been neglecting this aspect of my life
I have been able to practice it on my walk back home as I just focus on my local environment, but I feel like I could be doing it more often in a more intentional way that isn't solely due to the fact that I have to go home
I think instead I should just try to make my default for these times where I'm transitioning between an environment like transit or waiting in between a task to genuinely do nothing
to notice my surroundings like how the bus station I'm under has a curved roof with support bars under it
to observe the people who pass by me, their posture, their ethnicity
to realize the fact that today was Remembrance Day and that I should, you know, pay respects to the purpose of this holiday
it's times like this where I can just not focus about the future and worry and just experience living
it's making me question how far I need to push myself for these goals because I already landed an internship at arguably one of the biggest companies in the world
I have a product making passive income as I just sit here and talk to my phone
I have plenty of close friends that I've somewhat drifted away from as I focus on my goals
I guess this does have to do with my personality and my own ambition but at the same time I feel like there should always be some sense of balance
it's times like these right have the opportunity to turn on my voice to text and just blow it out whatever is on my mind
sometimes it helps me with spontaneous ideas that further enhance my understanding of the world, helps me reflect on events that happen through the day, just gives me time to sit and ponder
I've fallen into the trap of always chasing the next big thing without really spending the time to appreciate the big things I've already experienced
like I have not celebrated at all for my internship at sap, for hitting 6,000 subscribers, instead I've just been trying to push myself to level up my skills by taking these courses and following these trends for some form of online success
and I think I should just be questioning my values more I guess because in the end I'm the one who's in control of what I do and if I decide to isolate myself like I somewhat have been, my main source of interaction mostly being my coworkers and cousins
as much as I say that I am looking for driven people and that my standards are high, maybe I should lower them for a bit and just change the curation of the people I spend my time with
there's just so many ways to go about this concept of life, from the things I'm saying on this note right now to the way I move my body to what I think about too more long-term things like my overall direction, it's just very interesting to say the least
i feel like the closest I've been to this state was when I did psychedelics and I think I'm kind of happy with me trying to reach a similar state without the use of substances
it's when I just truly let my mind free from all feelings and assumptions and judgment
to let it wander around
Until next time!