🌌 Weekly Wondering 2023-W13
On jealousy, entertainment, and physical self-improvement
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 ;)
This newsletter is my version of learning and thinking in public, giving me time to expand on ideas that may turn into more refined content in the future.
✨ In My Life
Where I've been
Have been gone from late Feb to mid-March to go on vacation and visit a special someone, and had to just get back into the groove of things first :) It's definitely changed my future plans and priorities, so expect that to also be reflected in the content I consume and write about 😅
What I've been cooking
Finished the landing page and finalized things to prepare for Obsidian University, a course + vault for students wanting to use Obsidian to supercharge their learning and note-taking.
We're still finalizing the last promotion details and are waiting for a business account approval to properly split the revenue, but once that's finished expect some videos on it in the near future ;)
🔗 Links to Thinks
Overcoming jealousy and desire
Lately, I've been taking a break from my career and online grind to focus more on other areas of my life like health, happiness, and relationships.
But lately, something's been starting to creep back in.
Seeing friends accomplish impressive feats like bootstrapping a startup to $100,000 in a month, to having my Twitter feed full of success stories, I've slowly developed feelings of jealousy, comparison, and self-reflection.
In the video, one of Dr. K's viewers is struggling with a feeling of desperation as their goals of freedom (trying new things, socializing, and learning new skills) are hard to balance and prioritize because of their requirements for survival and working a 9-5 job.
And so, they're envious of their friends who don't have to worry about survival and basic needs as they've had unexpected good fortunes come their way, giving them the freedom to pursue whatever they want.
Thankfully, we can turn to Buddhist principles to regulate these negative emotions and be grateful for what we currently have (which is important for western capitalist environments like mine 😅)
He counters his gloominess by claiming that if it weren't for the presence of his friends, he would be much more appreciative of his current situation.
In reality, he's not living true to his values, but to the lives of others and his personal comparison against them.
Even if he were to suddenly become rich and have that freedom, such happiness would only be temporary as he would then find another area he's inferior in or lacking.
He doesn't want to be content.
He isn't really prioritizing his happiness.
Instead, true freedom and happiness lie in not letting jealousy or external influences dictate our desires and perception of our situation.
If you received a silver medal for being one of the two best people in the world at something in the Olympics, is it really worth feeling discontent and frustration because a singular person is better than you?
Social media enables comparisons with a small sample size of extremely high-performing people in various areas like appearance, career advancement, accomplishments, and more.
Instead of just competing against people in your local city, you're competing against anyone with access to the internet.
Sure it's motivational to believe you can do it because someone else has, but at the same time, it can be a delusional double-edged sword that chips away at your self-esteem.
Fortunately, I've been relaxing to just appreciate the progress I have made over the past 2 years, which is something I never really had the time to do as I kept chasing one thing after another.
To combat my own feelings of jealousy, I just need to internalize that no one has a similar life path as me, and there are no absolute goals or expectations of me except for my own.
I need to stick to my own personal theme for this year of finding balance and making up for other neglected areas in my life like health and relationships, without letting external influences disrupt my intentions.
Other cool content
I'm slowly getting back into content creation, so here's just a causal link dump of cool things I've watched:
entertainment is made to not make you think, but lots of people are defaulting to consuming entertainment as their choice of content
the constant switching of different types of media hinders us from processing it properly. ex) random ads in the middle of serious news
this puts these serious things in a weird situation where
Olivia asks how much does her persona have to matter with what she says? when we think of public figures, we may tend to take note of their appearance more than their opinions
our appearance and vibes are known more than what we actually say
why are we adding subway surfers and Minecraft parkour videos onto controversial or serious topics on short-form content? are we that lacking in attention that we need such irrelevant stimuli to focus and listen to chill content?
🚀 Actionable Tingz
Working on my physical self
Thanks to a certain individual, I've decided to put less emphasis on my digital persona and more on an area of my life I've neglected the most 😅
Ever since I shaved my head to not care about what other people think, I only did the bare minimum.
I would get the recommended 21 minutes of exercise a day for optimal brain power and do pull-ups for fun, I would eat enough meals to keep me not hungry, and I would have a basic skincare routine that didn't really do much towards healing the scars of countless years of picking.
But now, I've been spending time working on these three areas.
I've been going to the gym 5x a week, separating my workout sessions via the push/pull/legs split and tracking my progression using the Hevy app.
If you're interested, you can see my routines for push, pull, and leg day :p
I think I have been seeing gradual improvements for each session and have been learning a LOT about proper form and technique thanks to my personal trainer, so it's been invigorating to be a beginner at something new.
On top of this, I plan on doing stretches before bed to wind down and make up for the years of slouched backs and horrendous computer posture.
Seeing progress, in the long run, is going to be fun, but I'm still trying to figure out how to not feel as dead
Now, the second area I'm working on is my nutrition.
For some reason, I've always strayed away from carbs thanks to The Four Hour Body's Slow Carb Diet, and have been trying to eat in a calorie deficit because I felt like I was too fat (when in reality, I'm dead middle in terms of the average BMI for my height).
And so, I've been tracking my calories with My Fitness Pal, and it's helped me be more intentional and optimal with what I eat.
Right now I'm eating at a caloric surplus where I have 500 more calories a day than what I need to, and those calories are coming from a 50%/20%/30% split between carbohydrates, protein, and fats (protein may seem low but I just need 0.7-1g per day per pound of my 130~ bodyweight).
Of course, it's hard to track every single food, especially if someone else cooks for you, so I just try to estimate portions and ingredients used. Once I do consistently hit my goals, I can probably be less methodical about keeping track.
But yeah, it feels really weird knowing that as I'm able to eat much more than I used to, and that as I build more muscle that maintenance level will only increase which will let me eat even more... maybe working out is worth it after all 🤩
Lastly, I've taken some time to also work on my hygiene through skincare and mouthwash.
She's really into skincare and dentistry, so I was set up with a routine that covered the foundations while also healing my scars.
She also broke countless beliefs I had prior - I had no clue you were supposed to wear sunscreen every day, and I had even no more clue that it's best to brush your teeth before eating breakfast.
But yeah, I've been going at this for a few weeks now and have been pretty consistent with all three new responsibilities. At first, I was a bit hesitant because of how much money it would cost to maintain a membership, bulking meal plan, and skincare routine, but I'll worry about that another time 😎
Prior to these new priorities, I didn't have much clarity and direction for something new to pursue and work on, so being able to plan projects and execute them in these areas has helped me reignite my passion for self-improvement.
Making changes to my content diet and workflow
On Youtube, lots of recommended and viral videos have a storytelling aspect to keep the viewer engaged.
And most of the time, it's the same general advice over and over again, just told through different stories, without much emphasis.
I personally prefer density in knowledge and what better way than books diving deep into a topic?
Right now I've been using Shortform's text-to-speech reader at 2-3x speed to listen to book summaries relevant to my current challenges whenever I'm doing something not mentally taxing like working out or doing test cases for work.
And through this, I have three layers of effort in my content consumption:
In the first layer, I can easily skim through irrelevant parts as I have it on 2x speed.
When something interesting comes up, I can pause and highlight that part of the book summary in the app, and those highlights will be synced to my Obsidian vault.
After I'll go through my highlights and see what areas are most interesting or need more research, to which I can get the actual book and do more highlighting via Readwise Reader.
And at the end of the day, I'll spend some time as part of my night routine to process everything.
My Tools for Learning and Growth
I record everything I mention in my newsletters in my Obsidian, my favorite note-taking and productivity app.
If you want to aggregate the valuable gems from your week like this, or need a place to store your ideas and highlights, you can set up your own second brain.
If you want the most densely packed and actionable book summaries, try out Shortform for free here.
If you want to make reading and highlighting easier, check out Readwise (affiliate link) and sign up for their Reader app!