Sweet work

January 25, 2019 Will Simpson

As a person, I need to fully embrace the fact that in a conversation or interaction, I am the one ‘on stage’ that everyone is looking to for love, information, entertainment, validation, collaboration, a smile, a hug.

Heart felt work, life long learning. Historically work was about using our muscles - braun, in the more recent past work is about using our brains, the knowledge we acquire. In the future work will be about our ability to make connections and satisfy. Work will be a sharing of feelings, a long conversation, a relationship, an interaction.

Work connected to these feelings has always lead to success and happiness.

"And the good news is that we all start with the same advantage.” Start any time.

Hope you have an awesome day!

Credits — Bernadette Jiwa

This journal is meant as a reminder to encourage my future self. Where I work on my mental fitness and ‘adulting’. A reminder to him to operate in the world with love and compassion and some tips put together in a moment of clarity to help him when he is less clear and caught up in stuff the he can’t control. Continue the conversation anytime: will@kestrelcreek.com.

Questions

January 24, 2019 Will Simpson

The path to success is progressive and iterative. We get there by being brave enough to ask the hard questions along the way.

Euphonious dichotomy a pleasant sounding question that is messed up, confused, wrong, divisive.

Better questions. Ask better questions, practice. This helps drive conversation which drive connections. Asking others leads to asking myself better questions which leads to better thinking as thinking often is answering self generated questions.

What questions are worth the time and which are not? Just because a question can be formed doesn’t give it value. Questions can be helpful, insightful, well formed, add meaning, lead to expansion of knowledge or happiness, foster collectiveness, and/or are just nice. Some questions are the opposite, non sensical, questions for questioning’s sake, leading to divisiveness, formed without presence or awareness. I wait to spend my time on the first category of questions and stop, lose, avoid the second. This is what it meant by: The hard thing to know is to which notions to be ‘only don’t know' about and which are not worth the time.

Hope you have an awesome day!

Atul Gawande

January 23, 2019 Will Simpson

“Don’t grab defeat from the hands of success. Just when you’re about to succeed don’t let defeat butt in.

It is surprising how little it takes to defeat success in life. ”

— Atul Gawande

Hope you have an awesome day!

Credit - Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance by Atul Gawande

Be open to the gifts of the universe

January 22, 2019 Will Simpson

What spirituality means to me.

Spirituality is the position where wonder, exploration, adventure are dominant. A sense of the possible, a resting with the gift of life. A deep connection to what is, what happens, the desire to be open to whatever occurs in the moment. The drive to improve, to work toward this openness or the closest approximation I can manage.

Hope you have an awesome day!

Credits — Sam Harris

Changes in workflow

January 21, 2019 Will Simpson

I’m almost continuously tweaking my workflow trying to get back to that feeling of flow I remember. Lately I’ve been wondering why. Even as I’m retired and the social cues are to chill out and relax, I still plan and track my day in minutia. I think I can remember what must have been the dopamine rush associated with Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s “Flow” when things went according to plan. I think I can purposefully steer myself toward this by meticulous planning and tracking. But its not working that way.

Am I addicted to this feeling of flow? Most assuredly.

Is this ego driven? Holding on to the past.

Is my memory my wrong? Of course memory is fallible and unreliable.

Is reducing my resistance the answer? Works in plumbing, flow and resistance inversely related.

Should I give up? No.

Hope you have an awesome day!

Raw Data

January 20, 2019 Will Simpson

Not all feelings need to be paid attention to. Don’t waste time with feelings that are not helpful to leading a flourishing life. Similarly not all thoughts are worth following.

Sensations are made of both raw data and our concepts about them. We usually focus on our concepts about sensations that arise. Often we are told to work with our concepts, rather we are attracted to the sensation or repulsed. But I never thought to just drop all that and look at the raw data of a sensation. Pre-consept. Interesting. I only caught a glimpse but this has captured my interest.

Hope you have an awesome day!

Credits — Sam Harris

Lojong

January 19, 2019 Will Simpson

Yesterday I started a fresh round of Lojong Practice. 59 slogans. This round will be a little more complicated logistically. My study is in conjunction with listening to Be Grateful to Everyone: An In-depth Guide to the Practice of Lojong audio book featuring talks from a 6 week course taught by Pema Chödrön, a Tibetan Buddhist nun.

My current plan is to listen to 10 mins a day and take notes like I was attending a lecture. These notes I’m going to transfer to my Zettelkasten. As a sample here are today’s (day 2) notes.

It is not that we have to learn new behaviors but more a unmasking to expose our natural innate wholeness.
A heart felt smile is the sharing of bodhicitta or the wish to attain enlightenment motivated by compassion.
Surprise! We don’t always pull off our intentions to be present.
Atisha (980 and 1050 CE.) the monk who spend Lojong teaching to Tibet in traveling he "heard the people of Tibet were very good-natured, earthy, flexible, and open; he decided they wouldn't be irritating enough to push his buttons. So he brought along with him a mean-tempered, ornery Bengali tea boy. He felt that was the only way he could stay awake. The Tibetans like to tell the story that, when he got to Tibet, he realized that he need not have brought his tea boy: the people there were not as pleasant as he had been told."
Look at the ornery situations I meet as my “Bengali tea boy”.

Hope you have an awesome day!

Credits — Pema Chödrön - Be Grateful to Everyone: An In-depth Guide to the Practice of Lojong