#thebalance: harmony equals flow
October 14th, 2019 (vol20)
~ Welcome to vol20 of #thebalance ~
As mentioned in last week's edition, October is the month where #thebalance is right at home (♎⚖️) especially with the M.O. of your’s truly being this whole strive for balance thing. Thus, the inspo for this newsletter’s title, theme, & approach.
…yes, there is some deeper meaning kinda stuff behind the title of this weekly letter. Its a title I had been contemplating for quite some time before officially launching.
Given this (and the fact that for me, personally, it’s a pretty great time to ‘reflect’), I thought, what better time then now to dive deep on the word ‘balance’ actually means??? So, yes, this week’s theme is BALANCE aka that work life play trifecta.
Highlights, include:
🤔🤔 #GetSmart >>> #Balance rules everything around me. Picking out a few to examples to highlight: earth, bodies, worklifeplay, and some quotes to top it all off. #That balance… brought to you by #thebalance
📚📚 #GetReadin’ >>> Highlighting an absolute classic novel this week, about pursuing your own #personallegend (also one of Lebron’s “game prep” books - check it).
🧘🥊 #GetDoin’ >>> For my New Yorkers, be sure to check out my two favorite studios in the city where I go to recalibrate, reset and rebalance on the reg. #flow
⬇️ More below ⬇️
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EDITOR’S NOTE: As the current format of these newsletters take quite a bit of energy/effort to collating the info for the topics I dive deep on, you may see me experimenting a bit more with the format going forward. Please provide feedback (+/-). After all, these newsletters are meant to be a value add for you.
***Just as a refresher, the core thesis of this newsletter is to pique your curiosity by aggregating interesting topics in a thematic, bite sized, and relevant manner (w/ original posts occasionally) - ranging from blog posts, books, music, events, podcasts, and ideas on how to stay active, travel or otherwise... And please keep sending feedback my way… the goal is to make this thing worth it for you!***
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#GetSmart
🤔🤔 “Work, life, play.” “Life, laugh, love.” “Love, life, career." “Pursue your passion.”
We all know the cliches. There is certainly truth to them, but to say these cliches understate things would be over oversimplifying it (to oversimplify it ha).
I mean, how do you even live a “fulfilled life” anyway? Whatever that means… That’s the hard part and the question that drives us all forward as individual entities.
Nonetheless, this week, I am going to attempt to uncork the bottle a bit on the topic, highlighting examples of balance, equilibrium, flow & fulfillment in places all around us. Hopefully inspiring you to hone your own journey and explore within on makes you feel balanced…
>>>> Balanced Quotes
I came across these quotes (albeit, some a bit ‘traditional’) that I thought nicely summed up fluidity/balance/flow/equilibrium for one’s lifestyle:
“The master in the art of living makes little distinction between work and play, labor and leisure, mind and body, information and recreation, love and religion. He/she hardly knows which is which. They simply pursue their vision of excellence at whatever they do, leaving others to decide whether they are working or playing. To them, its always both. ” ― James A. Michener
“Seek wealth, not money or status. Wealth is having assets that earn while you sleep. Money is how we transfer time and wealth. Status is your place in the social hierarchy. You’re not going to get rich renting out your time. You must own equity — a piece of a business — to gain your financial freedom.” - Naval Ravikant
1) “Happiness does not depend on what you have or who you are. It solely relies on what you think. 2) “As you walk and eat and travel, be where you are. Otherwise, you will miss most of your life” - Buddha (both)
Damn. Some inspirational quotes right there.
>>>> Balanced Ecosystems and Homeostasis
🌎🌎 Earth.
What better place to start than humanity’s home for a great example of what true balance looks like. Just think about how delicate life is… all the things that had to go right for our planet to be habitable:
The earth is at just the right distance from the sun so that water is warm enough to melt, but not so hot as to boil and steam away into space.
Water is able in this habitable zone to both evaporate and condense at lower levels in the atmosphere, thus permitting a more even distribution of water, and a cycle of water over dry land known as precipitation.
The earth is in a “habitable zone” in the galaxy. Closer to the center of galaxies, radiation and the presence of wandering planetoids (my new fave word) make life there unlikely.
☀️☀️ Our sun is just the right kind of star, putting out a fairly steady amount of energy. Other types of stars are more variable in their output and this variance can
The earth’s axis tilt relative to it orbital plane is also just right to allow seasonal variations that help complex life but not so tilted as to make the seasons too extreme.
The moon also has a good effect by causing tides that are just enough to permit tidal zones (a great breading ground for diverse life) and not too severe so as to destroy life by extreme tides.
….. you get the idea.
CRAZY when you think about it. Makes me feel small, Idk about you.
>>>> Homeostasis-as-a-Service
A MILLION BILLION QUADRILLION things had to go right for us to be here alive & well and its all comes down to this crazy term called homeostasis:
⚖️ “In order to maintain homeostasis the ecosystem must establish a “dynamic equilibrium”, simply meaning “the conditions of the ecosystem (internal or external) are held more or less constant by negative feedback systems operating within the ecosystem”
>>>> Balanced Bodies *humanoids*
From the Khan Academy, “The body maintains homeostasis for many factors in addition to temperature. For instance, the concentration of various ions in your blood must be kept steady, along with pH and the concentration of glucose. If these values get too high or low, you can end up getting very sick.
Homeostasis is maintained at many levels, not just the level of the whole body as it is for temperature. For instance, the stomach maintains a pH that's different from that of surrounding organs, and each individual cell maintains ion concentrations different from those of the surrounding fluid. Maintaining homeostasis at each level is key to maintaining the body's overall function.”
>>>> Balancing Your Life
Wikipedia defines work-life balance as the following, “It is the state of equilibrium in which demands of personal life, professional life, and family life are equal.”
Certainly a very ‘proper’ way to put it… but I must say I couldn’t agree more. Just check out this pyramid.
Here are five ways to acquire success and discover fulfillment:
1. Challenge yourself to grow.
2. Contribute to others.
3. Live in the present moment.
4. End your sense of entitlement.
5. Connect to something larger than yourself.
Simple, I know. But hard in practice.
>>>> Finding your “Passion”
…. from Brad Stulberg, author of the Passion Paradox, “speakers advise graduates to ‘find your passion,’ ….And this was some of the fascinating research that went into the book, that it’s actually that phrase, ‘find your passion,’ that often sets people up for failure and frustration.
Because if you expect to just magically fall into an activity that you feel immediately passionate about, and makes you feel immediately good, then what ends up happening is you might find something that might be great for a week or two, but then suddenly it gets hard, or you get frustrated, and then you assume, Well, this must not be the thing I’m passionate about, so I’ll try something else.
++++ In the research, this is what’s called a fit mindset of passion. And a fit mindset of passion is just that. You think that you’re going to find something that’s the perfect fit. While the vast majority of people hold a fit mindset of passion, the research shows that a fit mindset of passion is associated less with people actually finding and pursuing a long-term passion. That’s because, again, if you have such a high expectation that it’s going to feel great from the get-go, then once that expectation isn’t met, you just assume, This must not be the thing for me.
****If I were giving those commencement speeches, it would be much less about find your passion, and much more about follow your interests and cultivate passion. If you lower the bar from, “This is great, this is perfect, this is a great fit,” to, “This is something that’s interesting,” and then follow your interests and give things some time and space to unfold—that can lead to passion.
🔑🔑 Curiosity is the (major) key 🚨🚨
>>>> In the Name of Work-Life Balance
Findings from the 2019 OECD Better Life Report:
“Long work hours may impair personal health, jeopardize safety and increase stress,” the OECD says. The report pointed out that families are often most affected by poor work-life dynamics, advising that governments can help to address the issue by encouraging supportive and flexible working practices.”
In the OECD index, the top 10 spots were occupied only by European countries. By contrast, the US ranked 27th, with 11% of people working very long hours.
#Europeftw
>>>> Yin and Yang (Taoism)
☯️ ☯️ We are all familiar with the yin-yang symbol. But are you familiar with what the practice represents?
Yin and Yang are integral to the Chinese culture and have been so for thousands of years.
In the Chinese Yin-Yang model, Yin (the black) contains a seed of Yang (in the form of a white dot). So there is balance, but the relationship goes beyond balance to one of harmony. When two things are balanced, they are equal but still separate. In a relationship of harmony, the two energies blend into one seamless whole, as perfectly embodied by the swirling Yin-Yang symbol.
This means there’s a dynamic flow happening that automatically and continuously balances and rebalances these energies. The entire Universal pattern is one of establishing balance and harmony. This perspective can help you more peacefully view the world and your role in it.
(^^^shout out Donna Chang)
>>>> Cultural Balances
…. thought this was an awesome assortment of symbols showing how prevalent finding balance, equilibrium, inner peace, a state of flow is in cultures all around the world.
(would love to dive deep on specific ones in a future episode- lmk if you have any requests)
>>>> Final Word
From Thrive, “Sometimes you will spend more time with family and friends, while other times you will need to work more. Sometimes you will need to lock yourself in your study and crank out something for work, while other times you can spend the whole day at the park. Sometimes you will need to drop everything to tend to a sick child, while other times you will need to reschedule a lunch date with your best friend.
Save yourself the frustration and accept life is too complex for perfect balance.
It’s about maximizing your time and energy with everything that you do. It’s about showing up as your best-self and being 100% present in every moment of everyday. Life balance is finding joy, peace, and harmony in life imperfections.
🌊🌊 Embrace those positive and negative feedback loops, people.
#GetReadin’
📚📚 Highlighting an absolute classic of book this week… about pursuing your own #personallegend, called The Alchemist.
With more than two million copies sold around the world, Paulo Coelho's masterpiece tells the magical story of Santiago, an Andalusian shepherd boy who yearns to travel in search of a worldly treasure as extravagant as any ever found.
If you don’t believe me that its worth a read, just believe King James I guess: Here he is reading it prior to the 2018 Eastern Conference Finals
#GetDoin’
🧘🧘 Yoga, in my opinion, is one of the best ways to practice the “flow state” and work on maintaining balance. Although there are many types of yoga (19 core types, in fact), at its core yoga (which means ‘union’) aims to join the mind, body and spirit, with the ultimate goal of achieving liberation aka that balance.
Big business too, did you know Americans spend almost $6bn a year on yoga (the number of yogis in the US has been growing by 50% YoY).
For my New Yorkers, be sure to check out my two favorite studios outchea:
😅 Verayoga (known as Sweat Yoga in out west in CA) 🧘
🥊Box and Flow 🧘
Have a great week all!!
Curiously,
Brian
***Including a snippet from the Exponential View newsletter (a must read for me each week), which posts the below carbon tracker. Latest update below:
😢😢 “Each week, we’re going to remind you of the CO2 levels in the atmosphere.
Each week, we’re going to remind you of the CO2 levels in the atmosphere and the number of days until reaching the 450ppm threshold.
The latest measurement (as of October 9): 408.41ppm; October 3, 2018: 405.62ppm; 25 years ago: 360ppm; 250 years ago, est: 250ppm. Share this reminder with your community by forwarding this email or tweeting this.The Tesla Model 3 had a stellar year in the US in 2018, becoming the best-selling luxury car in the country and the best-selling car of any type in terms of revenue. Sales figures are estimated to reach around 43,000 in the US, blowing away any other small or mid-size luxury car.
Focus on the delta over the past 12 months. The delta itself continues to increase. We are ~3,876 days from the dreaded 450ppm threshold.”***
A little bit about me:
My friends call me Block. Minnesota born & raised, I now live and work in New York City.
I am endlessly curious and eternally optimistic. I have a passion for new ideas, obsessed with all things technology, and am always seeking to broaden my perspective while striving for balance.
I am an open finance enthusiast, futurist, investor, entrepreneur, builder, advisor, life long learner, hockey player, traveler, podcast addict, hip-hop head, e-newsletter junkie, event planner, and comedic-short producer. Follow me on Twitter here and Instagram here.
“Find a question that makes the world interesting.” - Paul Graham
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