🔥Welcome to volume #00040!🔥
I’m Christian Champ. This is ☯️The Middle Way Newsletter ☯️. It is a place where I write, explore, share, and invite you along for the journey.
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🦃Gratitude 🦃
Life gives us many chances to find superpowers. An easy one to acquire, but challenging to perfect, is gratitude. This skill provides us with the ability to let an internal splash ripple out.
Showing gratitude opens us up to the world in a beautiful way. It enables us to bring grace, awe, and joy to those we encounter. When we start with gratitude, we open ourselves to the goodness that surrounds us. We come from a place of abundance vs. one of scarcity. Our positive energy flows, and we act as givers, not takers. We help make it better.
Life is messy. A plant starts as a seed and, like Thich Nhat Hanh says, "with no mud, no lotus". The challenging moments, the celebratory moments, and the mundane moments all make up the essential and wonderful parts of the journey. There is mud with the rainbows.
When we fall down, we get to sit with the gratitude of learning what doesn't work. When we succeed, we sit with the appreciation of learning what does work. Most importantly, we find people and communities that act as our suns, helping us grow and thrive.
Along those lines, I want to express gratitude to everyone that reads the newsletter. A strong thanks and head nod for all the kind words of encouragement, shared articles and shared conversations that marinated from the newsletter. You forget how much a "keep going" or an "I liked that, and it spoke to me" matters until you hear them.
An extra special thanks to my wife (and sometimes editor) for her efforts and support. Another extra special thanks to AP, SM, and DB, who've offered up invaluable advice, encouragement, editing, and ideas.
Love you all, and thank you for being here.
📓Articles to Read📓
Austin Kleon with an idea of perpetual Thanksgiving driven by a thought from Thoreau
Here’s what Henry David Thoreau said 160 years ago, 12/6/1856, in a letter to his friend, Harrison Blake:
I am grateful for what I am and have. My thanksgiving is perpetual. It is surprising how contented one can be with nothing definite…. My breath is sweet to me. O how I laugh when I think of my vague, indefinite riches. No run on my bank can drain it, for my wealth is not possession but enjoyment.
HBR on the case for asking sensitive questions.
This seems like another superpower worth developing. The power of questions is real and the more powerful the question, the better the relationship, conversation, and information exchanged.
We often avoid asking questions that feel too sensitive or personal. But avoiding these potentially awkward conversations comes at a cost: When negotiating a salary or choosing where to live, for example, it can be very useful to know how much a coworker earns or how much a friend pays in rent. Learning more about our peers’ circumstances can help us navigate our own professional and social interactions, and asking direct (albeit potentially uncomfortable) questions is one of the most effective ways to access this valuable information. Plus, these questions can sometimes strengthen relationships, as they can help us go beyond small talk and spark real connection.
Of course, how you ask a sensitive question matters a lot. Rather than directly blurting out a delicate question whenever and wherever it comes to mind, take the time to explain why you’re asking the question and how you plan to use the information. A bit of preparation can go a long way: Reflect on why you want to ask, whether you really need the information, whether there’s any context that might inform how the question will be perceived, and find an appropriate, private environment for a one-on-one conversation.
The main themes include learning, curiosity, and relationships.
This dovetails nicely with something I’ve been marinating on recently, which is what makes a great hire? The factors that seem to matter most include being smart and hard-working, a learning machine, and making others better. The third point is the most challenging of the three to accomplish and many of the lessons from the article focus on that exact point.
I wish I made a stronger effort to develop relationships with the junior folks of every client I dealt with. So many of those junior people are today’s amazing leaders in various industries and even in society at large. When you take the time to truly develop a relationship with someone who is also at the age of fighting to become relevant, that bond can become a foundation that can last a lifetime. When trust is established because you make them look good to their seniors by helping them, amazingly they reciprocate to the people you report to. Suddenly it is no longer a client/servicer relationship, but a prized partnership. This is one way careers are made.
I wish I took the time to not only focus exclusively on whatever task I was (overwhelmed) trying to accomplish but I also took the time to learn what my peers were working on. Obviously, there wasn’t enough time in the day to become expert in everything, but by picking your head up and forcing yourself to be aware of as many aspects of our industry, products, geographies, and industry verticals, you will have a much better chance of pro-actively determining your best career path. Just because you started in one specific product, group or geography doesn’t mean that the best thing for you is to lock yourself in forever.
I wish someone told me that while all of the pressure induced by peers, seniors and myself were real, if I don't also find time for some degree of balance for personal health, family and relationships I will burn out and be of no use to my co-workers, my company, myself or anyone.
I wish I made the effort to keep in better touch with all of the people (including the senior ones) that I worked with after I left the Analyst program. You never know.
🎙️ Listen / Watch 📺
Seth Godin drops his typical tons of wisdom on the Tim Ferriss podcast (Spotify)
Seth reminds us to be curious, show up, do the work, follow a process, and be consistent.
What would you do even if you knew you would fail?
Love what you do is for pros, do what you love is for amateurs
Magic is the moment that you weren’t expecting. In today’s world, the role left for us is to create magic
Create tension no matter what you are doing and then release the tension
How can you create constraints, even if they are arbitrary to force yourself to do better work?
Authenticity is fake and selfish, be consistent instead
Perfect is the enemy because it doesn’t exist
Generosity doesn't mean free. Generosity means that you're expending emotional energy, emotional labor, help somebody else.
Tim: You have a great quote in the introduction of the new book from sculptor Elizabeth King, and I'd love to hear you explain this or give examples of how it can apply or might apply. The quote from Elizabeth King is process saves us from the poverty of our intentions. What does that mean? There would be no book if it weren't for that quote from Elizabeth King.
Seth: What she is saying is this Tomorrow morning when you wake up, you probably won't feel like engaging in the practice. And if you do, you probably won't feel that way the next day that what we do is once decide. We decide that we're a runner and runners go running every day. We decide where a blogger and bloggers blogged every day, and that decision lightens the cognitive load so much because there's no time, no reason to negotiate with ourselves because we already had the meeting,
Seth: I think authenticity is a crock, and I think authenticity is overrated and talked about far too much. The problem with authenticity is it selfish. Authenticity enables us to say whatever we want, and if people don't like it while I was just being authentic. It is a ticket to self absorbed in consistency, and I don't think anybody we serve wants that. I think what they want is consistency.
Seth: There are soft skills and they involve curiosity. They involve experimentation and 30 other things. These air all skills in the sense that we can learn them. We can learn to be more honest. We can learn to be more diligent, weaken, learn to be more persistent. And that's great, because if you can learn them, then you're not stuck where you are. You can become who you want to be.
Seth: So let's go back to Joni Mitchell because something happened to Joni Mitchell after I don't know which album number. And it was that she was unstoppable, that her albums were on every radio station and were in every college dorm room. And Joni was in danger of becoming a hack because the audience knew exactly what they wanted from a Joni Mitchell record and exactly what they wanted from a Joni Mitchell concert. And Joni Mitchell looked at that and she said, I'm whatever 30 years old, I could do this quite profitably for the next 40 years. It's a cynic, your that she will be beloved and she will never fail because writing another Joni Mitchell song was pretty easy for her. And so she made a record called Don Juan's reckless Daughter, and then she made a couple other ones after that that seemed intentionally designed to alienate her audience. But they weren't. They were intentionally designed to alienate the old Joni Mitchell's audience so that she could find her smallest viable audience and make the music she wanted to for them because her goal wasn't to sell more records. Her goal was to explore that golden place of Wow. This might not work, but if she kept making the things that would work, she would ruin her life. And I just I'll listen to that record. God must be a boogeyman with Jaco Pastorius on the friendless base and there's still songs in there I don't get yet, but I'm so proud of her to have said enough. I have enough now. How do I make better? Yes, What would you do even if you knew you would fail? I love that I love that recasting of the question that I've always enjoyed, but for any number of reasons, very often not come up with great answers. Thio, would you dio if you know you could not fail? Uh, even if you knew you would fail, in a sense, I mean, it's of course. There's, um, caveats to the question, in a sense, but if you answer this or pursue the answers, explore the answers to that question.
Invest Like the Best Podcast talks to Shippo founder Laura Behrens Wu (Spotify)
There are all kinds of gold in this podcast starting with how Laura came up with the idea of Shippo to help businesses get better at shipping. The challenges of starting a company, picking your customers, and making your product work for them.
Laura: Persistence is an underrated superpower which sounds gritty, and it is gritty, but I think could have given up a lot earlier. There were times in the business that weren't fun. They still come up, but they're also longer times in the business that weren't fun. And especially when starting a company, you just have to be so persistent in making sure that you get to early proof point to get to people who believe in you enough to put money in. So persistence is a personal characteristic. I really appreciate also in my team members and then what my strength are again. I know more about what my weaknesses are and then have hired for those weaknesses. I'd say I'm or high level than in the detail. So when I'm hiring for people, I'm looking for people who could just at this point at least take the ideas that I have and turn them into execution on the executing site. I was fine as an individual contributor early on. I think as the company's at this scale, there are much better executers that are able to figure out how to do this at the size of the business for at right now. Yeah. I spent a lot of time this year hiring just people who have been there and done that.
📚 Books to Read or Listen to📚
The Biggest Bluff: How I learned to pay attention, master myself, and win by Maria Konnikova (Goodreads)
Maria, a Harvard trained psychologist, pitches a book about her playing poker using what she learned running studies and what she learns training with some of the best poker coaches. She needed to play the cards, her opponents, and her own mind.
Some of my favorite quotes from the book:
“Less certainty, more inquiry”
The more they overestimated their own skill relative to luck, the less they learned from what the environment was trying to tell them, and the worse their decisions became: the participants grew increasingly less likely to switch to winning stocks, instead doubling down on losers or gravitating entirely toward bonds.
“Focus on the process, not the luck. Did I play correctly? Everything else is just BS in our heads,” Erik tells me. “Thinking that way won’t get you anywhere. You know about the randomness of it but it doesn’t help to think about it. You want to make sure you’re not the person in the poker room saying, ‘Can you believe what happened?’ That’s the other people.”
The more you learn, that harder it gets; the better you get, the worse you are.
And as I'm learning, the craft of poker certainly cannot be mastered without self-knowledge, self-care, and self-reflection. All your technical prowess will evaporate if your mind and emotional landscape aren't solid.
I haven’t quite thought of it that way, but as always, the man has a point. How we frame something affects not just our thinking but our emotional state. It may seem a small deal, but the words we select—the ones we filter out and the ones we eventually choose to put forward—are a mirror to our thinking. Clarity of language is clarity of thought—and the expression of a certain sentiment, no matter how innocuous it seems, can change your learning, your thinking, your mindset, your mood, your whole outlook“You become a big winner when you lose,” Dan says. “Everyone plays well when they’re winning. But can you control yourself and play well when you’re losing? And not by being too conservative, but trying to still be objective as to what your chances are in the hand. If you can do that, then you’ve conquered the game.” And it resonates. After all, losing is what brought me to the table in the first place. It makes sense that learning to lose in a game—to lose constructively and productively—would help me lose in life, lose and come back, lose and not see it as a personal failure. It resonates—but it’s a tough ask. Dan nods. “It’s still tough to do. Even for me, and I have a lifetime of experience, that’s not an easy thing.”
It’s like that great Kipling quote: ‘If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster, and treat those two impostors just the same . . . ’” I nod. I know the one. “I love that. This is such a fundamental part of poker. The wins really go to people’s heads. And the losses—they can’t deal. It’s so easy to be delusional in this game,” he tells me.
When it comes to learning, Triumph is the real foe; it’s Disaster that’s your teacher. It’s Disaster that brings objectivity. It’s Disaster that’s the antidote to that greatest of delusions, overconfidence. And ultimately, both Triumph and Disaster are impostors. They are results that are subject to chance. One of them just happens to be a better teaching tool than the other.
Things in our control are opinion, pursuit, desire, aversion, and, in a word, whatever are our own actions. Things not in our control are body, property, reputation, command, and, in one word, whatever are not our own actions.
Mastery is always a struggle for balance. How much time do you devote to the craft, and how much to yourself?
In the end, he's just grateful that he gets to do something he loves for a living. In the grand scheme of life, there simply isn't a place for negative emotions. "Some people just become overly emotionally invested in their sadness and their misfortune," he says. "They forget to be grateful to be in the tournament, and then they lose their remaining chips." That's a bad attitude. Not only do you feel bad, but your decision making suffers "Everybody has a great opportunity to succeed and prosper at whatever they do, and everyone has some kind of unique gift. And I see that of times, the most difficulty we cause ourselves is kind of fighting again the grain of what is healthy for us."
💣Words of Wisdom💣
“What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life” - Mary Oliver
Gratitude is the wine of the soul. Go on. Get drunk!” — Rumi
Barking Up the Wrong Tree - Eric Barker
Research from the journal Cognition and Emotion shows that gratitude is the quality that makes people want to spend more time with you. Gratitude is the tactical nuke of happiness and the cornerstone of long-lasting relationships. If it’s that simple—just taking time to say thanks—why don’t we all do it? Researchers call it “hedonic adaptation.” I call it “taking things for granted.” When you first get your new house, it’s the greatest thing that ever happened to you. A year later, it’s that money pit that needs a new roof. The joy of the new never lasts. And this happens with everything.
@stewartbrand : Zen Buddhists define their task as “infinite gratitude for the past. Infinite service to the present. Infinite responsibility to the future”
The Five Invitations - Frank Ostaseski
“Helping, fixing, and serving represent three different ways of seeing life. When you help, you see life as weak. When you fix, you see life as broken. When you serve, you see life as whole. Fixing and helping may be the work of the ego, and service the work of the soul.”
How Adam Smith Can Change Your Life - Russ Roberts
When we earn the admiration of others honestly by being respectable, honorable, blameless, generous, and kind, the end result is true happiness.
Tweets From Jonny Miller 🐢@jonnym1ller on Twitter
Updating my definition of work to 'cultivating the conditions for grace to occur’
🙏Thanks for reading🙏
What are you grateful for? How can we add more gratitude practices in our lives?
Any thoughts or comments, please share!
Namaste,
Christian
