🎟️Endings are Beginnings Too🎟️
🔥Welcome to volume #00031!🔥
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.
🎟️ Endings are Beginnings Too 🎟️
As summer sets, it's one more ending in a year of endings. Change reminds us of how life is change. We change, and everything around us changes.
This year the change feels more profound and more pronounced. We stumbled in for a haircut and ended up with plastic surgery. The endings feel quasi-permanent, and the beginnings feel like quasi endings.
A couple of my colleagues moved on this week to other things. We get lucky to find ourselves around some beautiful people whose company we enjoy. We all make each other better in a virtuous feedback loop. At all times, we are both students and teachers.
The unfortunate part is that the moments don't last forever. When we find ourselves at the best age or doing the ideal thing, it ends. The perfect day doesn't repeat, and the perfect moment is never the same.
The endings are bittersweet and cathartic. The known fades away into something new.
That is why we wake up every day and try to make an imprint on the world and others—showing up as hopefully our best selves to enjoy the rollercoaster.
We feel the catharsis when we hit the endings while remembering that beginnings happen next.
📓Articles to Read📓
The Anatomy of Assholes by Scott Barry Kaufman
SBK as we call him in the classroom (I’m currently taking his Columbia course based on his book Transcend on the weekends - highly recommended) writes a scorcher here.
In recent years, it has become clear that the arrogant/antagonistic location on the interpersonal circumplex is close to the core of the “Dark Triad” of the malevolent personality—narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism—representing a highly unmitigated flavor of agency. While each one of the members of the Dark Triad has their own unique flavor, the “dark core” involves a mix of cold-heartedness, dishonesty/manipulation, and exploitation/aggression.
Again, note that just cold-heartedness is not enough—there are plenty of people who, on average, have very low levels of compassion but don’t have the drive to constantly exploit and dominate others. According to A.J. Figueredo and W. Jake Jacobs, the core of darkness is best characterized by its “antagonistic social strategies”: seeing others as objects to be exploited or rivals to be defeated.
Power of having Alternate Egos by Polina Marinova
“That other thing” is often referred to as an “alter ego.” Believe it or not, early in her career, Beyoncé was shy and reserved, which is antithetical to the powerhouse we saw on stage.
That’s because she created an alter ego she called ‘Sasha Fierce’ that allowed her to perform with a level of confidence she herself didn’t yet have. “I’m not like her in real life at all,” Beyoncé said. “I’m not flirtatious and super-confident and fearless like her.”
$10K an Hour Work by Khy He
Highly recommend Khy’s $10K an hour work boot camp on how to think about $10, $100, $1,000 and $10,000 an hour work. Did it this weekend and found it enlightening.
$10,000 per hour work is the process of identifying your highest leverage activities and committing a small amount of time to them each day. It’s the fast tortoise strategy on steroids. (It’s how Jeff Bezos became the richest man in the world)
🎙️ Listen / Watch 📺
The Stoa featuring Peter Wang talking about Mental Models (Episode 1 and Episode 2)
Peter offers up a discussion on multiple mental models with each session focusing on a different model or concept
Episode 2 introduces as defining ourselves through relationships as defining self (which is exactly what we do with children and how their selves get defined by their care takers)
If anyone wants the slides, send me an email
💣Words of Wisdom💣
If you aren’t willing to sacrifice your comfort, you don’t have what it takes.
Krista Tippet
“My only measure of the strength of a question now is in the honesty and eloquence it elicits.”
The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams and Neil Gaiman
“And that’s the deciding factor. We can’t win against obsession. They care, we don’t. They win.”
Don’t flap your wings so hard. It only exhausts you. Close your eyes. Lean into the currents, say yes. Let the wind raise you higher and higher. So easy. That’s what Eagles do. Oh, this is the secret to life as well.
Your joy is your sorrow unmasked. And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears. And how else can it be? The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.Drive - Daniel H. Pink
“Being a professional,” Julius Erving once said, “is doing the things you love to do, on the days you don’t feel like doing them.”
The Miracle Club - Mitch Horowitz
My conviction is that the true nature of life is to be generative. I believe that in order to be happy, human beings must exercise their fullest range of abilities—including the exertions of outer achievement.
The Book of Five Rings - Miyamoto Musashi
In the void is virtue, and no evil. Wisdom has existence, principle has existence, the Way has existence, spirit is nothingness.
“Therefore, the scholar who nourishes his life refines the form and nourishes his breath,” says an ancient Tao text. “Isn’t this evident?”
🙏Thanks for reading🙏
What excitings endings and beginnings are showing up in your life?
Any thoughts or comments, please share!
Namaste,
Christian
