šLeaning into It š
š„Welcome to volume #0046!š„
IāmĀ Christian Champ. This is āÆļøThe Middle Way NewsletterĀ āÆļø. It is a place where I write, explore, share, and invite you along for the journey.
šLeaning into ItĀ š
Every night this month, I've spent at least an hour laying in the bed of a two-year-old helping get him to sleep. The kids share a bedroom, and any night I'm not there, Isaac screams and repeats my name for over an hour. When his brother hits the top bunk, the screaming of my name doesn't play. When I arrive, he hits, kicks, and yells character names in my face like "Mario," "Sonic," and "McQueen" until he passes out.Ā
I'm not trying to enter a long-term drama triangle as a rescuer, but I do need both kids to fall asleep. The first couple of nights, I laid there trying to will him to sleep. Then I leaned into the moment. Yes, I prefer reading, writing, or juggling before I go to bed, but I have a lifetime to do that. I have days or maybe weeks left of this dynamic. How often do we recognize the "last-time" moments at the moment that they are "last-time" moments?
Given this mindset, the bottom bunk starts to feel like home.Ā Ā
Improv offers us the concept of Yes and. What that means is that no matter what happens, we acknowledge it and build off of it. When we lean into it, we say Yes and get ready for what happens next. We make the best of whatever just happened andĀ keep going.Ā Ā
Plus, it all ends quickly. If we forget to enjoy the moments, then what is the point? If we fail to see the silver linings, then what is the point? The things that we have to do are done best when weĀ lean in. They work best when weĀ re-frameĀ it to try to make it serve us and those around us.Ā
šArticles to Readš
Scalable Loops by Matt Sweet
How can we compress our most important actions and activities to make sure we do them every day? Introducing scalable loops.
Josh Waitzkin is a chess world champion, a tai chi push-hands world champion, and a Brazilian jiu-jitsu black under Marcelo Garciaāwidely considered one of the best BJJ practitioners ever. Thus, Waitzkin knows a thing or ten about the art of high performance, and inĀ The Art of Learning, he shares some of his insight. One particularly effective method he talks about is āmaking smaller circles.ā He cites the importance of ritualisation in psychological preparedness, but argues that high performers often donāt have autonomy over their time. Having a one-hour ritual you complete before a performance or high-stakes event is great, but what happens when, because of an unexpected occurrence, you only have two minutes, rather than an hour?Ā Make smaller circles. Iāll provide an example.
Imagine that before a BJJ match, I like to do three things:
1) Complete a breathing ladder, inhaling for one, exhaling for one, inhaling for two, exhaling for two, and so on up to ten and back down to one.
2) Work through a series of stretches and BJJ movements that gradually increase in intensity.Ā
3) Do 1) and 2) whilst listening to a favourite song on repeat.ĀThat processābreathing ladder and progressive moments whilst listening to musicācould take half an hour. But I can compress it into ten minutes. I could do three, deep inhalations and exhalations, complete three preparatory movements and listen to my chosen song once. Or I can compress it further. One breath and one stretch whilst listening to the chorus. Or I can do it without music: a breath and a movement whilst humming the hook to myself. This is making smaller circles; the compression of rituals into a smaller time and space.Ā
Mattās annual review from 2020 is another interesting and thought-provoking read.
As is his piece on Near-Deathness for RibbonFarm (one of my favorite places on the webs). We all should keep death in mind (my Tai Chi practice includes a daily dying meditation). This article reminds us of that and how to be most alive, we need to spend time near the edge.
InĀ To Philosophise is to Learn How to Die, Montaigne speculates that philosophy is an art less concerned with living well than dying well. More specifically, he stumblesāin typical Montaigne fashionāupon the insight that the people who die well are the ones who keep their mortality in sight whilst they are alive.
Life is a great mountain whose peak is near-death. Some crawl up to the edge, poke their heads over the precipice and shuffle away soon after. Other, more adventurous folk dance joyfully on the peak of Life, chucking shapes and seeing how close they can get without losing their balance. Yet, while they make frequent pilgrimages to The Edge, they too always return to normality. But there are a few people throughout time that not only come to The Edge, but never leave it. They make the climb, slowly and patiently, and spend the remainder of their existence on the Peak of Life, never far from Near-Death
One Day You are Not Their Favorite People by Khe Hy
This one relates to my intro this week. Time goes by quickly. Our bodies and the hands of time fight against the idea below, but it is something to think about.
āAs a dad to small kids, I sometimes think that we all have it backwards: we spend our 30s and 40s working hard towards career goals, when in reality itās this time thatās most valuable with our children! Perhaps we should all coast through our middle years then work hard when the kids start heading out on their own.ā
šļø Listen / Watch šŗ
The Covax Files (Spotify)
One of my buddies, Kent Collier, sponsored a deep look into vaccines, how the process works, trails, mRNA and where we go from here. A perfectly timed podcast for this moment that looks to answers the questions we all have.
Byrne Hobart and Taylor Pearson in a conversation on Capital Destruction and Mimetic Desire in Tech and Finance (video)
Byrne writes my favorite financial newsletter (The Diff) and one that is well worth the subscription fee (or at least check out the weekly free issue).
In the talk they cover:
Girard Mimetics --> multiple companies fall on the same ideas and things that they can copy. Like wearing black clothes like Jobs. Can't copy a product with network effects like Google or Facebook and see people trying to copy this and to see if it works, they are lighting money on fire
Best things we can do for healthcare: Mandatory glucose monitors - People not spiking their blood sugar levels and mess up their endocrine systems over time (he doesnāt recommend for a policy, but something we should do as individuals)
John Mackey comments he references
āI mean, honestly, we talk about health care. The best solution is not to need health care,ā MackeyĀ toldĀ Freakonomics RadioĀ host Stephen Dubner in an episode released on Nov. 4.
āThe best solution is to change the way people eat, the way they live, the lifestyle, and diet,ā Mackey says. āThereās no reason why people shouldnāt be healthy and have a longer health span. A bunch of drugs is not going to solve the problem.ā
Thinking of health care as an accrual method vs. just cash cost (ie Chronic conditions --> when you smoke cigarettes or eat donuts you are running up an accrual that isn't a cash cost yetā¦ eating poorly or smoking means you push up your healthcare costs but not till the future)
Ideal training for writing is invest in the public markets, listen to CEOs making their comments and watch the performance of their stock. Keep that in mind when tracking VCs.
Hard to access the skills if people are lucky or smart especially in crypto
Rebel Wisdom breaking down the Q'Anon and the Return of the Mythic
TLDW: People need hope, villains, saviors, etc and the mythical is filling that void
Sci-ops, gaming, and media all breaking down
Religion, new-age, and mythical thinking all converging
Good vs. evil, moral pluralism, are all creating anxiety
Qā Anon is a mix of Christian and New-Agey ideas
People that have been traumatized more prone to āblack or white thinkingā
āWe live in a world where everything is possible but nothing is provableā - Gary Lachman
Conspiracy theory is about filling in the vacuum of nothing, life as meaningless, and at least you are not apathetic (Jungian neurotic reaction to the reality you should be dealing with) - Lachman
Progressivism rejects the myth because they are ārationalā and the other side is looking for something to believe in
Successful to pump people up, but terrible in terms of making sense of the world and predicting the future (rapture type stuff) and as collective intelligence
šĀ Books to Read or Listen toš
A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I learned editing my life by Donald Miller (Goodreads)
TLDR: Donald Miller realizes that living your life like a story leads to a better life.
The book answers the question, what happens if we view life as a story and we always choose the more interesting or challenging path?
The Psychology of Money: Timeless Lessons on Wealth, Greed, and Happiness by Morgan Housel (Goodreads)
TLDR: Morgan talks about money, risk, greed, and luck by telling compelling stories about how random and unpredictable life can be.
Bill Gates and how lucky he was to grow up in town with a computer.
Never Enough - when rich people do crazy things
How we tell ourselves misplaced at best stories of the world because figure out what really is happening is too hard and probably impossible.
Memory storage grew 100M times in our lives, something that sounds impossible
A great question to ask āshow me what you do with your moneyā to know what people really do
We pretend the world is predictable
The average American home has more bathrooms than occupants
Less ego, more wealth
š£Words of Wisdomš£
There are two ways to be. One is at war with reality and the other is at peace. ā Byron Katie
What I Talk About When I Talk About Running - Haruki Murakami and Philip Gabriel
To keep on going, you have to keep up the rhythm. This is the important thing for long-term projects. Once you set the pace, the rest will follow. The problem is getting the flywheel to spin at a set speedāand to get to that point takes as much concentration and effort as you can manage.
Tweets From Podcast Notes šļø@podcastnotes on Twitter
How to be a better parent: -Eat healthy in front of your kids -Read in front of your kids -Exercise in front of your kids
Strange Rites - Tara Isabella Burton
According to Kuile and Thurstonās research, the ritual nature of SoulCycle attendanceāthe selection of a favored bike spot, say, or a preferred instructor and timeāallows it to become a significant, if not the most significant, source of order in participantsā lives.
Valley of Genius - Adam Fisher
In the Silicon Valley where Iām from, the stories were almost never about money. They were tales about resistance, heroism, and struggle, yarns about the creation of something out of nothingāand the derring-do required to pull such a feat off. In short, they were about dragon slaying.
Night Train to Lisbon - Pascal Mercier, Barbara Harshav (Translator)
When you have discovered disappointment as the guide to yourself, you will be eager to learn how much you are disappointed about yourself: about lack of courage and inadequate honesty, or about the horribly narrow borders drawn by your own feelings, acts, and sayings.
Difficult Conversations - Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton, Sheila Heen
The biggest factor that contributes to a vulnerable identity is āall-or-nothingā thinking: Iām either competent or incompetent, good or evil, worthy of love or not.
šThanks for readingš
What do you need to just lean into? What are you neglecting or avoiding?
Any thoughts or comments, please share!
Namaste,
Christian
Great one! Will check out the Q'Anon video during my lunch break.
looking good fam šš½ colourful letter this Christian!