š¤Our Words Matterš¤Ā
š„Welcome to volume #00061!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.
If you enjoy the newsletter please share it with your friends.
š¤Our Words MatterĀ š¤Ā
After I finished my speech, I cowered back to my seat. My legs felt like string cheese. I felt flushed and exhausted.Ā
The frustration hit before I stopped talking. What I practiced and envisioned and what I delivered failed to intersect.Ā
When the Toastmaster meeting ended, one of the top speakers in the group walked me through what he liked about my speech.Ā
His words inspired me to be better.Ā
The key point he left me with was he loved my energy. This energy made him want to keep listening.Ā Ā
This encouragement helped me keep stepping up and delivering speeches. Every time I spoke, it included that ENERGY. Eventually, I added the ability to tell a story and structure my speech to pair up with my energy.Ā
It came together because someone gave me positive feedback and believed in me.Ā
Now, I find myself offering compliments and constructive ideas whenever I can. If we can't help others and pay it forward, what is the point?Ā
It's the little things that end up changing the world. Those moments when we doubt ourselves and question our abilities, and we get that positive comment to push us along. The subtle compliments turbocharge us to keep showing up and putting in the work.Ā
We want to light sparks with our words. We want to be there to inspire people. You never know when someone needs a hand, and we change their trajectory.
Our words build up people and our communities. What we say to others and ourselves matters. Let's use our words to propel and help people excel.Ā
šFavorite Stories of the Week š
Reading Wanting: The Power of Memetics in Everyday Life by Luke Burgis, I ran into the story of Ferrari and Lamborghini.
šArticles to ReadšĀ
Heat by Colin Wright
Heat matters and as summer is here. Colin breaks down what happens when the temperatures rise and how it affects us.
The theory is that ourĀ oxytocinĀ levels are thrown off by high temperatures and the regulatory processes that trigger inside our bodies to keep our brains and other organs functioning correctly as we try to expel all that extra heat (which is very energy intensive).
This drop in oxytocin makes us less likely to empathize with strangers, less likely to feel inclined toĀ helpĀ others, more likely to fall back on in-group, tribalĀ affiliationsĀ for protection (rather than latently perceiving more people, whomever they might be, to be āone of usā), and more likely to be on a hair-trigger forĀ violenceĀ in support of our in-groups and ourselves.
In short: we seem to become a lot less prosocial when hot, because our bodies are too busy keeping us alive to incentivize us to bond with othersāwhich is also a survival mechanism, but not as pressing as the immediate concern of not dying from the heat.
The Back to Office Maximum by Anne Helen Peterson
Anne investigates how companies approach the changing back to the office landscape. She quotes folks from different companies and what decisions are being made.
Companies will either decide to shift their policies to become competitive, or theyāll slowly atrophy, because a company that foists full-time back to work on its employees with no reason has much bigger problems with company culture, control, and bad management. A shitty back to the office plan belies a shitty office culture, full stop.
For the companies that are trying to make flexibility work, thereās going to be periods of discomfort, and frustration, and confusion. The best corporate posture Iāve seen involves the straightforward acknowledgment of such:Ā this is going to be complicated, and iterative, and take time to figure out, but weāre committed to making it work.Ā These companies are anticipating, if not already figuring out how to proactively solve, a second layer of questions. After they figure out the hours, and the days, and the location, what happens to hierarchies, to pay, to communication strategies, to barriers instead of boundaries, to hiring and promotion and retention stats? How, in other words, do we allow people to workĀ differently, while also leveling the playing field?
Seth Godin with Five Useful Questions for a Project
My favorite two beyond the last one that asks if it is still worth it after answering the first four questions.
Whatās the hard part?Ā Which part of your work, if it suddenly got much better, would have the biggest impact on the outcome you seek?
What is the scary part?Ā Which outcomes or interactions are you trying to avoid thinking about or interacting with? Why?
šļøĀ Ideas from Podcasts/VideosĀ šŗĀ
Brian Eno joins Rick Rubin on the Broken Record Podcast
My tweet storm on it is here
Technology - Eno likes the space between the human and the mechanical to see what gets created.
āI mean, people are noticing it more and more particularly with vocals. Suddenly there are these ways of singing that you've never heard before. And what's very interesting of course, is that a new generation of people are learning to sing like that. I don't know if you've ever seen any of those wonderful things on Youtube where young people have clearly heard a Rihanna record or something like that and thought that's great, I'm going to sing like that and they don't actually realize that it's done with an auto-tune. Yes, that it was not possible to sing like that until somebody did it with a machine and then somebody else thought, well it's possible.ā
Using Randomness as a Tool
āThe interesting thing about randomness is that sometimes you're taken somewhere that you didn't expect to go and sometimes that turns out to be a really interesting new place. So random. This for me is really just a tool, just a way of taking me somewhere different.ā
What makes Art interesting
āI think what makes any work of art interesting is, or gripping or effective is the feeling that somebody was living, somebody was living it, somebody was alert and alive and passionate in some way. And the way you get into that state is by being in unfamiliar territory. I think you're most alive when you're not quite sure what, what is going on when you're you're slightly flying by the seat of your pants and you have to negotiate it somehow. That's why we love improvisation so much because people are deliberately putting themselves at risk in a way, soaring out into the unknown and somehow dealing with it. And that process of hearing someone dealing with it is the difference between life and death in a piece of work I think.ā
Using the environment and new environments for inspiration
Ways of trying to find myself in a new place because I get excited when I'm in a new place. I like being in unfamiliar surroundings. I always used to say that artists are either cowboys or farmers really and they're ways of being an artist are fine. You know, the farmer wants to find a piece of territory and fully explore it and exploit it.ā
Unknowing as a tool and most tools and values donāt last a lifetime ā>
And of course a lot of people are crippled by not knowing the answer and so they just choose an inappropriate answer just for the want of an answer. Yes. So you just have to accept that you don't know the answers and you will make mistakes and you will need to change your values and your tools and some of them might last you a lifetime. But you're lucky if that happens. I haven't got any of that lasted me a lifetime.
š£Words of Wisdomš£
When Things Fall Apart - Pema Chodron
āOnly to the extent that we expose ourselves over and over to annihilation can that which is indestructible be found in us.ā
TheVirtues of War - Steven Pressfield
Yet not one tells me of the Lionās Pass over the Amanus. Mark this, my young friend. Sear it into your soul with brands of iron: Never, never take anything for granted. Never believe you know, so that you cease to probe and query.
Gabriel GarcĆa MĆ”rquez
āHuman beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but...life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves.
Messy - Tim Harford
It is one thing to sharpen and straighten all the pencils on oneās own desk, metaphorically or otherwise. To order someone else to sharpen and straighten the pencils on their own desk displays a curious value system in which superficial neatness is worth the price of deep resentment.
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Robert M. Pirsig
What I would like to do is use the time that is coming now to talk about some things that have come to mind. Weāre in such a hurry most of the time we never get much chance to talk. The result is a kind of endless day-to-day shallowness, a monotony that leaves a person wondering years later where all the time went and sorry that itās all gone. Now that we do have some time, and know it, I would like to use the time to talk in some depth about things that seem important.
Tweets from Mike@NonGaap
āIām really competitiveā
Itās always Michael Jordan ākiller closerā competitive
Itās never Dennis Rodman āweāre about to get weird and uncomfortable while I outwork you doing the dirty workā competitive
The Invisibility Cloak - Ge Fei and Canaan Morse
āDo you mind if I contribute my thoughts to this one? If you could just stop nitpicking and dissecting every little thing, if you could learn to keep one eye closed and one eye open, and quit worrying about everything and everybody, you might discover that life is actually pretty fucking beautiful. Am I right?ā
šThanks for readingš
Where can you offer up some words of encouragement to maybe make a difference?
Any thoughts or comments, please share!
Namaste,
Christian
(Two guys looked into the camera for every photo, everyone else was very suspect, myself included)
Loving the rabbit holes you share every week mate. Always put aside a little weekend time to dive in.