Your Favorite Things...
🔥Welcome to volume 0008!🔥
I’m Christian Champ. This is the ☯️Middleway Newsletter ☯️. It is a place where I write, explore and share.
🤸What Was Your Favorite Thing Today?🏄
One of the games I play with my son is asking the question: What was your favorite thing today? Its a simple question that says a lot, not only what you enjoy, but what is showing up for you to enjoy.
We added and what else to the question to capture all the favorite moments we experienced, sometimes going five things deep.
What is your favorite thing each day? Does your favorite things align with how you are spending your day?
Then there is the next level question of what do you wish your favorite things were each day? Or what would the best version of you say was your favorite things each day? How do you fill up your cup with more of your favorite things?
Its an easy exercise to do and you can record it on your phone. Its a simple thing that can unlock some magic and some gratitude in your life.
📓Articles to Read📓
Proposes love corresponds with happiness
Cultivating Love includes Care and Attention
How can we cultivate more love?
Love is losing yourself in the process of caring about and showing undivided attention to someone or something, through ups and downs. It’s as simple and as hard as that.
On an average day, I walked about eight hours, produced my two output streams, ate, bathed, laundered my sweaty gear, packed, unpacked, and repacked. Checked my equipment, bandaged feet, iced knees, and attempted to get a minimum of eight hours of sleep. About a week into the walk, I told an old woman about my schedule and she asked me, “Is this an ascetic practice?” I laughed in the moment, but then for weeks as I walked, I turned her question over and over in my mind. The grueling pace. The boredom. The pain. And then doing it over again the next day. It certainly starts to sound like an ascetic practice. Webster’s 1913 Dictionary—which happens to be my default dictionary on my laptop (yes, I know that's weird)—defines an ascetic as “one who devoted himself to a solitary and contemplative life, characterized by devotion, extreme self-denial, and self-mortification; a hermit; a recluse; hence, one who practices extreme rigor and self-denial in religious things.”
There is a connection between stamina and success
Creating energy might be the key for where you are trying to go
40 Favorite Interview Questions - (Hat tip Shanu for sending this over)
Interviews seem to provide questionable value, like a first date when everyone is acting as their “best self” that doesn’t really exist, but some of these questions would lead to an interesting conversation if nothing else
What is your super power and what job would you want if you could have any job in the world (if they say the job they are interviewing for they are either shooting too low or lying), are my two favorite questions.
TLDR: They are mainly going to smaller cheaper metros
🎙️ Listen / Watch 📺
The Future of Markets, Democracy and Geopolitics with Samo Burja 🔥🔥🔥
Impact Theory w/ Jason Silva - Transform Your Mind 🔥🔥🔥🔥
Both And w/ Evan Driscoll - Changing Systems 🔥🔥🔥
Econtalk with David Deppner on Leadership, Confidence and Humility 🔥🔥🔥🔥
💣Quote Bombs and Tweets💣
"Life's like a movie, write your own ending. Keep believing. Keep pretending."
~ Kermit the Frog
How to Find Your Purpose and Do What You Love - Maria Popova
This is your life. Do what you love, and do it often. If you don’t like something, change it. If you don’t like your job, quit. If you don’t have enough time, stop watching TV. If you are looking for the love of your life, stop; they will be waiting for you when you start doing things you love.
When you see another person suffer, you can try to tell yourself that it’s their issue, not yours – but neurons deep in your brain can’t tell the difference.
The Absorbent Mind by Maria Montessori
The purpose of life is to obey the hidden command which ensures harmony among all and creates an ever better world.
One exercise I find useful is to hold on to different levels of tension in your body, from complete relaxation to spikes of frozen alertness. By consciously holding on to your bodily reactions to environmental tempo changes, for a little longer than they would normally last, you can train yourself to be more aware of them.
What Technology Wants - Kevin Kelly
I acknowledge that my relationship with technology is full of contradictions. And I suspect they are your contradictions, too. Our lives today are strung with a profound and constant tension between the virtues of more technology and the personal necessity of less: Should I get my kid this gadget? Do I have time to master this labor-saving device? And more deeply: What is this technology taking over my life, anyway? What is this global force that elicits both our love and repulsion? How should we approach it? Can we resist it, or is each and every new technology inevitable? Does the relentless avalanche of new things deserve my support or my skepticism—and will my choice even matter?
Flow - Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
I shall argue that the primary reason it is so difficult to achieve happiness centers on the fact that, contrary to the myths mankind has developed to reassure itself, the universe was not created to answer our needs. Frustration is deeply woven into the fabric of life. And whenever some of our needs are temporarily met, we immediately start wishing for more. This chronic dissatisfaction is the second obstacle that stands in the way of contentment.
What was your favorite thing today? What do you want your favorite thing to be tomorrow?
Here is to hoping that you get to do more and more of the favorite things you want to be doing!
👍👍👍👍
Thanks for reading.
Any thoughts or comments, please reach out.
Namaste,
Christian
