Mar 16, 2024 | #049
Hello, friends! This week a deeper dive on my experience with the speaking bootcamp I told you about last week. Many of you reached out to ask for more information which I took as a signal that it’s probably worth writing a bit more about. That’s the first essay linked bow.
On a personal note, after about a year on this journey of writing publicly, I have a clearer idea of where this all might be headed. I’m still not entirely sure but sitting down to read and write stories fills me with pure bliss and excitement. My goal is to keep doing this for as long as possible.
Speak Before You Think
I described the feeling as shifting perspective from “behind my eyes” to being “in front of my eyes”. When I wear a mask, I’m behind my eyes peering out into the world. Participant and observer. While the participant engages, the observer notices, critiques, judges, and thinks. When I am in front of my eyes there is just being. There is no conscious thought, though thinking clearly happens. It’s just that the whole becomes symbiotic. I’m not aware of thoughts in that state. I can just be. And that state is our true nature.
Bite-Sized Wisdom
“Can you remember who you were, before the world told you who you should be?”
— Charles Bukowski
“I am my own muse. I am the subject I know best. The subject I want to know better.”
— Frida Kahlo
“When a person can’t find a deep sense of meaning, they distract themselves with pleasure.”
— Victor Frankl
Nudges
1.
“In a world dominated by artificial intelligence, the last remaining skill is to remain fully, deeply human.”
2.
“The greatest minds of history wrote down their all their thoughts, and yet you still don’t read books.”
3.
“Most people view time as an enemy when it is our greatest ally.”
(Click to share one, two, or three on X).
Gems
On Getting Sorkinized
“And as is the nature of working for a master, expectations are high. “You have to memorize mountains of dialogue,” Daniels said. “And then you have to spit it out at a hundred miles an hour.” That means actors can’t do what actors typically do: memorize their lines in the makeup chair. “I’ve seen day-players come in on Newsroom, and they’re trying to learn three pages of Sorkin in the makeup chair, and the flop sweat hits them. I’ve never seen it anywhere else.”
Daniels would come to call it “getting Sorkinized.” He was the first to fall to a knee in that first season of filming The Newsroom but not the last. “We all, at some point, took a knee.” “
On Curioristy’s Double Edged Sword
“Research has shown that people with higher levels of curiosity tend to have greater activity in brain regions associated with reward processing. This heightened sensitivity to potential rewards may explain why highly curious people are more likely to engage in exploratory behavior and seek out new experiences.But this same reward-seeking mechanism can also contribute to difficulty focusing on a single idea or project. When presented with multiple new ideas or projects, the curious brain may experience a surge of dopamine in response to each potential reward. This can create a sense of excitement and a desire to explore all the possibilities, making it challenging to commit to just one path.In essence, the curiosity conflict arises from the brain’s struggle to shift from exploration to exploitation: the dopaminergic reward system that fuels curiosity can make it difficult to transition from the excitement of exploration to the more focused work of exploitation. How can you make that shift easier?”
On Boredom
Today, all people’s troubles come from not having to know how to sit still in one room.
It’s not that we don’t know how to be bored or in silence. It’s that we don’t need to know. Today, a few minutes pass by without our brains receiving external stimulation and we go crazy, so we click out of our boredom. Noise and chaos don’t make us go mad — boredom does. And silence.
Thanks for reading,
— Tom
P.S. Spring feels incredible. Go outside.
