Sign up to get the Sloww Sunday newsletter via email for free:👇
Sloww Sunday Newsletter 002 (January 26, 2020) — This is Water, Follow Your Bliss, Multipotentiality, & More
Read about the newsletter launch or browse previous newsletters.
Happy Sunday!
Sloww Sunday is a new email newsletter sharing inspiration to awaken the art of living in all of us.
In a modern world focused on the trendy, here’s your weekly dose of the timeless.
1 // New on Sloww
The Spiritual Hero’s Journey of a Lifetime: “Siddhartha” by Hermann Hesse (Book Summary) — Siddhartha is to spiritual growth what The Alchemist is to life purpose. I thoroughly enjoyed this story and identified 9 stages of Siddhartha’s journey. Check out the infographics in the post for a summary of each stage: Mind (stages 1-3), Body (stages 4-6), and Spirit (stages 7-9).
Almost all the prose works I have written are biographies of the soul…monologues in which a single individual is observed in relation to the world and to his own ego.
— Hermann Hesse
In Case You Missed It:
- 15 Legendary Themes & 75 Quotes from “The Alchemist” by Paulo Coelho (Book Summary)
- On Enlightenment: 3 Meanings of the “Chop Wood, Carry Water” Zen Quote
- I Searched “Life Purpose” and Read 100+ Articles (Literally). Here are the Highlights for a Meaningful Life.
2 // Speech I’m Listening To
This is Water — David Foster Wallace (YouTube | 23 mins) — Some things should be revisited yearly. This speech is one of them.
The capital-T Truth is about life before death. It is about the real value of a real education, which has almost nothing to do with knowledge, and everything to do with simple awareness; awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, all the time, that we have to keep reminding ourselves over and over: ‘This is water.’ ‘This is water.’
— David Foster Wallace
Pair with these 3 profound life lessons from the speech on the default setting, choice/thinking, and awareness/consciousness.
3 // Video I’m Watching
Follow Your Bliss and Doors Will Open — Joseph Campbell (YouTube | 5 mins) — I’m currently reading The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell and am diving deep into the hero’s journey. This short segment is from Campbell’s 1988 series The Power of Myth with Bill Moyers, and it’s still as relevant as ever.
If you do follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you’re living somehow.
— Joseph Campbell
Pair with the truth about ikigai and my attempt to redesign the ikigai diagram to better match reality.
4 // Article I’m Reading
The Story of Us (Wait But Why | Book Length) — I’ve been thoroughly enjoying Tim Urban’s 12-part post series The Story of Us since it launched. It took Tim the last few years to fully research and write this series. While his primary driver was to better understand politics, he actually proposes many lenses that can be applied to humanity more broadly: human nature & behavior, identity & ego, and the nature of beliefs.
Tim is currently on chapter 10 of 12. I highly recommend reading it in full, but I’ll also be publishing a summary once the series wraps up. You can jump to the table of contents here or the series introduction here.
To accomplish our goal in this series—to understand modern societies well enough that we can figure out how to make things better—we’ll need to go deeper.
— Tim Urban
5 // Quote & Question I’m Contemplating
For fast-acting relief, try slowing down.
— Lily Tomlin
This quote is a paradox. Life is full of paradoxes—they are a key theme in Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu, Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, Let Your Life Speak by Parker J. Palmer, and Stillness is the Key by Ryan Holiday.
If you’re struggling with something in your life right now, have you considered the paradox?
Bonus: Something I’m Learning
Multipotentiality:
- The ability and preference of a person (particularly one of strong intellectual or artistic curiosity) to excel in multiple fields/areas of diverse interests.
- Multipotentialite is also known as: Generalist, Potential Polymath, Multipassionate, etc.
- More on Wikipedia.
Are there areas in your life where you may be a multipotentialite?
Worth sharing? If you enjoyed Sloww Sunday, please share with a friend or two (or post socially). It’s easy for others to subscribe for free here.
Have feedback? It’s always appreciated! Please let me know by email or socially.
If you come across something interesting on the same wavelength as Sloww content, please let me know. I may be able to include it in an upcoming newsletter.
Have an awesome week!
Go with the Sloww,
Kyle Kowalski
Founder & Writer, Sloww
