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Sloww Sunday Newsletter 171 (Jan 21, 2024) — Simple Simplicity, Practical Practices, My Mind, & More
Sloww Sunday shares my latest and greatest creations and curations to 10,000+ students of life. If you enjoy this issue, please help grow Sloww by forwarding this newsletter to other lifelong learners.
📚 Lifelong Learning & Deeper Development
What do you want in the Synthesizer course?
I made more progress on the Synthesizer course this week and am aiming for a February launch! I want to make sure I’m comprehensively (yet concisely) covering everything, so what do you want to see and learn in the course? Send me an email and let me know.
“People take four courses in economics, go to business school, have all these I.Q. points, and write all these essays, but they can’t synthesize worth a damn.” — Charlie Munger
Explore more: 50+ posts on Lifelong Learning & Deeper Development (Sloww Stage Support)
🌎 Lighter Living
Mini Guide to Voluntary Simplicity
Did you know you can intentionally choose less in life—less busyness, less stuff—which, paradoxically, leads to more life? This didn’t occur to me until I discovered the concept of “voluntary simplicity” soon after my existential crisis in late 2015. I must have been in a deep rabbit hole because I somehow stumbled upon the concept from a college student’s thesis titled Listening to the Quiet Revolution: The Implications of Voluntary Simplicity for a Sustainable Society (Thesis Summary). I’ll always be grateful for this because it introduced me to others who have pursued voluntary simplicity like Richard Gregg (Essay Summary) and Duane Elgin (Book Summary). According to Elgin:
Defining “voluntary”:
- “To live more voluntarily is to live more deliberately, intentionally, and purposefully—in short, it is to live more consciously … To act in a voluntary manner is to be aware of ourselves as we move through life. This requires that we pay attention not only to the actions we take in the outer world, but to ourselves acting—our inner world.”
Defining “simplicity”:
- “To live more simply is to live in harmony with the vast ecology of all life. It is to live with balance—taking no more than we require and, at the same time, giving fully of ourselves … To live more simply is to unburden ourselves—to live more lightly, cleanly, aerodynamically. It is to establish a more direct, unpretentious, and unencumbered relationship with all aspects of our lives: the things that we consume, the work that we do, our relationships with others, our connections with nature and the cosmos, and more. Simplicity of living means meeting life face-to-face. It means confronting life clearly, without unnecessary distractions.”
So, “voluntary simplicity” means:
- “When we combine these two concepts for integrating the inner and outer aspects of our lives, we can then say: Voluntary simplicity is a way of living that is outwardly simple and inwardly rich. It is a way of being in which our most authentic and alive self is brought into direct and conscious contact with living.”
Explore more: 100+ posts on Intentional Living (Sloww Stage 1)
🧭 Higher Purpose
What have you done to know yourself psychologically?
I’m curious what has helped you the most in terms of knowing yourself on the psychological level of your mind. Please respond to this email and let me know if you’ve done something you recommend that’s not listed below. Here’s an outline of what I’ve done to date:
- MBTI Personality Type: INTJ (2017-2020)
- Enneagram: Some combo of Type 3 & 5 (2019)
- CliftonStrengths / StrengthsFinder: Input, Intellection, Achiever, Learner, Maximizer (2020) / Achiever, Learner, Maximizer, Responsibility, Input (2012)
- DiSC Classical Pattern: Objective Thinker (2015)
- Imperative Personal Purpose Profile: Inquirer—”to enable society to overcome societal barriers by finding answers and increasing their knowledge” (2018)
- Ego Development Theory: “Center of gravity” around stage 5 (2021)
- 🔒 Self-Assessments: self-actualization (2021), ego development theory (2021), and how my journey maps to EDT (2022)
Explore more: 50+ posts on Life Purpose (Sloww Stage 2)
🧠 Mental Mastery
Infographic Cheatsheets for Mental Models, Cognitive Biases, & Philosophical Razors
Here you go!
25 Mental Models to Master the Art of Thinking (+ Infographic Cheatsheet)
25 Cognitive Biases to Master for Better Thinking (+ Infographic Cheatsheet)
25 Philosophical Razors to shave off Bad Thinking (+ Infographic Cheatsheet)
Explore more: 75+ posts on Mental Mastery (Sloww Stage 3)
☯️ Spiritual Seeing
Spiritual Practices from Pema Chödrön
Here are two practical practices I recently learned from spiritual teacher Pema Chödrön:
1. Compassionate Abiding Practice (precursor of Tonglen): First, contact the feeling, and put your hand gently there. Breathe it in deeply with the sense of breathing it into the heart, breathing it into the whole body, breathing it in with a feeling of opening to it with kindness and warmth; not with fear or hatred. Take a deep in-breath and then send out that kindness, that compassion, that love, that heartfelt appreciation. Feel the space, relaxation, relief.
2. Tonglen Practice (‘Tonglen’ is a Tibetan word that means ‘taking in, and sending out’): If you’ve been doing the compassionate abiding practice, then you just take it another step. If you do it for 10-20 minutes with your own feeling of groundlessness/fear, then a good way to end is to let it be your link with what everybody else is going through. You breathe in for that feeling, and you’re opening your heart, and then you say ‘millions of people right now are feeling exactly like this.’ Since you’re feeling it anyway, it’s your doorway, it’s your connection, your stepping stone for understanding what other people feel too. And you breathe out, and you send out that sense of relief, relaxing, and slowing down. Breathe it out for everyone. Your pain is the connection with other people’s pain, and when you breathe out, your sense of relaxation is your connection with wanting other people to feel that sense of relaxation. Whatever you’re feeling is sort of shared with everybody else, so there’s a sense of empathetic compassionate love and caring for each other. Breathe in with a sense of ‘may we all be free of suffering,’ and when you breathe out ‘may we all have love, and caring, and the feeling of interconnectedness in our life.’
Explore more: 50+ posts on Spiritual Seeing (Sloww Stage 4)
💬 Final Thought
Wise Words from Anthony de Mello
- “The human mind is such an extraordinary thing. It has invented the computer. It has split the atom. It sends ships into space. It has not solved the problem of human suffering … How come we haven’t found the answer to that? We’ve made all kinds of technological advances. Has that raised the quality of our living by one inch? My opinion is no, not one inch. Oh, we have more comfort, more speed, pleasures, entertainment—greater technological advances. Any improvement on that loneliness and emptiness and heartache? Any improvement on that greed and hatred and conflict? Less fighting? Less cruelty? If you want my opinion, I think it’s worse. And, the tragedy is, the secret has been found.” — Anthony de Mello
What is the secret?
- “Ask to be happy no matter what you get. There is the secret.” — Anthony de Mello
- “The secret is to renounce nothing, cling to nothing, enjoy everything and allow it to pass, to flow.” — Anthony de Mello
- Student: “What is the secret of your serenity?” Master: “Wholehearted cooperation with the inevitable.” — Anthony de Mello
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All the best,
Kyle Kowalski
Founder, Sloww
