Sloww Sunday 043: Flourishing Well-Being, What Awakening Means, Slow Living

Sloww Sunday Newsletter 043 (Jan 3, 2021) — Flourishing Well-Being, What Awakening Means, & More

Happy New Year!

Sloww Sunday is a free newsletter highlighting the latest from Sloww along with some words of wisdom I come across each week.

New News

🎉 The start of a new year is a great time to begin living intentionally. I just watched the new film from The Minimalists called “Less is Now.” A few of their minimalism challenges are on my list of 25+ intentional living challenges and experiments that will help you try slow living, simple living, decluttering, and more.

📚 In preparation for the online life purpose course I’m building, I’m starting the year by reading a few more relevant books on my reading list. The first is learning more about the “hero’s journey” in The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell.

😃 If you haven’t signed up for Sloww Sunday yet, subscribe today and you’ll get The Hierarchy of Happiness free eBook in your Welcome email.

Sloww Stuff

🆕 Introducing “Ikigai 2.0” — A New eBook for Finding Life Purpose & Making Money Meaningfully

100+ people are already reading since it launched last week! If you are searching for meaning in your life, this is for you. The eBook includes a 70-page guidebook outlining the exact model I used to find my purpose—along with a 20-page workbook to help you find yours. My goal is to make this the only guide you will ever need.

PS: If you finish the book and find your own ikigai, please let me know what it is!

Fresh Wisdom

🌱 Flourishing: A New Understanding of Well-Being

Martin Seligman is a psychologist, author, and the founder of positive psychology. In this presentation, he agues that a good life isn’t just about the absence of misery and suffering. It’s about flourishing. Seligman’s theory is called PERMA and claims that well-being consists of five elements that free people choose in life:

Positive Emotion
Engagement
Relationship with Others
Meaning and Purpose
Achievement

“Relieving the states that make life miserable … has made building the states that make life worth living less of a priority. The time has finally arrived for a science that seeks to understand positive emotion, build strength and virtue, and provide guideposts for finding what Aristotle called the ‘good life.'” — Martin Seligman

Timeless Wisdom

☯️ Alan Watts Explains What Awakening Means

A short teaching from Alan Watts (1915 – 1973) that covers: order & chaos, Buddhism & science, and subject & object. Pair with my all-time favorite Alan Watts quotes.

When describing yin and yang, he points to each side of the symbol and says:

“If this one wakes up (yin) and this one wakes up (yang)—which is called ‘awakening’ in Buddhism—they realize they are one. In other words, they go together. They are inseparable from each other. And this realization is that experience which is called in Zen ‘satori’ or in Buddhism ‘bodhi’ or awakening.” — Alan Watts

💭 Contemplative Quote

“Slow living is a curious mix of being prepared and being prepared to let go. Caring more and caring less. Saying yes and saying no. Being present and walking away. Doing the important things and forgetting those that aren’t. Grounded and free. Heavy and light. Organized and flexible. Complex and simple.”

— Brooke McAlary

From Slow: Simple Living for a Frantic World (Book Summary)

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Have a slow week!

Kyle Kowalski
Founder, Sloww