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Sloww Sunday Newsletter 119 (Oct 2, 2022) — Intentional Inspiration, Monetizing Meaning, Awakened Action, & More
Hi friend!
Sloww Sunday shares creations from Sloww and curations of fascinating finds from around the web to 10,000+ students of life. If you enjoy this issue, please help grow Sloww by forwarding the email version of this newsletter to others.
🌎 Lighter Living
Slow & Simple Living Inspiration
When you are first getting started on this path, inspiration is important. I’ll never forget Joshua Becker of Becoming Minimalist saying that intentional living requires daily inspiration. Why? It’s not easy to follow a countercultural lifestyle when mainstream society is always trying to suck you back in.
Over the years, I’ve curated a collection of inspirational quotes to help guide you:
- Busy Quotes
- Slow Living Quotes
- Simple Living Quotes
- Contentment Quotes
- Minimalism Quotes
- Time Quotes
Explore more: How do I design a lighter life (Sloww Stage 1)?
🧭 Higher Purpose
Money is an Optional Byproduct of Meaning (not Mandatory)
If you haven’t heard yet, the 4-circle ikigai diagram is wrong:
Most importantly, money doesn’t need to be a mandatory part of the equation. I spent years studying ikigai and redesigned the diagram to better reflect the truth about ikigai:
Get the eBook: Ikigai 2.0: A Step-by-Step Guidebook to Finding Life Purpose & Making Money Meaningfully (+ Bonus Workbook)
Explore more: How do I find higher purpose (Sloww Stage 2)?
🧠 Mental Mastery
Always be Razoring Your Thinking
Razors are principles or rules of thumb that allow one to eliminate unlikely explanations for a phenomenon or avoid unnecessary actions.
“A razor ‘shaves off’ unnecessary assumptions.” — Gabriel Weinberg & Lauren McCann (Super Thinking)
Here are a few of the top razors:
- Occam’s Razor: When presented with competing theories/explanations about the same prediction, the simpler one (with fewer parameters/assumptions) is to be preferred.
- Hanlon’s Razor: Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
- Adler’s Razor: If something cannot be settled by experiment or observation, then it is not worth debating.
PS: This concept is included in Mini Mind: 365 daily emails of bite-size brain food
Explore more: How do I master the mind (Sloww Stage 3)?
☯️ Timeless Wisdom
Being + Doing = Awakened Doing
This week, I revisited the idea of awakened doing from Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth (Book Summary). In a nutshell:
- Outer Purpose: What you do (unique to you).
- Inner Purpose: Awakening and staying awake (shared with everyone).
- Awakened Doing (Outer Purpose + Inner Purpose): Alignment of purposes so that a deeper meaning flows into what you do—consciousness is brought into the world of form and transforms the world. When the basis for your actions is inner alignment with the present moment, your actions become empowered by the intelligence of life itself.
- Why it Matters: Doing is never enough if you neglect being. If you are in the grip of the ego, you believe that by doing more and more you will eventually accumulate enough “doings” to make yourself feel complete at some point in the future. You won’t. You will only lose yourself in doing. No matter how active we are or how much effort we make, our state of consciousness creates our world—if there is no change on that inner level, no amount of doing will make any difference. Unless being flows into doing, you lose yourself in whatever you do.
- Redefining Success: When doing becomes infused with the timeless quality of being, that is success. You are present when what you are doing is not primarily a means to an end (e.g. money, prestige, winning) but fulfilling in itself—when there is joy and aliveness in what you do.
“The only actions that do not cause opposing reactions are those that are aimed at the good of all. They are inclusive, not exclusive. They join; they don’t separate. They are not for ‘my’ country but for all of humanity, not for ‘my’ religion but the emergence of consciousness in all human beings, not for ‘my’ species but for all sentient beings and all of nature … Awakened doing is the outer aspect of the next stage in the evolution of consciousness on our planet.” — Eckhart Tolle
Pair with: 🔒Eckhart Tolle Synthesis: How to Live a Life of Presence & Purpose with “The Power of Now” + “A New Earth”
Explore more: How do I embody wisdom (Sloww Stage 4)?
🤯 Mind Expanding
Ted Chiang Books
Thanks to Ryan Vaughn for the reminder to check out Ted Chiang’s science fiction writing. His books have some amazing reviews, and I added both of these to my reading list:
- Exhalation: Stories | 4.5 rating & 7000 reviews (Amazon)
- Stories of Your Life and Others | 4.6 rating & 6000 reviews (Amazon)
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Go with the Sloww,
Kyle Kowalski
Synthesizer & Solopreneur
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