The Pursuit of Balance Digest | Vol. 01 | Issue 01
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Table of Contents
Leaders Don't Say ‘That's Not My Job’ | Find ways to lead in unexpected arenas.
Intention Is Everything | Is this the component of happiness no one talks about?
How To Focus by Thich Nhat Hanh | Commentary and key takeaways from the book.
The Need To Recalibrate | Ask yourself these questions.
From the Editor
I’m back after an extended break from writing this newsletter and blog. I had to step away because other priorities in my life began to pile up. For instance, filing my taxes prompted me to realize that there were all kinds of dumb things I was doing in terms of managing my family’s finances. There were several pieces of low-hanging fruit that I had to grab—simple ones like opening a savings account to start a little emergency fund and complicated ones like writing retirement and home-ownership plans.
But as the days and weeks rolled by without writing on this blog, I began to realize that I had needed a break from it anyway. I needed time to think, read, and recharge.
Hence the brand new design and format of this week’s post. I realized that writing is only part of what I love about blogging. I love to create things. I like selecting interesting photography to pair with my words. I like graphic design.
So I’ve decided to experiment with a magazine format. This should allow me to express myself, but also I hope that it will help provide variety for you. Each issue will feature editorial content from myself, much like the newsletter always has, but it will also feature book summaries and reviews, cultural and historical takes, tips and tricks, and whatever else I feel like creating.
This new format will take a lot more time than writing a simple text-based article, but it’s what I want. If you’re not engaged in something fully with all your heart, it will begin to stagnate, and that’s the last thing I want for this blog. Although I will continue to strive to publish content weekly, I no longer want to be bound by a calendar. Instead, I want to focus on quality, even if that means less frequent posts.
I’ve done some soul-searching over the past few weeks. I had even considered stopping the blog altogether. But I worked backwards from my core values. I want to be a compassionate and disciplined person. Writing this blog (and doing the research for it) helps me grow in the direction of my values and it’s always my greatest hope that it will help you in some way as well.
Brechen, Editor
Leaders Don't Say ‘That's Not My Job’
Leadership comes in many forms. We usually think of people who get paid to lead others when we think of leadership. We think of famous CEOs or military commanders. But even those of us who don't have a team have many situations in which we are called upon to lead. Parents must be leaders. Spouses must at times take the lead in a marriage. Even something as mundane as abstaining from gossip is a form of leadership.
One of my favorite concepts that I came across somewhere in the Stoic literature is that every word we speak and every move we make are like tiny votes for the kind of world we want to live in. So we have a responsibility to cast our vote as we walk about our daily lives.
"Circumstances don't make the man, they only reveal him to himself."
– Epictetus
When we fail to see ourselves as leaders, there’s a diffusion of responsibility that occurs. Classic social experiments have shown that when someone trips and falls on a crowded street, many people simply walk by without offering to help because they assume someone else will do it. This same diffusion of responsibility occurs in many areas of life—at work, in parenting, in relationships, in elder care, in altruism.
Be the first person to stop and help. Be the person who speaks up. Take control of a situation that you see derailing. Because leaders don’t say, ‘That’s not my job.’
Intention Is Everything
Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo shares in her book The Heroic Heart the following exercise to help ground yourself in the present moment: Ask yourself, “What am I thinking right now?” When I first read that, I thought it would be useful. For some people, it may be an effective technique for dropping into the present moment, but for me it fell short. I tried it, but it never really stuck.
Lately, however, I’ve adapted this concept to something that is beginning to help me return to the present moment, and that’s to constantly restate my intention regarding a given situation.
When I start off for home on my bicycle, I remind myself, “My intention is to ride safely and pay attention to the traffic around me.” When I put my son to bed, I remind myself, “My intention is to be calm and peaceful, no matter how long it takes him to fall asleep.” When I sit down to dinner with my family, I tell myself, “My intention is to listen to my wife.” When I sit down to a 50-minute block of focus work, I restate, “My intention in this hour is to accomplish X.’
Recalling my situational intention does two things. One, it reminds me how I want to conduct myself. Two, it brings me back to a state of mindfulness, which is a prerequisite for acting in harmony with the intention.
Unlike Palmo’s technique, this one is sticking as a habit. I think it’s because I’m beginning to realize that intention is everything. I’ve heard a lot of definitions of happiness. I recently watched a short video on the concept of antifragility, first developed by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. It explained that those who seek happiness—those who expect it and chase it, tend to be less happy.
For brevity’s sake, I won’t elaborate much more on the concept of antifragility, which is certainly a valuable idea, but I think it and many other definitions of happiness I’ve heard would do well to add one more level: Happiness is acting in accordance with your intentions. To take the inverse, failing to act in harmony with your intentions causes distress.
I’m beginning to see this as fundamental, but again, I also find that this protocol of constantly restating your intention in response to the ever changing context around you is not only a practical way to uphold your values, but it’s also an effective way of restoring present moment awareness.
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Key Takeaways from the book How To Focus by Thich Nhat Hanh
“To breathe with full awareness is a miraculous way to untie the knots of regret and anxiety and come back to life in thepresent moment.”
– Thich Nhat Hanh
Part of Hanh’s mindfulness essentials series, How To Focus is a concise guide to mindful awareness that exudes compassion on the part of the author for his readers. It takes a simplistic approach to focus, which is refreshing in an age where we tend to look to peer-reviewed studies, hacks, and tips to help us enhance our focus.
We usually think of focus as serving to accomplish more. In How To Focus, Hanh nudges us to recognize that focus is about opening our eyes to the natural world around us, slowing down, and connecting with ourselves.
I’d like to share what were the most salient points to me. I’ll present them in the form of direct quotes from the book followed by my own commentary on each of them.
“As we breathe with full awareness, our breath becomes slower and more regular, peace and joy become more stable with every moment.”
This tells us not to overthink stillness. We don’t necessarily need a vacation. We don’t necessarily need a quiet walk in the forest. All we need to do is breathe.
“If we cannot stop, we cannot have insight. We have to learn the art of stopping—stopping our thinking, our habit energies, our forgetfulness, and the strong emotions that rule us.”
The word that jumped out to me when I first read that passage is ‘forgetfulness’. When we forget our intention to be compassionate and disciplined, we suffer.
“We turn on the TV and then we turn it off. We pick up a book and then we put it down. How can we stop this state of agitation? We can stop by practicing mindful breathing, mindful walking, and deep looking in order to understand.”
Entertainment can be relaxing at times, but when it becomes our sole means of unwinding, it gradually shifts towards a form of avoidance. Consuming too much media leaves no room for truly connecting with ourselves, thus creating a low level of anxiety and agitation. This low level of anxiety is almost more dangerous than high levels of anxiety because we often fail to recognize its cause and we just carry on living with it.
“Meditation is not to avoid problems or run away from difficulties. We do not practice to escape. We practice to have enough strength to confront problems effectively. To do this, we must be calm, fresh, and solid.”
This relates to the above point. When we take time to deal with our low levels of anxiety and agitation by practicing meditation, the result is a more refreshed, calm, and solid mind. Therefore, meditation is a more effective form of rest than consuming media.
“When you climb the stairs, climb each step in mindfulness, concentration, and joy. In that way you are doing exactly what the Buddha was doing: generating and transferring your best to the world. Peace, happiness, and brotherhood and sisterhood become a reality if we know how to live our daily life in mindfulness and concentration.”
This passage exemplifies the magic of Hanh’s teachings. Who doesn’t want to transfer their best to the world? Who doesn’t want to realize peace, happiness, brotherhood and sisterhood in their lives?
Well, it’s as simple and accessible as practicing mindfulness. It’s simple and effective, but not easy. Living with mindfulness and concentration requires effort and dedication.
“If you want to succeed in the practice of concentration, make it interesting. If you are interested enough in the object of focus, concentration will be easy.”
This is so insightful. If you really bring a sense of wonder or awe when observing your breath it becomes so much more interesting and therefore easier to focus on. And when you stop and think about it, the breath is a pretty special miracle.
“Not only children need to be protected from violent and unwholesome programs, films, books, magazines, games, and social media. We, too, can be destroyed by these things. If we are mindful, we will know whether we are ingesting toxins or nourishing ourselves with sense impressions that encourage understanding, compassion, and the determination to help others.”
This is something I’ve been slowly realizing in my own life—that much of my media consumption, even seemingly wholesome content like informative podcasts, is actually just eroding my capacity for mindfulness and in some cases causing malnourishment of my being. I encourage you, too, to audit the media you consume regularly. If it’s not nourishing your being, then stop consuming it.
The Need To Recalibrate
During Microsoft’s rise, Bill Gates would (now famously) take retreats to a secluded location where he would do nothing but think for days. No distractions. No connection to the outside world.
I recently took time away to think. I nearly filled a notebook with stream-of-consciousness writing about life, money, and values. The sheer volume of thoughts and the fact that I needed so much time (about six weeks) tells me that my time to think was long overdue.
This time to reflect has led me to make some important adjustments to the way I spend my time and energy. It led me to realize that this blog had become a second job. It had project trackers, goals, and deadlines. I have enough of those at my full time job, so it’s time to restore my writing to what it was always meant to be, which is a creative outlet—a creative way to share the things I’m learning about the things I want to be good at.
This was just one of many dials I had to recalibrate during this recent period of reflection. I had no idea what I was doing and I have no way of knowing for sure if I’m on the right path now, but I am confident that I’m on a path that aligns more closely with my values than the one I was walking before.
It was a helpful exercise (albeit at times a confusing one) to question everything in my life. I used a system akin to First Principles thinking, challenging assumptions and attempting to establish ground truths. I worked backwards from my values, but most importantly I asked myself what I really want in life.
“Few people think more than two or three times a year; I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week.”
– George Bernard Shaw
We can all benefit from periodic recalibration like this because we change. We grow, and the circumstances in which we find ourselves evolve, too. We tend to bury our heads in the sand. We plough forward, our vision obfuscated by our routines and schedules. Time passes and before we know it we’re headed in a direction that is not harmonious with who we want to be.
It’s not enough to journal everyday. Usually, that’s just a reflection of the aforementioned routines and schedules. It’s necessary to pause all activity, if even for just a day, and start asking yourself question after question until you’ve come to your own ground truths. Then, you can work backwards from them to establish how you want to spend your time and energy. Take time to think, and have the humility and the courage to change your course.
