👁 Top Insights #124 - Deep Declutterring, Elasticizing Expectations, & Living with Disability

How changing your environment transforms your mind, trading expectations for acceptance, & what I've learned living with disability

Sep 05, 2024

“Top Insights” is a monthly newsletter that shares mind-expanding podcasts, transformational frameworks, and insightful links that help you go beyond conventional development.

Happy September!

May this month bring you a harvest of wealth, wisdom, and wonder.

Deep Decluttering 🧹

This past month, my family & I moved into our beautiful new home in the heart of Bay Ridge, Brooklyn.

It was bittersweet saying goodbye to our old space, where we spent nearly a decade creating memories.

During our time there, my wife & I got engaged, married, had two kids, started businesses, and experienced a wild rollercoaster ride full of ups, downs, twists, and turns.

Right now, I’m recognizing how transitional moments like this can be leveraged for transformation.

To move into a new place is to be given a fresh start.

It’s a perfect time to declutter, reorganize, and create new habits.

In my rapper days, I was absorbed in fashion which resulted in a closet overflowing with more clothes than I could ever wear.

Over the years, I’ve become more minimalistic but I still found myself holding onto items I should have long let go of.

This move gave me permission to release what I no longer needed.

It’s felt like a detox for my psyche; after all, our minds are not separate from the physical spaces we inhabit.

To clean out your closet, in a way, is to cleanse your mind.

One of the four branches of 4E cognitive science tells us that cognition is embedded.

Simply put, our thinking and decision-making are influenced by the physical spaces we occupy, including the tools and resources available to us.

This is an underrated point because, when we feel stuck creatively or emotionally, we rarely consider changing our environment.

Moving into a new home is a more radical shift, but even rearranging furniture or doing some deep cleaning can have profound effects on our inner state.

The next time you feel stuck, change something in your physical environment and watch your mind open to more creativity, wonder, and joy.

Elasticizing Expectations 🔁

Before leaving on a 6-day meditation retreat I wrote a piece on growing apart with friends that I intended to include in this newsletter.

During the retreat, I found myself thinking about this piece several times, sensing that it didn’t feel quite right.

There was a rigidity to it, almost a bitterness.

Now that I have returned, I feel I have more space to write something that feels more aligned.

Friendship has always been important to me.

I have long pondered: What is a friend? What does it mean to be a good friend?

Why do some friendships last for decades, or even a lifetime, while others fade after a just a few years?

These are big questions that I plan to address in a future post.

For now, I want to speak about expectations.

There’s a popular spiritual principle that says, “Accept everything and expect nothing.”

I’ve tried to apply this to my friendships, but I’ve never quite managed to.

Maybe someday I’ll get there, but as far as I can see we need some expectations for our relationships to function.

Having no expectations for our friends might reduce them to strangers, but holding them to excessively rigid expectations turns them into shadows of an impossible ideal.

Like many spiritual adages, I can be extreme.

Years of inner work have illuminated a tendency to hold high standards for myself and others.

From a conventional perspective, this is a positive trait, but, like most qualities, it’s a double-edged sword.

The same high standards that inspire us to do better can trap us in a hamster wheel of self-improvement and alienate us from others.

Towards the end of my meditation today, I spontaneously recalled a dream from the night before involving a friend I haven’t seen in over a year.

Over time, I’ve become annoyed at this friend for his lack of initiative for staying in touch and other flaky behavior.

I didn’t know how to adjust my expectations or to accept his flaws, so I closed my heart to him.

As my meditation ended, I felt my heart crack open.

Despite his shenanigans, I realized I missed my friend.

Texting him, I felt a wave of compassion flow through me.

I expect he will respond, but it’s okay if he doesn’t.

I still have expectations, but they feel more elastic.

I haven’t accepted everything, but I’ve found a greater capacity for acceptance.

Living with Disability ♿️

This past month marks three years of living with a disability.

I’ve mentioned my condition in previous newsletters and on a few podcast epsiodes but to reiterate - about three years ago, I contracted co-vid, which triggered a freak reaction in my body, damaging my spine and making it difficult to walk.

Despite trying various treatments and undergoing intensive physical therapy for years my condition has remained largely unchanged.

Thus far, this has been the most difficult experience I’ve had to endure in my life.

Many times I felt submerged in a sea of bottomless grief.

I’ve cried, I’ve protested, I’ve hoped, I’ve feared, I’ve fought — and ultimately, I’ve surrendered to what is.

This disability has taught me that the only thing more staggering than the suffering humans face is our capacity to transform through it.

One of my favorite philosophers Forrest Landry writes:

“One has an experience of pain when one perceives a decrease in one's potentialities. Events and choices which decrease apparent freedoms, are constrictive, and increase feelings of limitation will tend to result in experiences and feelings of pain.”

To be human is to be limited, and to experience limitation is to feel pain.

But within every constraint, there is not just what is prohibited but also what is afforded.

These days, I’m spending less time chasing after things in the world, which gives me more time to read, write and meditate.

Aside from hanging with family and friends these are the activities I want to be asbrobed in.

My whole life, I’ve been a physical active person, so not being able to lift heavy weights, practice martial arts, go for long walks, or simply move my body in the all the incredible ways I once could is something I will continue to miss.

At the same time, I have found appreciation and gratitude for what I once took for granted.

I’m grateful to still be able to drive, do enough physical exercises to take care of my body and walk, even if it's not very well or very far.

Good food, good conversation and simple moments with loved ones fill my cup.

It’s easy to see how this disability changed me physically, but it’s difficult to convey what has shifted inside.

I’ll put it this way: grief & love are two sides of the same coin, living with this disability has made me more intimate with them both.

Elevating Consciousness Podcast 🎙

In case you missed them here are the podcasts I released this past month.

Global Brain Singularity & The Future of Philosophy with Cadell Last - Cadell Last is an anthropologist, philosopher, and founder of Philosophy Portal – an online educational platform opening space for the next generation of philosophical thought. After developing a strong grounding in evolutionary anthropology and biology, he began a deep study of philosophies of phenomenology and psychoanalysis, which opened him to fresh perspectives and helped him better navigate some of life’s most challenging aspects. Today his work explores biocultural evolution, mind-matter relation, and speculative futures. He is the author of “Global Brain Singularity”, and “Systems and Subjects”, co-author of “Sex, Masculinity, God”, as well as lead editor of community anthologies “Enter the Alien” and “Abyssal Arrows.” In this episode, we speak about the limits of science and the Importance of philosophy, connecting dead philosophers with living philosophers, dialectical thinking, what Jordan Peterson & Richard Dawkins have in common, Global Brain Singularity and so much more.
Accelerating Expertise with Cedric Chin - Cedric Chin is a business operator, programmer, and writer. He is also the founder of Commoncog – a publication that explores the models of business expertise and how to accelerate the acquisition of that expertise. His approach to writing and learning is finding interesting ideas, trying them out in his life, and then sharing the results. Over the years he has compiled an extensive knowledge base on how to think and learn better in business and beyond. In this episode we speak about the limits of mental models, Ray Dalio & believability, three approaches to expertise, why you should read biographies, overcoming information overload and so much more.
Why Reclaiming Value is Essential for Humanity’s Survival with Zak Stein - Zak is a writer, educator, and futurist whose work explores issues around existential risk and the meta-crisis. He studied religion and philosophy at Hampshire College and then later educational neuroscience, human development, and educational philosophy at Harvard. He is a co-founder of several organizations including Lectica, Civilization Research Institute, and the Center for World Philosophy and Religion. He is also the author of several books including “Education in a Time Between Worlds” and a co-author of “First Principles and First Values: Forty-Two Propositions on Cosmoerotic Humanism, the Meta-crisis, and the World to Come.” In this episode we speak about the problems of post-modernity, why value & consciousness are fundamental aspects of reality, Cosmo-Erotic humanism, evolving perennialism, the problem of evil, the most powerful and dangerous religion in the world today and so much more.

Insightful Links 🔗

What is religion? - I enjoyed this conversation between Jonathan Pageau and Peter Boghossian exploring religion. The skepticism and criticality that Boghossian brought helped clarify Pageau’s argumentation although Boghossian’s adherence to liner reason (or as he said lack of imagination) ultimately bogged down the conversation. Nonetheless, I appreciate the earnest attempt Bogohssian made to understand Pageau’s view.
Psychoanalysing the Philosophy of David Goggins - Look everyone knows Goggins is cringe but this lecture from theory underground made me appreciate his view and what it potentially affords. The main lecture starts at the 10 minute mark and runs for about 40 minutes.
DEI must DIE - Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI) is a framework and set of principles often used in organizational contexts, such as workplaces, schools, and community organizations, to create environments that are fair, welcoming, and supportive for all individuals, regardless of their background or identity. While the intention to create a fairer society is a noble one it can lead to disastrous outcomes. Imagine choosing a surgeon based on a DEI checklist rather than on their capacity to perform the surgery effectively. Here is a perspective on why DEI does more harm than good.

Quintessential Quote ✍️

"Out of clutter, find simplicity. From discord, find harmony. In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity." — Albert Einstein

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