(Volume 1, Issue 28)
Quote of the week
“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” -- Carl Jung
Three recent articles
1. The English language can be limiting. For example, Tim Lomas, provides 12 Words for Experiences We Can't Name in English. Learning languages and etymology can add richness to understanding and expression of what is happening in reality.
2. What should investors do given geo-political uncertainties, global monetary policy, and unknown-unknowns? Several market strategists give their take: Bill Miller, Joe Zidle, Warren Buffett (1999), Warren Buffett (2001)
3. Taking a prompt from tennis legend Andre Agassi's book Open, David Perrell's essay, The Price of Discipline, raises important questions about purpose, motivation, personal agency, and coping with pressure. Perrell highlights a passage from Agassi's book tennis as a metaphor for life and choices:
It's no accident, I think, that tennis uses the language of life. Advantage, service, fault, break, love, the basic elements of tennis are those of everyday existence, because every match is a life in miniature. Even the structure of tennis, the way the pieces fit inside one another like Russian nesting dolls, mimics the structure of our days. Points become games become sets become tournaments, and it's all so tightly connected that any point can become the turning point. It reminds me of the way seconds become minutes become hours, and any hour can be our finest. Or darkest. It's our choice. Even if it’s not your ideal life, you can always choose it. No matter what your life is, choosing it changes everything.
Topic of the week: Comfort zones
Reminiscent of three stories in Steve Jobs's famous 2005 Stanford Commencement Address, Yubing Zhang tells three stories in her Stanford TEDx talk about how "Life begins at the edge of your comfort zone."
Fear is a powerful emotion. It originates from the amygdala's evolutionary survival response to stimulus perceived as dangerous. Fear -- in most personal, professional or competitive situations -- is more a perception than a reality. Fear of failure is perhaps the most common example of fear that pushes one back to safe comfort zones and missing out of exceptional opportunities.
Zhang, uses three personal stories to explain that:
Things are not as scary as they might look
Fear of failure holds back exceptional experiences and personal connections
Embracing uncertainty might lead to fulfillment and unknown possibilities