⚡️ Enlightening Bolts

🕹️ The Remarkable Life of Ibelin: When the parents of a beloved World of Warcraft player announced his death, his guild members reached out to them - and revealed his hidden life. You need not have any interest in video games to find this extremely moving film to be a worthy watch. See it here.

🧠 The Ecstasy of an Open Brain: On critical periods where the brain can absorb information like a sponge and how to re-open them. Listen here.

🥣 It’s All Just Soup: A reminder of the interconnectedness of all life. Watch it here.

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🎇 Image of The Week

The image above depicts the "Blue River Dragon." It is actually the Odeleite River reservoir in southern Portugal, located in the municipality of Castro Marim in the Algarve region. The body of water gained its nickname due to its distinctive dragon-like shape when viewed from above.

 👑 Dethrone The Inner Critic

The talking points of the inner critic are often informed by real-life experience. This makes it hard to shake the truthiness of this internal naysayer that is constantly darting emotional fastballs of judgment in your direction.

Sure it might spit some truth but this truth is incomplete. The inner critic's perspective is almost always constrained and limited.

Some people will approach dealing with the inner critic by addressing its criticism through action. "I'm so lazy and procrastinate all the time. I'm going to ramp up my productivity and discipline."

Then the critic won't have anything to criticize, right? But alas, for the few who actually succeed at their change efforts, the critic does not vanish. No, instead it fixates on some new object of judgment and will lambast you until you take its marching orders.

You do not free yourself from the suffering of the critic by listening to its instructions. You free yourself by listening to its tone.

A biting tone means this part of yourself needs to be nourished into a space of safety and tranquility. If a child is having a temper tantrum do you obey his commands? No.

This requires a bigger motherly/fatherly perspective that can hold the whole interaction: The part being attacked and the part doing the attacking.

The critic is tracing lines around things that really happened but it selectively highlights things to form a particular narrative. It does not offer a whole and complete perspective.

It does not act as a critic to make you better. It's a critic because it's hurt and scared.

So don't place it on the throne in your mind where it's capable of making decrees about your worth and capability.

The throne should be reserved for an aspect of yourself that is unifying and even challenging at times but never threatening to withhold love unless you change in some specific way.

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⏱️ Living In Expectation

Consider these words from Arthur Schopenhauer:

“We are always living in expectation of better things, at the same time we often repent and long to have the past back again. We look upon the present as something to be put up with while it lasts, and serving only as the way towards our goal. Hence most people, if they glance back when they come to the end of life, will find that all along they have been living ad interim: they will be surprised to find that the very thing they disregarded and let slip by unenjoyed, was just the life in the expectation of which they passed all their time. Of how many a man may it not be said that hope made a fool of him until he danced into the arms of death!”

🤓 Learn This Word

Meliorism: the belief that the world can improve and that humans can help make it better

⏳ From The Archives

A hand-picked link from a previous edition of 🌀🐇

The Secret to Artistic Excellence: This 2-Minute Video Will Radically Invigorate Your Creative Self

I know something about you.

I know that regardless of who you are or what you do for a living; at some point in your life, you dreamed of creating something great.

Maybe you fantasized about moving into the woods and writing the next great novel. Maybe you imagined yourself giving an acceptance speech at the Oscars. Maybe you envisioned yourself playing music in front of a stadium filled with thousands of people.

Maybe you still do.

There’s something incredible about creating a piece of art — whether visual, musical, culinary, or literary — and having it connect to other human beings around the world.

We’ve all heard a song that made us want to dance or sing. We’ve all seen movies that moved us to tears or made us laugh. We’ve eaten a meal that we never wanted to end. We’ve been mesmerized by amazing works of art. We love seeing/hearing/tasting/reading other people’s creations.

And, as the video below explains, this love of art — what Ira Glass calls “good taste” — is the very thing that can crush our creative dreams.

As children, we naturally embrace the “creative self.” We’ll take a crayon and draw on whatever’s available — a piece of paper, the wall, the neighbor’s cat. And when we attend grade school, we begin experimenting with art. We don’t worry too much about the result. We just create. It’s fun.

Then, at some point during the transition to adulthood, our creative lights begin to dim. We start comparing our work to the work of others, and suddenly it’s not as fun anymore. It takes more effort. We come to an important realization:

We’re talentless hacks who suck at making art.

But hold on! Pump the brakes! That’s not entirely true. Odds are we’re experiencing the classic “paralysis by analysis,” which I’ve never heard explained better than Ira Glass (host and producer of This American Life) does in the inspiring video below.

Watch and listen as Mr. Glass explains the unique and occasionally hostile relationship between our taste and our talent:

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