⚡️ Enlightening Bolts

The most loved links of 2024:

🎬 Quit Your Job: This article advocates for the value of stepping away from structured, predictable work to embrace risk, pursue personal visions, and engage in exploratory, meaningful activities that could lead to significant, unconventional achievements. Read it here.

💗 Experiencing MDMA Without Substances: Practitioners of the Jhanas claim they can induce extremely blissful mental states that rival life’s peak experiences, available at any time with enough concentration. Read more here.

👁 A Dozen Ways To Live Real Good: Twelve practices to produce positive shifts in the way you feel about your life. Read them here.

💌 Want More? Down The Rabbit Hole readers also enjoy these awesome (and completely free!) newsletters. Explore

🎇 Image of The Week

The ice caves in Vatnajökull National Park, Iceland, are a mesmerizing natural wonder, offering a glimpse into the heart of Europe’s largest glacier. These caves form when meltwater carves intricate tunnels through the ice, which refreeze in winter, creating surreal chambers of vibrant blue hues. The striking colors result from centuries-old compressed ice that filters light in a way that feels otherworldly. Constantly shifting with the seasons, each cave is unique, making every visit an entirely new experience. Accessible only during winter, these fragile and ephemeral formations are a testament to the beauty and impermanence of nature. Exploring them is like stepping into a crystal palace, where light dances across frozen walls and ceilings, creating a dreamlike ambiance that captivates all who venture inside.

🔎 The Myth of Perfect Clarity

The desire to have perfect clarity before taking action is one of the biggest inhibitors to personal progress.

Many feel as though they need the vivid details mapped out as a first step, not realizing that the details emerge as a vision is refined through real-world action.

Abstract visions and aims eventually need to collide with reality so that your map can become a closer representation to the territory.

Sometimes people spend far too much time obsessing over the map when they need to get out in the wilderness and see where it takes them.

Then you can actually recognize the flaws and the insufficiencies in the map. You might realize that certain ground was not accounted for. That the topography is different than you expected.

That you might need additional tools like a compass to keep yourself oriented. You might realize you need to learn how to read the stars to keep moving in the proper direction.

Rather than trying to engineer perfect clarity, the better approach is to use the slivers of clarity you have as jumping-off points into the fog.

You'll eventually need to navigate through the cloudiness of uncertainty.

Eventually, you'll come upon a clearing in the woods. From this space, you'll be able to see a greater perspective. You will have arrived at a deeper clarity that is only possible through navigation, not pontification.

Armed with this heightened awareness, you'll proceed forward eventually merging back into the fog. And so it repeats.

There is an oscillatory nature to clarity and cloudiness.

As the pendulum swings between these two poles, a pixelated image (the original vision) is transformed into a high definition multi-dimensional rendering that draws on encounters with reality paired with predictions informed by battle-tested theory.

These details are gifts only earned through experience.

Experience that offers a wisdom that "lives in the bones" that goes far beyond the flickerings of the mind.

All this to say, don't feel like you need to have it all figured out to justify taking the first step towards a vision.

The perfect plan does not exist. The idea that one does is veiled procrastination.

So start. Get out into the wilderness and see what you discover.

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• 1-Minute Power Moves: Go from distracted to focused in a minute.

• Sol: Boost your emotional well-being

• Movie Brief: A weekly deep dive into the world's best films.

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🤔 The Paradox of Our time

Sit with these words from Bob Moorhead:

"The paradox of our time in history is that we have taller buildings but shorter tempers, wider Freeways, but narrower viewpoints. We spend more, but have less, we buy more, but enjoy less. We have bigger houses and smaller families, more conveniences, but less time. We have more degrees but less sense, more knowledge, but less judgment, more experts, yet more problems, more medicine, but less wellness.

We drink too much, smoke too much, spend too recklessly, laugh too little, drive too fast, get too angry, stay up too late, get up too tired, read too little, watch TV too much, and pray too seldom. We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values. We talk too much, love too seldom, and hate too often.

We've learned how to make a living, but not a life. We've added years to life not life to years. We've been all the way to the moon and back, but have trouble crossing the street to meet a new neighbor. We conquered outer space but not inner space. We've done larger things, but not better things.

We've cleaned up the air, but polluted the soul. We've conquered the atom, but not our prejudice. We write more, but learn less. We plan more, but accomplish less. We ve learned to rush, but not to wait. We build more computers to hold more information, to produce more copies than ever, but we communicate less and less.

These are the times of fast foods and slow digestion, big men and small character, steep profits and shallow relationships.

These are the days of two incomes but more divorce, fancier houses, but broken homes. These are days of quick trips, disposable diapers, throwaway morality, one night stands, overweight bodies, and pills that do everything from cheer, to quiet, to kill. It is a time when there is much in the showroom window and nothing in the stockroom. A time when technology can bring this letter to you, and a time when you can choose either to share this insight, or to just hit delete...

Remember, to spend some time with your loved ones, because they are not going to be around forever. Remember, say a kind word to someone who looks up to you in awe, because that little person soon will grow up and leave your side.

Remember, to give a warm hug to the one next to you, because that is the only treasure you can give with your heart and it doesn't cost a cent.

Remember, to say, "I love you" to your partner and your loved ones, but most of all mean it. A kiss and an embrace will mend hurt when it comes from deep inside of you.

Remember to hold hands and cherish the moment for someday that person might not be there again. Give time to love, give time to speak!

And give time to share the precious thoughts in your mind."

🤓 Learn This Word

Levensgenieter: A dutch word referring to someone who loves life deeply; is devoted

⏳ From The Archives

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

End-of-the-Year Reflection

How to do a New Year Review and Why it Could Be the Best Thing You Do All Year

The post-industrial myth of ceaseless, machinated productivity tells us there is no time to slow down and reflect. But this is not only a harmful belief, it is misguided, based on a false economy of time.

We are not at our most productive and effective when hammering away every hour of the year. Rather, it is when we lift our heads up to remind ourselves of where we are going and why that we may find fresh motivation and correct where we have gone off course. There is in fact no better way you could spend your time than conducting a year reflection.

Read on to find out how to conduct your own review, and how doing my own review has already created profound changes in my life.

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