2026-04-16 23:00:48
When you’re having a conversation with someone, we imagine it to look something like this.
But in reality, this is what’s happening:
And so on.
We equate conversation with the words that are spoken, but much of the dialogue is actually happening in your own mind. When you listen to someone in this way, you’re scanning for the most compelling thing to respond to, knowing that your chance to speak will be coming up soon.
And once you’ve identified that interesting point, you begin to formulate your response to it, effectively tuning out whatever the person says after that.
This is what I call Impulsive Listening, where your desire to listen is driven by the impulse to reply. It’s when the volume of your own thoughts is louder than the words that may be spoken by the other, which puts you at the center of the conversation the whole way through.
Impulsive Listening is what causes anxiety throughout any given conversation. When you’re so focused on what you’re going to say next, you feel like the spotlight is always on you, regardless of who’s talking. You’re often processing the person’s current point while formulating your reply to their previous point, and this deluge of thought nullifies your ability to be present.
So the key is to tame this impulse to reply. But how do we go about doing that? After all, isn’t the very nature of conversation to respond to what another person has said? Isn’t the game of ping-pong the most apt way to describe the flow of a good conversation?
There is truth to this analogy, but one thing that’s worth asking is the following:
What makes a great conversation?
If you sit with this question long enough, you’ll find that it’s not necessarily the back-and-forth nature of a conversation that makes it great. It’s not the sustained rally of point-after-point that makes it compelling.
Rather, what makes a conversation feel worthwhile is if it expanded your mind. It’s when you learned something interesting, felt something deep, or laughed heartily throughout. In other words, a great conversation materializes when you give yourself the space to receive what the other has said, and your reaction happens then and there. You’re not mentally bookmarking a statement to address for later, and you’re not trying to craft an intelligible remark to sound smart.
We may understand this in theory, but it’s difficult to put into practice because we find silence discomforting. One of the immediate triggers of social anxiety is the “awkward silence,” and our desire to avoid it is perhaps the leading cause of Impulsive Listening. We desperately want to have a response ready so that we don’t have to deal with the elevated heart rate that can accompany the absence of sound.
But another thing worth asking is the following:
What makes silence uncomfortable?
Well, the first thing you’ll realize when you sit with this question is that it depends on context. Silence on a meditation retreat isn’t just a requisite, it’s desired. The same goes for when you take a walk in nature. By giving yourself the space to still your mind, you allow clarity to seep in, one light ray at a time.
Expectations shift, however, when you’re in a social setting.
When you seek clarity within the scope of a conversation, you don’t expect it to be found in the absence of words. Rather, you look for them within the arrangement of the words themselves. It’s through the stream of dialogue that you expect clarity to flow its way through you.
And because we place so much value on what is spoken, we judge the value of our contribution by the words we speak. The question of self-worth is at the center of all this, even if it’s subtle. If you have nothing to say in a conversation, you feel tense because a narrative of disapproval starts filling your mind.
Anxiety is most noticeable in the person that can’t allow silence to persist. Even a second of silence can be unbearable to some, and they’ll need to say something to alleviate the discomfort that may be arising in their mind and body. For this person, real listening is an impossibility.
In order to truly listen, we need to reframe our interpretation of silence. Instead of viewing it as a marker of a flat conversation, we need to see it as a signal of a point that is being internalized. As a way of communicating that you were truly listening to their point, which is why you now need a moment to process and formulate a response.
But of course, it’s nuanced.
When you’re meeting someone for the first time (or when you don’t know the other person that well), silence will likely have the opposite effect. Oftentimes, the other person may interpret your silence as an indicator that you weren’t listening to what they were saying. That’s because when you don’t know someone well, you’re reliant upon dialogue to make up for that gap in shared experience. And when the dialogue isn’t flowing back-and-forth, it feels like there’s not much in common between you after all.
That’s why anxiety tends to be higher when you’re with people you don’t know. The words you speak hold more weight, and the absence of them makes you feel like you’re dropping the ball on this interaction. Given this dynamic, it’s hard to truly listen to what the other is saying, and to override the impulse to latch onto a statement and formulate a response right away.
In these situations, it’s important to ease into the silence. You want to be fully present and listen to everything they’re saying, but to also let them know that you’re processing things shortly afterward. That way your silence isn’t misinterpreted as indifference.
One way I do this is to simply let the other person know that I need a moment to think through what was said. I could either be explicit about it:
Or I could be brief to signal that I need a moment:
It’s remarkable how something so simple changes the texture of silence. By prefacing that you need a moment, you’re indicating that (1) you were really listening, and that (2) this silent period shouldn’t be awkward. This makes the silence feel welcome, and opens up the breathing room required to process the dialogue in a mindful manner.
All right. So what about people you do know well? How can you ensure that you’re listening to them with full presence of mind?
What I find most interesting about close relationships is how we tend to take them for granted. That the more comfortable you are with someone, the more permission you give yourself to put your brain on auto-pilot and tune out at any given moment.
Think of the quintessential image of a family having dinner at a restaurant, where everyone is on their phones:
Or how it becomes okay to zone out during a conversation you’re having with your partner:
And so on.
Things that we’d never do when we meet someone for the first time become commonplace for the people we see all the time. I get it though. In one sense, that’s why close relationships are so precious. You can let your guard down and occupy a rare space where mannerisms and norms don’t govern it.
But on the other hand, it’s easy to get complacent and miss every opportunity to get to know one another better. Just because you know someone well doesn’t mean that you’ve uncovered everything there is to know. Every human being possesses an incredibly nuanced and fascinating mind, and even if you’ve known one another for decades, there is always more terrain to cover.
So when it comes to the people you know well, the art of listening is to reinvigorate your interest in learning more about them. To not take the silence for granted, and to view it as an indicator for you to ask questions and to allow dialogue to take center stage once again.
For example, I’ve known my wife for close to a decade now. We’ve shared thousands of meals together, and I’m not going to sit here and tell you that each one was full of mind-blowing dialogue that uncovered some core element of who we are. There were plenty of unremarkable meals where we just watched TV together or sat in silence while we were thinking our own thoughts.
But there have also been many, many meals where we asked each other a bunch of questions, spoke about our greatest fears, and celebrated our small triumphs. With each of these conversations, we learned a bit more about one another, and understood that one life contains multitudes. Neither me nor my wife are the same person we were 10 years ago, and it’s only through consistent dialogue where we realize how much our worldviews have changed, and how we’re attempting to align ours together over time.
The art of listening isn’t just about taking in what the other person is saying. It’s also about reassuring the other person that you haven’t extinguished the flame of curiosity when it comes to your bond. That you’re not going to be complacent. That you’re not going to be okay with treating silence as a given, despite the privilege you have of being comfortable with it.
Listening is the silencing of the mind, but it’s also being aware of when it’s time to speak again. It’s about listening without the desire to respond, but giving space to process those words so you can respond in a thoughtful manner.
Ultimately, to listen is to be compassionate. And when conversation becomes a vehicle for kindness, you will notice just how powerful each one can be.
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For more stories and reflections of this nature:
You Are Not Your Anxiety: A Journey Into the Anxious Brain
2025-12-26 04:02:39
Let’s start by defining what intuition is.
Some say that it’s a gut feeling that validates a decision. Others think of it as an alarm that alerts you of potential mishaps. And in some circles, it might be described as a divine force that guides you toward truth.
Regardless of which framing you use, there is utility in each one. That’s because we all recognize that the world is unpredictable, yet we still have to navigate it with confidence. If you want to make the most of life, you have to lean into it instead of shrinking from it, and that is only made possible through a belief that you can handle the unknown.
Intuition is the inner wisdom that welcomes uncertainty. It understands that you can’t know everything, but what you know about yourself will make up for that gap. And by trusting your resolve, you’re able to frame the unknown in a way that serves you.
To illustrate this dynamic, let’s consider the three main factors that will have an outsized impact on your life:
1. Where you live,
2. What you work on, and
3. Who you’re with.
You can get many things wrong, but if you get the above three right, your well-being will be high. So for something this important, you might assume that rationality will be the beacon that guides you toward the answer. Perhaps you’ll do a ton of research, make a list of various factors, and make your decisions based on a careful weighing of your options.
What you’ll find, however, is that a pros and cons list can only take you so far. What looks good on paper may feel off in spirit, and the inverse is also true. For example, a job offer that checks all the boxes can still feel like it’s the wrong one. Or a date that doesn’t satisfy your initial criteria can later feel like the right partner. There is a limit as to how far your rationality can take you, and it’s not as far as you might think.
Intuition is what takes you from the limits of logic to the decision you ultimately make. No matter how rigorously you apply reason to reduce uncertainty, there will always be a great level of uncertainty you have to accept. Your intuition is what helps you make that jump, knowing that this specific texture of the unknown is a worthwhile challenge to navigate. You can’t predict what a big move or a career change will yield, but your intuition instills the confidence required to welcome whatever does.
One way to imagine intuition at work is in the form of an inner compass we all have:
Every inner compass starts at true north, which is the state of trusting ourselves. This is because we are all born with the gift of presence (as discussed in Chapter 2), which is when your inner state is in alignment with your external surroundings. There’s no worry or fear when you’re present because you’re content with what simply is. This is why children are fully attentive to whatever is in front of them, and why adults feel time dissolve when we’re in a state of flow. We are all capable of feeling this because this very state is the origin of our minds.
When your compass is at true north, you have conviction in who you are. You’re aware that uncertainty is inevitable, but it’s a source of empowerment rather than fear. The fact that you can’t predict what happens next is seen as a feature of life, and not a bug. After all, if everything was knowable, there would be no room for curiosity to emerge. Curiosity is being grateful that there’s more to uncover, which is what drives the conviction to explore.
Now, if our inner compasses stayed here, we would all be doing what is aligned with our sense of purpose. But as we all know, there are many forces that prevent us from doing just that.
What disturbs this alignment are the winds of conditioning. This is when the external voices promising security, safety, and status direct us to a path that is not our own, which ultimately leads to suffering. Conditioning takes many forms, but in the context of the inner compass, any force that pulls you away from true north falls under its reach.
Anytime you think you “should” do something, that’s conditioning. Anytime you compare yourself to another, that’s conditioning. Anything that causes fear or worry to arise is conditioning, as peace is disturbed only when you have an expectation that lies beyond the present moment.
The great thing about your inner compass, however, is that it does a great job alerting you of when these winds are pulling you away from true north. And the way it does that is through the avenue of your physiology.
This may sound a bit esoteric, so I’ll take a moment to explain.
Let’s say that you’re working at a job you find meaningful. You’re solving problems you care about with people you care for, and this creates an atmosphere of purpose. The only gripe is that the pay could be higher, but you recognize that it’s enough for your needs.
Now let’s say that a recruiter approaches you for another job, which will effectively double your pay. The tradeoff, however, is that you’ll have to take up more managerial responsibilities, which don’t align with your inherent interests. What you give up in agency will be made whole through money, and that is the state of the offer.
Upon learning about this opportunity, you’ll likely feel a tension arise somewhere in your body. Some common areas are the chest, stomach, or forehead, but it’s a familiar area where tensions of this kind arise. You may initially interpret it as anxiety or stress, but what’s really happening is that your inner compass is alerting you of a pull away from true north (in some cases, it feels like a literal pull on your body). It’s telling you that the winds of conditioning are strong, and that there’s a chance you may go against your intuition as a result.
If you were already doing meaningful work and making enough money, then your inner compass is asking you why you’d want the other opportunity. More money is great, but is it worth a misalignment in your interests? If you’re feeling challenged in all the right ways, why are you trading that away for a certainty you don’t care much for? At the center of all this is the allure for something external, which manifests in the form of expectations of what you “should” do.
It was once believed that mind and body were separate entities (an idea known as dualism), but both neuroscience and philosophy have converged to show that they are closely interlinked. The inner compass is one way of illustrating just how connected these two realms are, and in this case, how a conflict within the mind manifests as a pressure in the body. This reveals a fundamental truth about how the inner landscape works:
When you are conditioned, every action feels tense. But when you have conviction, every action feels fluid.
The Daoists have a concept called wu-wei, which roughly translates to “effortless action.” It recognizes that we have to act within this world, but that we can do so in a way that harmonizes with its natural order. Instead of controlling our way through existence, we can locate its seams and ride alongside them.
This is what having conviction feels like. When you trust your intuition, you recognize your innate capabilities and see all the ways in which they fit within the world. There is an alignment between who you are and what you offer, so you develop the confidence to lean into what makes you unique.
Conditioning, on the other hand, is filled with tension because you’re constantly trying to insert yourself into unwelcoming terrain. Instead of leaning into your innate curiosities, you shrink away from them and mold yourself according to the preferences of others. And in doing so, you open the floodgates of suffering because this terrain is where fear, envy, and competition reside.
Ultimately, every endeavor comes down to two options. You can either choose conviction, or choose conditioning. You can follow your true north, or be swayed by external winds. You can choose what you must do, or what you should do.
This is what the inner compass helps you calibrate throughout your days.
When you see life as a choice between conviction and conditioning, there is a clarity that accompanies that lens. You see how every pursuit has two clear endpoints depending on which path you choose.
To illustrate this, here’s how the inner compass is delineated in four meaningful domains:
We will go into some of these domains later in the book, but you can immediately see the difference between trusting your intuition and denying it. True north points to the heights of what we have to offer, while conditioning caters to the lowest of our impulses.
With that said, a common objection to the above is the following:
“Wait, but what if your intuition is faulty? If you trust something that is flawed, won’t that just lead to bad outcomes?”
It’s a good question, and one that we’ll go over in the next chapter. And in doing so, we’ll explore why the pursuit of self-understanding is the most worthwhile of them all.
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2025-12-11 09:24:35
Paradoxically, knowing yourself doesn’t happen in isolation.
While being alone with your mind is a feature of the process, it is just that: a feature. The process itself extends well beyond it, encompassing all the interactions you have with other people as well. This is because no being can exist without the other, as the social nature of our species ensures that to be the case.
Life is a single-player game, but meaning is derived on multi-player mode. You’re responsible for the actions you take, but the results of those actions will be shared amongst others. Everything you do contributes to the state of the world, irrespective of how large or small you think that impact may be.
A simple way to map this dynamic is in the form of this diagram:
There is you, the self, that is a part of the greater world you inhabit. And much of self-understanding is about knowing how to function within this world while retaining conviction in who you are. Attaining this balance is the hallmark of what it means to know yourself.
It is with this context that I’d now like to share the three principles of self-understanding. They are:
That’s it. Three simple words that house an abundance of detail.
Each principle touches upon a section of the “Self and the World” map shown earlier, as every component is necessary to comprehend. It is through the careful interplay of each moving part where you cultivate the stillness required to resist conditioning, which is the only way to dissolve suffering.
The rest of this chapter will provide a brief summary of each principle, while the rest of this book will explore them in greater depth. The details are what produce insight, but the overviews are what provoke curiosity. So with that aim in mind, let’s briefly review what each principle entails.
The foundation of your being has been built by other hands. Your genes, your parents, and your upbringing are the result of randomness, yet they are responsible for much of your worldview.
The first principle of reflection starts with the recognition of this fact, then attempts to take a bottom-up approach to the question of who you are. It’s an active exploration of the building blocks of your identity, an understanding of why they’re there, and the discernment of what to keep or replace. What results is the core of who you are, untouched by the winds of conditioning and free from the fog of fear.
To reflect is to study the self and to question what you find. And through this process, you’ll develop the conviction required to position yourself within the world.
Relationship is a mirror. The way you view others will reflect the way you view yourself.
If you treat people as assets that serve your goals, then you will define yourself by what you produce. If you categorize people by status, then you’ll use your place in society to determine your self-worth.
Conversely, if you treat people with compassion, then you will be kind to yourself regardless of circumstance. If you are present with whoever you encounter, then you’ll retain contentment even when you’re alone.
To relate is to study the world and how you interact with it. And through this process, you’ll discover an unfiltered perception of who you are.
Creating is not a privilege reserved for the artistic few. It’s a birthright that we all have access to, and exercising it dissolves the boundary between you and the other.
Take a brief moment to look at your surroundings. Almost everything you see, from this book you’re holding to the contents of your environment, is the result of creativity. Creating and sharing is in the lifeblood of our species, and it is through this dynamic where we construct our reality and coexist within it.
To create is to express what you’ve discovered about yourself and the world. And through this process, you’ll harvest meaning from the experiences that have deep roots in your mind.
Reflect. Relate. Create.
In the pages that follow, we’ll explore each principle in sequential order, largely because each one feeds off its precedent. Reflection is the origin point because it’s only through questioning yourself where you observe your unconditioned core. By observing this core, you then gain clarity into the kinds of relationships that will brighten both yours and others. And by knowing what brightens yourself and others, you then create the very things that contribute to that shared brilliance.
Through this cycle, you strengthen your sense of purpose and gain a better understanding of who you are. And given that the journey of self-understanding has no endpoint, each step forward is yet another opportunity for reflection, which brings us back to where it all begins.
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2025-11-12 04:36:16
“Consistency is the virtue of small minds.” — Alan Watts
When I first heard that quote in one of Watts’ talks, it gave me pause. I believe it was from a talk on Daoism, where he was describing the intricate balance that exists between any two poles. The general argument was that we live in a society that heralds consistency, yet the universe is essentially the antithesis of that. There is nothing constant about the domain of existence, but we delude ourselves into thinking that it’s attainable in the context of our own lives.
This does a good job highlighting my own tension with consistency, especially in the domain of one’s beliefs and habits. On one hand, consistency is a surrogate for stability, which signals trust. It’s the only way for us to predict what might happen tomorrow given someone’s past behaviors. And once a discernible pattern of behavior arises, we use that to determine whether or not a person is deemed reliable.
But on the other hand, consistency is an adherence to rigidity, and keeps people chained to an identity that they may no longer resonate with. We see this often in politics, for example, where a candidate’s track record is determined by how long they’ve held a certain view throughout their career. Even if their mind has changed about that view, they can’t communicate it openly because that would foreshadow the loss of their seat. It’s this kind of consistency that Watts is speaking of when he refers to the small minds who adopt it.
As a writer, there’s a common narrative that consistency is the virtue that should reign supreme over your work. Whether you publish daily, weekly, or monthly, there should be some predictable cadence you choose that signals a sense of reliability to your audience. That it’s through this chain of unbroken promises that trust is ultimately cultivated.
While I understand the rationale behind this, one thing I’ve realized is that as a reader, I don’t seem to pay much attention to a writer’s consistency. I don’t read someone’s work because they publish something every Friday. No, I read them because their work is great, regardless of the time of week in which it was published. I prefer depth of thought over adherence to cadence, and that holds true for any work of art.
But at the same time, consistency does have its virtues. Whenever I see an article from that creator in my inbox on Friday, it’s a way of them stating, “Hey, I showed up this week, just like I said I would.” Even if I don’t engage with that email at all, it’s a small indicator that they were present for the occasion. And oftentimes, that’s enough for me to believe that they’re serious about their craft.
In my case, I don’t have a set schedule for this blog, but I publish regularly enough so you can expect to hear from me when I have something to say. And by continuing to share my work with you in this way, I further develop that bond of trust. Simply put, I use consistency as a means to delve deeper, and the only way to cultivate depth is to first establish this familiarity with you.
This highlights an important thing: Consistency is beautiful when it’s used to build deeper connections, but becomes burdensome when you use it solely for personal gain. The reason why I don’t like the common advice of “publish every (insert cadence here)” is because it often comes from people that are giving advice on growing an audience. It uses consistency as a prop for your personal gain, which is to grow an audience to serve some personal goal – be it the desire for money or the pursuit of fame. And whenever it’s used in this way, you grow weary because self-interest is a tiresome endeavor. One can only serve their own goals for so long before it feels tedious and never-ending.
But if you’re showing up at a regular time because you truly care about the relationships you’re building, then consistency is indeed a virtue. That’s why we check in with our friends regularly, attend our children’s games, and show up to work on time. These all signal that we care about the people we’re interacting with, and that we aspire to build a reputation that exudes this commitment.
Consistency is a virtue of the compassionate mind, but a mere tool for the selfish one. Wisdom is in knowing when to embody consistency to cultivate depth, and when to accept serendipity to open up the mind. By regularly oscillating between the two, you realize that adherence to any one pole is a futile endeavor, and are made aware of the declaration that the Daoists made many millennia ago.
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2025-10-08 15:56:18
Youth is no longer a descriptor of my identity. I can either mourn or celebrate that. Choosing the latter is what will open me up to the beauty this decade can yield.
Age is interesting because it’s both objective and subjective. Objective in the sense that it represents the number of times my physical frame has rotated around the sun. It’s quantifiable and governed by the law of entropy, which means that my body will show signs of this number that’s attached to my name. Shoulder pain, a few gray hairs, and some health issues are a few of the things that personally fall under this domain.
But on the other hand, there is a subjective definition as well. There is a psychological frame you can place around your age, which has the effect of making you feel like you’re younger or older than the number of orbits you’ve taken on this planet. This is common amongst adages like “40 is the new 30” or the belief that “you have an old soul.” While some use subjective age as a coping mechanism, the truth is that many people don’t feel like their objective age. There is something about the number that feels off to them, creating a gap between who they are and what they’re expected to be.
As I turn 40, I’ve been wondering if this is the case. Does the number 40 feel foreign, or does it feel like it’s exactly where I’m supposed to be? While I have an intuition as to what the answer is, the purpose of this essay is to help me understand that answer better through the avenue of reflection.
The first thing to consider is that by the time you hit 40, you’ve seen a good deal of hardship. While you may not have seen the most acute degrees of hardship you’ll ever experience, you will certainly understand why people say that life is hard. This is obvious for those that are struggling to survive, but even if you’ve achieved everything you’ve ever wanted, the ensuing boredom will become your new source of hardship. Straining our way through obstacles is a feature of life, and not the bug we mistakenly interpret it to be.
The beautiful tradeoff of facing obstacles, however, is that you learn valuable lessons. And the more lessons you learn, the less daunting each subsequent obstacle will be.
In economics, there is something called the law of diminishing marginal utility. Simply put, it states that for any commodity, you will derive lower levels of utility (or pleasure) with each additional unit you consume. For example, if you’re hungry and you buy a burger, that first one will be amazing. But if you buy another burger, then that one will be less pleasurable than the first. And by the 5th burger, you’ll hate yourself and won’t buy that burger again for the next month (at least).
When it comes to overcoming obstacles, however, I feel that there’s an inverse of this: a law of increasing marginal utility. With each obstacle you overcome, the utility comes in the form of a lesson you can import into the next obstacle you face. And once you overcome that one, the utility gained has a compounding effect that takes all the prior lessons into account as well.
This has the interesting effect of allowing calmness to be more of a baseline state as you’re introduced to various obstacles over time:
So while the first obstacle you faced in a given domain may have provoked a lot of anxiety, by the 30th one, you’ll know how to face it with equanimity.
I say all this because by the time you turn 40, you’ll definitely have had some experience with the above graph. You may not be at the uppermost part of the curve because that tends to be reserved for the elderly (many of whom have the ability to calmly face the greatest obstacle, which is death), but you’ll know what it’s like to roam around the middle of the arc. You will have faced trying times, but you also will have felt what it’s like to overcome them. This introduces a level of maturity that gives you more confidence to handle whatever may come next, knowing that in the long-run, disorder is inescapable.
Now, it may sound rather disheartening to hear that one’s exposure to hardship is a feature of aging. But like most things in life, it comes with a beautiful balance. And in the case of turning 40, that balance comes from knowing what roots you want to deepen to cultivate a life of meaning and love.
In The Inner Compass, I wrote:
Let’s consider the three main factors that will have an outsized impact on your life:
1. Where you live,
2. What you work on, and
3. Who you’re with.You can get many things wrong, but if you get the above three right, your well-being will be high.
Ultimately, these 3 things all represent deep investments of both attention and trust. And the wonderful thing about age is that it filters out the superfluous and amplifies the necessary.
I’ll give you a personal example of this using the lens of the 2nd point: what you work on.
My journey as a writer didn’t really start until I was in my mid-thirties. I was initially concerned that I was too late to the domain of writing online, and that I had too many responsibilities on my plate to dedicate my full attention to it. This fear of uncertainty kept me in a job I disliked, where I did mind-numbing tasks for the sake of earning a steady paycheck.
But slowly and steadily, I started publishing stories and sharing them with others. Some of them received a great response, while others dwelled in obscurity. While there was no clear path to a viable living doing this, it became obvious to me that I at least had to try. Most people stay in jobs they dislike because they don’t know what else they’d dedicate their attention to. But I had the privilege of knowing exactly what that would be, so it seemed irresponsible to turn my back on that truth and to continue living a lie.
Years after taking the leap, I can confidently say that this is a career now. And as I turn 40, I want to continue deepening my relationship with the craft. Perhaps one of the greatest gifts of turning 40 is that you have a better understanding of what you want, which usually isn’t the case when you’re swimming in the fountain of youth. The fountain is a crowded one, and your desires are largely formed by whoever seems to be in its upper tiers. But as I begin to step outside of its waters, I’m understanding what it means to shape your own wants, which is largely downstream from your personal values and the few people you want to keep close to you. That discernment of the essential is the greatest lesson that age provides.
As I turn 40, I am also aware of the paradoxes of life. A big one is this: how much of my attention do I dedicate to breadth, and how much of it goes to depth? A meaningful life contains both, but one often comes at the expense of the other.
Generally speaking, breadth comes in the form of one’s career and work. Work is the domain where you make a wide impact, as the decisions you make and the way you actualize them will influence your colleagues, your students, your clients, your readers, etc. You provide value through your ability to solve problems, and that value will translate to impact and respect.
But depth is cultivated through relationships that are built outside the domain of your social value. My daughter loves me because I’m her dad, and not because I’ve created a popular blog. My (true) friends love me because I’m there for them in the same way they’re there for me. My parents love me because I’m their son, and that alone is sufficient.
In a perfect world, there is an unperturbed harmony between breadth and depth. But we do not live in such a world, which is why there are rich people with broken families and poor people with wholesome ones. Accomplishment may command respect but it cannot conjure love, and those that can’t see the difference will experience future regret.
As I turn 40, I’m more excited about my work than I’ve ever been. But at the same time, I’m more moved by my relationships than I’ve ever been. The other night, I had tears in my eyes as I looked at drawings that my daughter created of me and her holding hands. I thought to myself, Am I making the most of the time I have with her? And then moments later, I found myself thinking of different ways I could get the word out about my book. The desire for breadth is often found in the same thread of thought that understands the importance of depth.
The way I reconcile the two is to live in a way where one strengthens the other. For example, publishing this essay is my contribution to breadth, where people I don’t know will read these words. But writing this piece is a commitment to depth, as it’s making me reflect on my loved ones and just how important they are to my well-being. My work actually helps me be a more thoughtful and compassionate person, which has the benefit of making me be a better father, husband, son, brother, and friend.
As I turn 40, I’m learning that the great paradoxes of life can’t be solved. Rather, you can only you do your best to align the opposing ends as much as possible. In this sense, perhaps I am still young. Maybe I still have a youthful ignorance around ambition given that I want to leave an impact on people’s lives. Maybe I have a naive belief that it will also make me a better loved one in turn.
But it’s just as possible that I believe all this because of the wisdom that comes with age. That due to all the lessons I’ve learned so far, I’m left with the conclusion that I have to operate on both wider and narrower scales to live a meaningful life. After sifting through all of society’s expectations, what remains is the great work I want to do coupled with the few people I want to be around. With this framing, it’s the passage of years and its resulting lessons that has led to timeless wisdom.
Since I feel both younger and older than 40, perhaps I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be. Too young to be satisfied with my pursuits, and too old to be wasteful with my time. The ability to see this clearly is a hallmark of turning 40, and that clarity is something well worth celebrating.
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I’m coming to terms with the fact that this is the meaning of life:
A beautiful life is one where you get to choose the problems you want to solve:
Thankfully, Life Is Full of Problems
As you get older, it’s crucial to understand the difference between respect and love:
2025-09-20 14:46:09
A common question I get from readers is how I generate my ideas. Do they usually come from books? From articles? From conversations? From good ole contemplation?
The easy answer is that it comes from all of these things. It’s common knowledge that ideas come downstream from existing sources, all of which eventually find their way into your body of work. After all, originality is nothing more than the reframing of old ideas, done in a way that conjures the illusion of novelty.
With that said, the straight-forward answer is generally a sweeping one, discounting the nuances that lie underneath. So in today’s essay, I want to delve into a particular misconception that surrounds the topic of idea generation, and how I’ve shifted my perspective on it.
The misconception is the belief that your ideas precede the creative process. Or in other words, that you first have an idea, and then you work to bring that idea to life.
This mindset reminds me of an industrial complex, where employees are shown an image of what they’re all building toward, and then are sent to an assembly line to contribute their part to the vision. It’s deterministic in a sense, where they already know what the future ought to look like. In this setting, any deviation from that vision is an error, which means that the overarching idea takes precedence over any individual contribution.
This type of efficiency is great for producing standardized widgets, but does little for cultivating creative minds.
The best ideas are birthed during the creative process, and not before. That’s because creativity often contains a serendipitous element, where a train of thought takes unexpected turns throughout its journey. Even if you know that you have a specific conclusion you’re working toward, the way you’ll get there is going to be winding and, frankly, quite surprising.
A few years ago, my wife took up a ceramics apprenticeship in Korea. I visited the studio a few times during her stay, and had the privilege of watching her teacher and other students create vessels during the afternoons. The immediate thing that struck me was how no one had any clue what their creation would look like at the end of each session. All they knew was that they were starting with the same mound of clay, and that this would eventually become something after a few hours. There were no outlines, no mockups, nothing. Just their materials, their wheels, and their commitment to shaping the clay in front of them.
Over the next few hours, I periodically checked in to see how things were going. Two things were immediately clear each time I did: (1) everyone was so present with what they were doing, and (2) no two vessels were shaping up to look the same. There was something both thrilling and peaceful about the whole thing. Thrilling because the artists had no idea what was going to come about, and peaceful because they were okay with that (or it appeared that way, at least).
This whole scene reminded me that ideas take shape as you create. It’s the flow of the experience that causes another branch of thought to emerge, which you then incorporate to propel that experience in a new direction. Ideas generate through action, and not through a mind that tries to think its way to them. The process of moving your hands, shuffling your feet, writing your words… these are the things that allow ideas to arise without you forcing them to the surface.
So the way to build a playground of ideas isn’t to accumulate a bunch of information, but to regularly put yourself in that space to play. You can read great books or watch amazing films to inspire you, but the only way for that inspiration to give birth to a beautiful idea is when you’re actively engaged in the creative process. And what’s great is that you don’t require a vision of what you want to build beforehand; all you need is the desire to create and the commitment to make that happen.
In my case, I often don’t know what I’m going to write about until I sit down to do it. As you could guess, there’s a lot of creative resistance at first, primarily because we’re so conditioned to believe that you have to know what you’re going to write about before you start doing so. This is reinforced in high school English class, for example, where you’re taught that writing is merely a way of formalizing whatever ideas you’ve structured in advance (via an outline or a lengthy brainstorming session).
But it turns out that the writing itself is where the ideas come from. All you need is one thought to get you going, and once you’re moving, many other tributaries of thought begin to open up. Each session is like entering a laboratory of some sort, where the longer you write, the more personal experiences and external sources of inspiration you touch with each sentence. It’s this inertia that gives rise to your ability to reframe thoughts into ideas that exude originality.
The key takeaway is to unlearn the belief that a vision is required in order for you to start. It’s to dispel with the notion that everything needs to be plotted out in advance before a word is typed, a brushstroke is painted, or a dollop of clay is shaped. The simple yet powerful reality is that showing up and committing to the craft is what matters most, and that moving past the starting line will birth more ideas than any pre-planning ever will.
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