Is there a secret of how to know yourself? Probably not too many of us. But sharing what we learn with others … well, that may be a different story. We should not be strangers to sharing knowledge and advice with others, should we? I recently read a very interesting article from Brain Picking’s Weekly. Ever read from this weekly? Always chock full of interesting reads. Certainly the case here, especially since it is about what Brain Pickings teaches about how to know yourself.
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In this blog, I will share the article (reprioritizing the points to emphasize my feelings on their importance) and add my thoughts on each point.
We love to read about learning, especially when people discuss what they have learned over the years. This is particularly when the people are like Maria Popova. Maria is the substance behind Brain Pickings, a highly influential curation of the best content from the web and beyond.
As she describes it, Brain Pickings is “your LEGO treasure chest, full of pieces across art, design, science, technology, philosophy, history, politics, psychology, sociology, ecology, anthropology, you-name-itology.” Maria is a prolific reader, reading hundreds of things a day and posts the best to her blog and constantly-updating Twitter feed.
Let’s get started with this recent article from Maria in Brain Pickings:
On October 23, 2006, Brain Pickings was born as an email to my seven colleagues at one of the four jobs I held while paying my way through college. Over the years that followed, the short weekly email became a tiny website updated every Friday, which became a tiny daily publication, which slowly grew, until this homegrown labor of love somehow ended up in the Library of Congress digital archive of “materials of historical importance” and the seven original recipients somehow became several million readers. How and why this happened continues to mystify and humble me as I go on doing what I have always done: reading, thinking, and writing about enduring ideas that glean some semblance of insight – however small, however esoteric – into what it means to live a meaningful life.
In October of 2013, as Brain Pickings turned seven, I marked the occasion by looking back on the seven most important things I learned from the thousands of hours spent reading, writing, and living during those first seven years. (Seven is an excellent numeral – a prime, a calendric unit, the perfect number of dwarfs.) I shared those reflections not as any sort of universal advice on how a life is to be lived, but as centering truths that have emerged and recurred in the course of how this life has been lived; insights that might, just maybe, prove useful or assuring for others. (Kindred spirits have since adapted these learnings into a poster and a short film.)
As Brain Pickings turns nine, I continue to stand by these seven reflections, but the time has come to add two more. (Nine is also an excellent numeral – an exponential factorial, the number of Muses in Greek mythology, my favorite chapter in Alice in Wonderland.)
Here are the nine subjects reflecting my priorities as well as heading descriptors:
How to know yourself … stillness
Build pockets of stillness into your life. Meditate. Go for walks. Ride your bike going nowhere in particular. There is a creative purpose to daydreaming, even to boredom. The best ideas come to us when we stop actively trying to coax the muse into manifesting and let the fragments of experience float around our unconscious mind in order to click into new combinations. Without this essential stage of unconscious processing, the entire flow of the creative process is broken.
Most importantly, sleep. Besides being the greatest creative aphrodisiac, sleep also affects our every waking moment, dictates our social rhythm, and even mediates our negative moods. Be as religious and disciplined about your sleep as you are about your work. We tend to wear our ability to get by on little sleep as some sort of badge of honor that validates our work ethic. But what it really is a profound failure of self-respect and of priorities. What could possibly be more important than your health and your sanity, from which all else springs?
My take:
No argument from me here, which is why it is at the top of my list. What is more important than your inner stillness and your ability to maintain and grow it? It enhances your ability to broaden and deepen your participation.
Freedom to change
Allow yourself the uncomfortable luxury of changing your mind. Cultivate that capacity for “negative capability.” We live in a culture where one of the greatest social disgraces is not having an opinion, so we often form our “opinions” based on superficial impressions or the borrowed ideas of others, without investing the time and thought that cultivating true conviction necessitates. We then go around asserting these donned opinions and clinging to them as anchors to our own reality. It’s enormously disorienting to simply say, “I don’t know.” But it’s infinitely more rewarding to understand than to be right – even if that means changing your mind about a topic, an ideology, or, above all, yourself.
My take:
It is very hard for most of us to change, particularly when it involves admitting to being wrong. As active learners we should all practice acknowledging we don’t know or we haven’t formed an opinion.
Know yourself meaning … know who you are
When people tell you who they are, Maya Angelou famously advised, believe them. Just as importantly, however, when people try to tell you who you are, don’t believe them. You are the only custodian of your own integrity, and the assumptions made by those that misunderstand who you are and what you stand for reveal a great deal about them and absolutely nothing about you.
My take:
Nothing is simpler than listening politely and just moving on. You must believe that no one knows you any better than you.
Know your priorities
Do nothing for prestige or status or money or approval alone. As Paul Graham observed, “prestige is like a powerful magnet that warps even your beliefs about what you enjoy. It causes you to work not on what you like, but what you’d like to like.” Those extrinsic motivators are fine and can feel life-affirming in the moment, but they ultimately don’t make it thrilling to get up in the morning and gratifying to go to sleep at night – and, in fact, they can often distract and detract from the things that do offer those deeper rewards.
My take:
In my opinion, we are all attracted to money, status, approval, prestige. Just try and provide balance those attractions with knowing what your deeper rewards are and explicitly examine them in making tradeoffs.
Why is knowing yourself important … expand your presence
Presence is far more intricate and rewarding an art than productivity. Ours is a culture that measures our worth as human beings by our efficiency, our earnings, our ability to perform this or that. The cult of productivity has its place, but worshipping at its altar daily robs us of the very capacity for joy and wonder that makes life worth living – for, as Annie Dillard memorably put it, “how we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.”
My take:
Would certainly expect this subject from Maria. She is the master of being involved with as many of her loves as possible. I certainly appreciate giving up some perfection to spread where you can contribute more. If I had the opportunity to redo my career, I would definitely put more focus on this goal. How about you?
Be generous
Be generous with your time and your resources and with giving credit and, especially, with your words. It’s so much easier to be a critic than a celebrator. Always remember there is a human being on the other end of every exchange and behind every cultural artifact being critiqued. To understand and be understood, those are among life’s greatest gifts, and every interaction is an opportunity to exchange them.
My take:
Could not say it any better. Appreciate every interaction for its ability to understand and be understood. Imagine what could be achieved if each one of us could improve just 5-10 % here.
Spend the time
“Expect anything worthwhile to take a long time.” This is borrowed from the wise and wonderful Debbie Millman, for it’s hard to better capture something so fundamental yet so impatiently overlooked in our culture of immediacy. The myth of the overnight success is just that – a myth – as well as a reminder that our present definition of success needs serious retuning. As I’ve reflected elsewhere, the flower doesn’t go from bud to blossom in one spritely burst and yet, as a culture, we’re disinterested in the tedium of the blossoming. But that’s where all the real magic unfolds in the making of one’s character and destiny.
My take:
As one who did much employee coaching in his day, teaching patience is one of the most difficult tasks. But it can be the most rewarding for those that develop the skill.
Getting to know yourself activities … magnify your spirit
Seek out what magnifies your spirit. Patti Smith, in discussing William Blake and her creative influences, talks about writers and artists who magnified her spirit – it’s a beautiful phrase and a beautiful notion. Who are the people, ideas, and books that magnify your spirit? Find them, hold on to them, and visit them often. Use them not only as a remedy once spiritual malaise has already infected your vitality but as a vaccine administered while you are healthy to protect your radiance.
My take:
A very interesting way to describe this subject. About 20 years ago I selected 5 authors to magnify my spirit by letting them be my ‘silent’ mentors. They have never let me down.
Learning about ourselves … don’t fear idealism
Don’t be afraid to be an idealist. There is much to be said for our responsibility as creators and consumers of that constant dynamic interaction we call culture – which side of the fault line between catering and creating are we to stand on? The commercial enterprise is conditioning us to believe that the road to success is paved with catering to existing demands – give the people cat GIFs, the narrative goes, because cat GIFs are what the people want.
But E.B. White, one of our last great idealists, was eternally right when he asserted half a century ago that the role of the writer is “to lift people up, not lower them down” – a role each of us is called to with increasing urgency, whatever cog we may be in the machinery of society. Supply creates its own demand. Only by consistently supplying it can we hope to increase the demand for the substantive over the superficial – in our individual lives and in the collective dream called culture.
My take:
I read this one several times before I could put my arms around what I felt Maria wanted us to take away. What I take away from this is that whether we are a realist or an idealist, the focus needs to be staying our course, while maximizing our value add to others.
The bottom line
Thank goodness for the Marias of this world. Without them, we would be learning at a much slower pace. Thank you for all your sharing Maria.
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Mike Schoultz is the founder of Digital Spark Marketing, a digital marketing and customer service agency. With 40 years of business experience, he blogs on topics that relate to improving the performance of business. Find him on G+, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
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More reading on learning from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:
The Nine Most Valuable Secrets of Writing Effective Copy
How Good Is your Learning from Failure?
10 Extraordinary Ways for Learning to Learn
Continuous Learning Holds the Keys to Your Future Success
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