89: More Being and Less Reading

More on what I’m learning and how I am being as a result of consuming fewer books and less information.

Conversation Highlights

• Avoiding the Twitch (Anthony Ongaro)
• Going through books and podcasts much slower and multiple times
• Judgment, Acceptance and Freedom by Tara Brach
• Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life by Jon Kabat-Zinn
• There is no where to get to
• Convergence of three things
  • Consuming less information
  • Spending the weekend away with my wife
  • Feeling more present
• The importance of going away alone with your spouse
  • Turn off your phone and the TV
  • Be present to the moment and each other
• My book reading fast and road trip prepared me well for this weekend away
• Concentrated times of being make the subsequent actions cleaner and more direct
  • Peace that comes from it
• A book is just a book
  • It doesn’t matter how much or how little I read right now
  • Peace comes from a place of not needing to accomplish anything or finish a book
  • I don’t need to read another book to get to where I’m going right now
• Seeing an increasing level of confidence of knowing when to be in being or doing mode
• Skimming and scanning for interesting things doesn’t move thing forward in our lives
  • It’s like consuming junk food if I want a fit body
• Personal Inquiry
  • Do you really need to read another book to do what you need to do?
  • Is getting more information simply a form of procrastination?
  • How much of what you’ve read and learned have you implemented?
  • What if you read fewer books this year and implemented more of what you learned in them?
• Creating negative associations to avoid behaviors or consumption that doesn’t serve me
  • “Reading the news puts poison in my head”
  • “Sugar (candy) reduces my immunity and makes me sick”
• When I don’t jam as much information into my head there is space
  • From that space comes great ideas or actions to take
• Concluding Inquires
  • Why are you consuming information?
  • Is that information in service of something positive?
  • Is what you are consuming giving you the outcome you want?
  • What’s something valuable you have consumed or learned recently?
    • Go through it again
    • Implement it

Credits

• Hallon by Christian Bjoerklund
• Cold Funk by Kevin MacLeod
• Original photo source: Me

All songs licensed under Creative Commons

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