☕ saturday mornings - march 18, 2023

seeing with the heart, pure process & pressure

Tommy Dixon

Mar 18, 2023

Happy Saturday!

I hope you’re having an excellent start to your weekend.

What I’ve been up to:

It's been another week of writing, reading, walking, and working. I've written +5,000 words this week, as part of my goal to write 1,000 words a day.
I'm very excited to join Write of Passage Cohort 10 as an Editor. If you want to publish quality ideas, find your people, and 2x your potential, Write of Passage is for you. It's the single best educational experience I’ve ever seen.
I've been on a documentary kick. If there's a documentary you love, let me know!

Here's a recap of the most interesting ideas I've explored this week.

Enjoy.

✍️ quote i’m pondering:

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, French writer, on the importance of intuition:

“Here is my secret. It is very simple: it is only with the heart that one can see rightly. What is essential is invisible to the eye.”

📚 book passage i loved:

Climbing mountains is another process that serves as an example for both business and life.
Many people don’t understand that how you climb a mountain is more important than reaching the top. You can solo climb Everest without using oxygen, or you can pay guides and Sherpas to carry your loads, put ladders across crevasses, lay in six thousand feet of fixed ropes, and have one Sherpa pulling and one pushing you. You just dial in “10,000 Feet” on your oxygen bottle, and up you go.
Typical high-powered, rich plastic surgeons and CEOs who attempt to climb Everest this way are so fixated on the target, the summit, that they compromise on the process.
The goal of climbing big, dangerous mountains should be to attain some sort of spiritual and personal growth, but this won’t happen if you compromise away the entire process.

― Let My People Go Surfing by Yvon Chouinard

💡 essay from me: under pressure

People tell me I put too much pressure on myself.

Maybe you do too.

I'm not sure how to put less pressure on myself. But, I figure that makes me a bit of an expert on the topic. So I wanted to explore the idea some more.

the beginning

I was at coffee with a friend a few weeks ago. As we were chatting, I felt a rush of clarity and sketched:

Pressure.

We all understand what it means. Setting high expectations of yourself for what you achieve, and even higher expectations for when you achieve it. These expectations get placed on your mental timeline, creating a sense of urgency to move forward in life. A sense of discomfort with your current state, because there's somewhere else you need to be. A sense of compulsion to do more. Achieve more. Be more.

I understood the concept of pressure, but never grasped its meaning until I thought about it in a mechanical context.

In engineering, pressure is force over a certain area. The greater the force, the more narrow the area, the greater the pressure.

Think of steam pressure on an old-fashioned engine. The steam builds and builds and builds in a confined area until the pressure becomes so great that it pushes a piston forward, which kicks the engine into gear.

Pressure is a driving force that pushes an object from where it is to where it should be. But, as I realized in that coffee shop, psychological pressure works the same way:

We put pressure on ourselves to drive ourselves from where we are now to where we want to be.

We see a gap between our current state and our desired state, and want to fix it. So we put pressure on ourselves to close that gap. Like steam pressure pushes a piston forward, we create pressure to push ourselves forward. To somewhere else. To our desired state. To where we think we should be.

Pressure demands direction. The more narrow the area, the more force, the faster you can go. We see other people moving at terrific speeds, and question why we're moving so much slower. We become antsy in our day-to-day lives. Continually frustrated with the slow pace of life, continually ratcheting up the pressure to go faster. "Look at the people who know where they're going," pressure whispers, "and how much faster they're moving than you."

We feel forced to choose. To figure it out. Point in a direction and go.

danger of pressure

Pressure feels like insufficiency. It isn't fun like a Sunday brunch with your friends. It's more like standing on the plank of a pirate ship with crocodiles snapping below. When you’re under pressure, you need to make something happen.

Pressure tantalizes us. We're not enough right now, but if we put enough pressure on ourselves, perhaps someday we will be. We're no longer happy with who we are, where we are. We have somewhere else to be. Pressure invades the present moment, and glorifies the distant future.

Pressure is rigid. It doesn't allow the space to flow with the rhythm of life. It doesn't like adjusting. Changing direction. That only slows you down. Pressure has its eyes on the kill, and doesn't want distraction.

Pressure is ceaseless. You can almost always put more pressure on yourself. If you're not getting the results you want, that’s often the first step. Work harder. Be more disciplined. Grit your teeth and make it happen.

So pressure is dangerous:

By scrambling up the ladder of life as fast as you can, you risk getting halfway up and realizing you're on the wrong ladder.
By focusing intently on a projection of the life you want, you forget about the life you have.
By always putting more pressure on yourself to be somewhere you're not, you’re always dissatisfied with where you are now.

Pressure turns the natural process of transformation into an agonizing experience. You're continually trying to move forward faster and faster. But, life seems to drag along at its own stubborn, glacial pace.

We each have a timeline that is intimately our own. But pressure doesn't realize that. Doesn't care. Pressure suffocates the serendipity and randomness and luck that makes life so mysterious and magical. Pressure disregards the importance of giving great opportunities the time to bubble up to the surface. Pressure wants immediacy. It wants speed.

patience as an antidote

The opposite of pressure is patience.

Patience doesn't mean lowering your ambition. It isn't renouncing your possessions, shaving your head, and becoming a monk in the mountains. It isn't stagnation.

Patience is pure process. Taking measured, thoughtful steps each day. Trusting each step you take will lead to the next. Keeping your eyes open to everything around you. Noticing the signs and signals of life. Not bothered by the pace. Not frustrated by the obstacles. Not needing to be anywhere. Not rushing the mystery of your timeline. Accepting the way things are. Giving things the time they need to unfold.

Patience emerges when where you want to be is the same as where you are.

Someone who is patient doesn't put pressure on themselves. There's nowhere they need to be, but where they are. There's no need to rush to a destination over the horizon, because they're perfectly content existing right now, right here, as they are.

Michael Jordan: "I have something more important than courage. I have patience. I will become what I know I am."

A funny thing about patience: what you do from a place of patience often leads to better results than what you do from a place of pressure. Your best ideas, your best thinking, your best decisions, your best performances, won't occur in moments of intense pressure when you’re tense like a tightly wound spring, ready to snap at any moment. Rather, they emerge in moments of patience.

Patience gives you space to think. A portion of your mind isn't hooked on getting somewhere else. In moments of patience, your entire mind exists in the present.

Then you can devote all your ability to do whatever the current moment demands. Unencumbered by expectation. Unblocked by nagging thoughts of what this will lead to. Unshackled by questions on how fast you're moving.

Patience is appreciating the natural unfolding of events. Realizing you can't force life to follow your plans. It’s choosing to have your full mind, your full capabilities in the present moment, knowing you'll need them.

We are not driven forward by the gap between where we want to be and where we are. We are driven forward by who we are.

Naval: Great people have great outcomes. You just have to be patient... It never happens in the timescale you want, but it does happen.

the end

I'm trying to not compete with others to run the fastest. Not put so much pressure on myself I shoot out of a canon in a direction I'm not certain I want to go. Not create artificial timelines I expect life to follow.

Rather, pause and keep my eyes open. Be patient. See where opportunity emerges. Listen to what life asks of me, and do my best to answer.

Remember to tend to the current moment. How simple, peaceful it is. Learn to love the current me, despite knowing I have so much I want to change, build, do.

Keep my grand visions for the future, but look only for the first small beginning, then the next one. Dial huge possibilities into small practical actions. Trust that doing enough of what needed to be done today will, with time, render a great outcome.

I'm trying to learn to be in the process of transformation. Not just trying to be transformed.

And for you: You don't need the pressure. You'll get where you need to go. Maybe somewhere better than you dare imagine. And perhaps enjoy the journey along the way.

You can’t skip past creating to the creation.

❓ question i’m asking:

A simple question that provides clarity on priorities:

What am I optimizing for?

📸 photo of the week:

After taking a photography workshop, I've taken an interest in capturing images on my phone.

I can begin to tell that photography is a lens through which you can view the world. It's made me pay more attention to my surroundings. Notice more. Be more present.

Look at the world around me for splendor or beauty or mystery. Or things that simply capture interest.

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Much love to you and yours,

Tommy