This edition of Curiosity is mind blowing.
My mind was blown away by the boldness, curiosity and the breaking-out-of-the-human-condition I witnessed here.
Ever since the Internet stepped into our reality, demanding our attention, humans seem to have lost their sense of direction.
The digitally enhanced reality got more complex, denser, it stepped in our face while we stepped out of our minds.
We will learn today there is nowhere to go but the realty. There is nothing else to do but making the most of it. How?
Let me tell you about these incredible people and how they choose to deal with complex reality.
This is a fascination journey into the mind. These people remind me the extent to which curiosity and courage can take us.
Switchcraft by Elaine Fox
This is a book about staying alive, relevant and thriving - as a person- while living in the realty, while striving to achieve a certain purpose.
When healthy and free to express ourselves, when supported by others , when the existing democratic systems are working -life is fun and easy.
But this is the "perfect world" scenario we mention as to say that we deal with the real reality. The circumstances shared by all and forget for a moment about the impossible reality we are relentlessly striving to achieve.
The very possible reality is that you wake up one morning and notice that your legs don't work as expected. Or your kids are sick, or you need to bury someone, or you have lost your job and need to get yourself back on track .You find yourself in a new situation, with different factors influencing your life.
How do you chose to behave in these moments decides the trajectory of your life.
I have been there many times. Looking back , I think that I could have done so much better in many ways, but the essence, I feel, was there. My mind has been set on progress, getting back up, trying and adjusting the process.
Switchcraft attracted me greatly because it promised (and delivered) to teach me HOW to switch mindsets.
For me, the process of Becoming is just a series of choices, actions, evolution and re-adjustment of the same process. As you might have already understood, it's an inside job.
The human trying to evolve beyond their current possibilities, out of a situation needs to stop, analyze his/her thinking processes, recognize what is failing and then, by the grace of GOD, the UNIVERSE and their will power- that human needs to change their actions.
Why? What an incredible question!
Why change? Because negating the fact that you are alive- therefore changing all the time together with the reality around- is only going to make things harder for you and everyone around.
Change is extremely hard though. Why? Because most humans hate self reflection, looking inside, becoming aware and then accepting their own failures and doing something about them.
If you are still reading, there is still hope! Let me tell you about the structure of the book and what to expect.
Agility
In my own understanding, agility is the ability to accept the need for change and to constantly adapt to constantly changing situations, as to stay relevant and thriving. Agile is a way of being not doing. I feel that this is a very important distinction to make, now in the era of agile transformation at all levels, corporate or personal.
The Pillars :
1) Mental Agility - as opposed to mental rigidity, this is the power to change, to switch perspective, to become aware of a different point of view of the same situation and to decide how to act in a new way, as to achieve a new, better result that would bring you to a new step, where the same process happens.
There are four components :
Adapt to changing demands
Balance competing desires and goals
Change and challenge your perspective
Develop your mental competence
2)Self awareness - this is basically the famous " Know thyself". It refers to knowing your psychological and physiological make-up, learning about your personality.
Intellectual humility is a main component here. In order to know, to learn something we need first to admit the fact that we don't know. It means openness.
Listen to your body- another essential component, the body is giving us signal at all times about our state and possible steps we could take.
Beliefs and values - everything we do and think is influenced by this. A human being cannot act against their belies and values AND thrive.
3)Emotional Awareness -understand your emotions and reactions, understand why something is upsetting or triggering you. This is so important because humans are emotional and rational creatures at the same time. But our behaviour is greatly influenced by our emotions.
Emotional regulation plays a huge role in our pursuit of agility.
4)Situational Awareness- being attuned to the reality surrounding you, listening to your intuition, reading "the room", having the so called "context sensitivity". By doing we get information that is relevant for that specific reality and we can decide how to act, again, in a relevant way.
" I am a cognitive psychologist and affective neuroscientist. I study the science of what makes us thrive at the Oxford Center for Emotion and Affective Science (OCEA) - a lab I founded and direct at the University of Oxford. We take into account people's genetic make-up, their brain functions and what they tell us is important as we try to deepen our understanding of resilience and thriving[...]"
I'm going to use many of the tools presented in this book, which I highly recommend.
I am Bolt A universal Pictures Documentary
Usain Bolt is one excellent personification of Agility.
I have always been in awe of sportsmen and sport women for their ability to combine concertation and physical movement, repetition and minor improvements of their technique leading to better results.
The documentary kept me locked to the screen. I was exited to see the daily life of such a star and , surprisingly, his daily life is just like any other human daily life.
His days are the same but his attitude, actions and thoughts in relation to the circumstances are different than most people.
I watched him training, getting injured,
being left out of the race because of recovery, watched him training- NO MATTER WHAT. I also saw him living a secluded life, the downside of being BOLT. His daily life would probably be way too hard, for the very simplicity of it.
I highly recommend this documentary, if you have a passion for sports, athletics, for human concertation and excellence.
Open . La mia storia
by Andre Agassi
Andre Agassi wrote an incredible book. Incredible because rarely does the world see a man opening up.
In his case, the man is a Mondial star, a force on the tennis court, so this is a person who has had his share of setbacks and fighting to go.
I see in him anther perfect example of agility.
I know, we all want men and women to open up but when they do, we freeze.
Agree Agassi is telling the story of him with great emotional awareness (now) and understanding, sincerity and openness as well. I hope with forgiveness also. As you will see when reading this book, the beginning of his "stardom" rests in pain, fear, extreme discipline and traumatic experiences.
The saddest part, if we think about the little boy he was, is that his father was the "perpetrator", the evil teacher hunted by his own demons he could not control.
Read this book, for your sake.
Rückkehr ins Weltall (Return to Space) a Netflix Documentary
I kept the best for the end.
I'm joking!
Well, if you have been following my curiosity, you might know that I am a supporter of Elon Musk and his endeavour to solve very real human problems in such new ways.
His ways are mind blowing, out of this world, in reality.
Of course, I'm someone looking from far away. I'm reading what is available and I listen to opposing perspectives also. I hear the controversy, the power war that is happening, BUT this is all part of the Game.
I think that Elon Musk is having the most mature and awaken approach to reality and human condition on this Planet at the moment.
This documentary is about vision, dedication, focus, risk taking. This is AGILITY alive. Watching the American astronauts, set into the fucking space by SpaceX and NASA, watching them join the International Space Station made me cry of joy.
Elon Musk and his team, NASA and whoever is working on this, are humans able to see outside of the default paradigm. He has also the capacity to turn his vision in reality.
The documentary is directed by the Oscar winning duo - Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi.
Watch it, watch it, watch it! It will give you HOPE, if nothing else.
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