My Weekly Learnings #35 (21.11 – 27.11)

Amidst all the content I consume every week, through this weekly series of ‘My Weekly Learnings’, sharing highlights of content pieces that caught my eye and provided more value than I could imagine.

(P.S. Every Sunday, I share a list of what to read, listen to, and watch, in my weekly series, The Last 7 Days. You can check out the editions here).

1. Anything that uplifts your consciousness is spirituality. Anything that brings you more peace of mind, that’s spirituality. Anything that gives you confidence, self-confidence, is spirituality. Anything that helps you to communicate better with people and anything that promotes a better understanding of yourself, of others, and of the universe, that’s spirituality. (Listen here more to understand about spirituality) [Gurudev Sri Sri Ravishankar]

2. Beware of confusing attention with admiration. Being noticed isn’t a substitute for being respected.

Don’t mistake recognition for appreciation. Knowing who you are doesn’t mean people value what you do.

The point of sharing isn’t to gain followers. It’s to make a contribution. [Adam Grant]

3. “Many people use deliberate cold exposure specifically to increase their metabolism and fat loss. Because many people also combine deliberate cold exposure with a sauna or hot showers, I asked Dr. Susanna Soeberg, Ph.D. (expert in human cold therapy science and first author on a recent landmark study about cold exposure for metabolism), whether or not heat should be done before or after cold exposure.

Dr. Soeberg’s answer is what I now call “The Soeberg Principle”: which states that even though you can alternate heat and cold *if your main goal is to increase metabolism then you should end with the cold* because it forces your body to use its own energy to heat back up.

Remember: you can still get benefits from a cold exposure if you end with heat but you won’t get as great a metabolic effect.” [Andrew Huberman]

4. The Illusion of Self

Source: grantdraws

5. Amazon’s founder, Jeff Bezos, isn’t a fan of the phrase “work-life balance.”

Bezos said new Amazon employees shouldn’t view work and life as a balancing act. Instead, Bezos said it’s more productive to view them as two integrated parts.

“It actually is a circle,” Bezos said. “It’s not a balance.”

“And my view is, that’s a debilitating phrase because it implies there’s a strict trade-off.”

“If I am happy at home, I come into the office with tremendous energy,” Bezos said. “And if I am happy at work, I come home with tremendous energy.” [Jeff Bezos via Business Insider] (Read more here)

My Weekly Learnings #32 (31.10 – 06.11)

Amidst all the content I consume every week, through this weekly series of ‘My Weekly Learnings’, sharing highlights of content pieces that caught my eye and provided more value than I could imagine.

(P.S. Every Sunday, I share a list of what to read, listen to, and watch, in my weekly series, The Last 7 Days. You can check out the editions here).

1. In my experience, not body weight but these are the factors that improve health — healthy mother
– good education
– strong family bonds
– access to doctors
– well-paying jobs
– athletic childhood
– living in green walkable cities

Health is multidisciplinary, not a number. [Rujuta Diwekar]

2. Charcoal & Diamonds are both carbons. The difference lies in the configuration of the carbon atoms in them.

There’s a big lesson in here.

You can increase the value of something by changing its very nature by re-organizing its building blocks.

Inputs <> Outputs [Kavin Bharti Mittal]

3. Tips To Building Your Emotional Intelligence:

– Accept that you can’t be happy all the time
– Start to identify emotions in other people and yourself
– Accept that not all emotions have to mean something
– Identify when zero response is the best response [Mark Manson]

4. “MOTIVATION” = EFFORT + (INTERMITTENT) REWARD

Dopamine is the common currency of motivation, pleasure, and pursuit of pleasures. Everybody enjoys pleasure. That said if you achieve pleasure from food or experiences without having to put in any effort pretty soon those pleasures lose their potency. That doesn’t mean we stop pursuing pleasures but it lowers our baseline level of dopamine and causes us to pursue progressively smaller goals. That is not good.

These days pleasure is available to us without any work: High potency food, experiences, etc. that don’t require any strain or effort to achieve.

Some small amount of that is fine of course but the best way to keep your dopamine system tuned up for ongoing motivation and pursuit is to periodically avoid pleasures that are easy to access, focusing instead on pleasures that take effort to achieve. And sometimes it can even be useful to not reward yourself at all for hard work and instead just cycle right back into another round of effort. Of course, get your rest and your sleep too so you can continue to be motivated and in pursuit (and pleasure) for all your days and years. [Andrew Huberman]

5. “There will come a time when you believe everything is finished. That will be the beginning.”

‘Up to a point a person’s life is shaped by environment, heredity, and changes in the world about them. Then there comes a time when it lies within their grasp to shape the clay of their life into the sort of thing they wish it to be. Only the weak blame parents, their race, their times, lack of good fortune, or the quirks of fate. Everyone has the power to say, “This I am today. That I shall be tomorrow.” [Louis L’Amour – The Walking Drum]