Special

When the things that set us apart, keep us apart.

Quick newsletter announcement

This week onwards, I'm introducing a new section of the newsletter. I write a lot about looking inwards, but often forget that this isn’t the whole point. The point is to do so in order to do what’s actually important: connect outwards.

I want to be explicit about this, and write about things that I'm currently doing, or things that I'm trying to change in my life. The other day, I heard myself saying, "I've spent the past year accumulating all this self-knowledge, it feels like I need to start doing more with it." And so this is a way to keep me accountable to myself.

Hopefully it also inspires you to look at the things in your own life, and to consider what you might want to change, however big or small it is.

For now, I'm calling this section THE DEEP END. I'm still unsure because it feels heavy, and I want something lighter, something that captures the excitement of change and of the possibilities that await us when we pull ourselves out of the dark. But I also wanted a swimming/water related metaphor, and this seems to work for now.

If you have any ideas for what I should call this section, please let me know!

(h/t to

Neal Moore

for the conversation that inspired this. Here’s us from earlier this week:

nealpmoore

A post shared by @nealpmoore

Check out Neal’s writing at

Neal Moore | Pro-Human

)

---

This week's newsletter is kind of a postscript to what I wrote last week.

If you missed last week's newsletter, it was essentially about how most of us don't want to suffer, but inadvertently do so because we pursue our goals the only way we know how—through acting from a place of sacrifice and fear. We can accomplish incredible things, but lose parts of ourselves along the way.

After publishing Stop suffering, start being weird, this is what I was left thinking about: the reason we develop such ways of working and operating in the world is because we all develop attachments to certain identities.

Sometimes that identity is

• I have to do everything for everyone all the time, because I'm the only one who knows how to do it properly

• I'm not the smartest, but I can work longer hours than anyone

• My team is the top priority, so my own views and preferences don't matter

• People inevitably disappoint you, so I'd rather be self-reliant and never depend on anyone else

• No one thinks I can do it, so I'm gonna prove all of them wrong

And identities, at their core, are stories that we tell ourselves about who we are and how we exist in the world.

This made me realise that a big part of my own story has always been that "I'm not like other people." For as long as I've been aware, it has always been the natural, instinctive thing for me to see myself as apart from and different than others.

This same motivation once made me think it was lame to just fly to Vietnam and back for a holiday, and so I flew to Vietnam, and spent 2 months making my way back to Singapore by land. It was what made me decide not to pursue a full-time job when I graduated from university, and to start a media company with guys that I met one time over beers in Jalan Besar.

It was also no coincidence that the underlying ethos of this media brand came to be, "Whatever everyone else is doing, we'll do the opposite."

Conversely, I have also told myself stories like, "I'm not like other people, so ..."

• This piece of advice won't work for me

• I'm not willing to try what someone else has already done before

• I don't need help even if I'm struggling

• This or that doesn't matter to me

• I'm logical and rational, and therefore feelings are inconvenient

• Ordinary experiences are not good enough

Just the other day, I was arranging a coffee chat with someone I really look up to, and was looking for a spot that would be convenient for us to meet at.

After about 5 minutes of frustrated searching, wondering why I couldn't just decide, I caught myself in a thinking loop. I had realised that the best place to meet at was Ya Kun, but I also kept thinking, "I can't meet this person at Ya Kun! It's so basic!" I thought this even though I love Ya Kun and go there all the time.

Even then, I thought it wasn't cool enough. It wasn't special enough for this person that I was really hoping would find me interesting.

But once I caught myself, I realised, why the hell am I doing this when the point is to connect? So I texted this person the location of the Ya Kun, and promptly moved on with my day.

This is a somewhat ridiculous example, but it was a reminder to me that the same impulse that can drive me to do things my way can also cut me off from connecting with others, solving simple problems, and even doing things that I actually really enjoy.

These days, I find myself making more of a conscious effort to embrace ordinary things. I find myself using the word 'nice' a lot, where typically I would always strive for something deeper and more three dimensional.

I am remembering that not everything has to reveal something profound and insightful about life in order to be worth doing.

With that, let's move on to ...

---

THE DEEP END

So here's something I've been working on.

I recently decided to shift my daily runs to the start of each day. I typically run during lunch or in the late afternoons, and this has worked really well as it allows me to expend a lot of the stale energy that I noticed accumulates in my body throughout the day.

As I've increasingly been taking on more work (and therefore also more meetings), these hours have also gradually filled up.

For a long time, I have always felt like I never have the energy to exercise first thing in the morning. I have no trouble waking up early, but then I want to lounge around, drink coffee, listen to music, stare out the window, read. It's easily the best part of my day.

As you can tell, shifting this habit was hard for this very reason. I had to give something up. Also, rolling out of my warm cosy bed at 6:30 AM in the morning is probably one of the hardest things to do in the world.

But I've been managing to do this somewhat consistently, and this is what has been working for me.

1. Sleeping early. I get into bed by 10 PM, and I read until I feel sleepy (I've been reading S. A. Chakraborty's Daevabad Trilogy, which is fantastic and I highly recommend), after which I just go to sleep.
   
   I've never been the sort to stay up until 2 or 3 AM, but this is still considered early for me. For a long time I resisted this because it felt too disciplined, too responsible. And I thought, this isn't me. I am free and young and I can sleep at any time I want and still have energy for the next day.
   
   This, I've accepted, is no longer true. It was also this acceptance that has made it possible for me to realise how exactly my habits need to change.
   

2. Sleeping earlier has been a game-changer in that when my alarm wakes me up, I have enough presence of mind to tell myself: you get to enjoy the morning breeze and smell trees and touch grass and watch the sun rise.
   
   I am able to remind myself that I'm not really doing this because I need to get my 1 hour of exercise in. I'm doing it because moving my body clears my mind, I get to listen to a podcast, and can keep it fun and easy by running at a slower pace.

There's a very popular life hack that says the easiest way to get up in the morning is to count down from 5: tell yourself, "5, 4, 3, 2, 1," and just get up. This sometimes works for me, but I find myself more willing to do so when I remember that once I get over that initial hump, I actually really love doing this.

And it's been great so far. I'm lucky to be living close to a park connector where there are plenty of trees, and the weather is perfect in the morning. I've also been getting a ton of ideas for things that I want to start working on, so I really hope I'll be able to keep this up.

---

---

Stuff that moved me this week

• As I navigate my early 30s, adult friendship is something that I think about a lot: how to make new ones, keep the ones I already have, and connect more deeply with the ones I care about the most as our lives grow in eventfulness and complexity.
  
  Dense Discovery is one of my absolute favourite newsletters, and this recent issue explores some of these very same ideas.
  

• I recently discovered Sublime, a platform for collecting and curating all the internet things that you love and want to eventually come back to. In particular, I love how the community dimension of it allows you to build on each other's libraries and collections. I'm still figuring out how exactly this works, but here's an example.
  

• I first read Lori Gottlieb's Maybe You Should Talk to Someone in 2019, which I loved for being such a beautiful and entertaining read, but also for its emphasis on how, "In therapy, you’ll be asked to be both accountable and vulnerable."
  
  In this interview with Mark Manson, she circles back on this idea, this time contextualising it within a climate where social media has increased access to mental health resources, but also led to crucial misunderstandings of important concepts and ideas.

• This week, I also finished watching the reboot of Mr & Mrs Smith on Amazon Prime. I loved it, that's all I will say. Go and watch it.

• Something useful that I chanced upon:

  Cissy Hu
  ’s tactical guide on How to Sabbatical—in case you or someone you know is thinking of taking one soon.
  

• And finally, you know how sometimes you come across things on the internet that make you think, "Damn it, I will never be smart and creative enough to create something like that." This particular edition of NY Times Close Read, which explored the woodblock prints (also called 'Ukiyo-e') of Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai, was exactly that for me.
  
  Combining art criticism with a poetic contemplation of the modern world, this is absolutely worth taking a quiet moment to just experience.

---

---

I know that this week's newsletter was a long one. If you enjoy this format or have thoughts on it, please let me know!

Otherwise, catch you at the next one 👋🏻