Jonah's Journal (Pride, Restlessness, and Avoidance)
Welcome back!
I’m all moved in into my new place, and I’m excited about having my own room for the first time. I’ll write about the importance of place next week, but today we’ll discuss the virtues of pride, restlessness, and avoidance.
Pride, Restlessness, and Avoidance
While humility, consistency and initiative can be valuable virtues to have in your effort to lead a more intentional life, there are times where too much of each can lead to inaction as a slow death.
I want to highlight three ideas I’ve recently learned that advocate for a more proactive, aggressive approach to your life.
Modesty is a gamble (Source).
Always deferring to others and underselling yourself only is sustainable as long as we count on others to be kind and understanding about it. We don’t really know whether or not our vulnerability will be respectfully acknowledged or taken advantage of. In this way, counting on others to accept our modesty is a gamble. To hedge your bets, balance your vulnerability and humility with a quiet, prideful intensity.
It’s OK to be restless (Source).
A sense of restlessness or urgency in finding the next shiny opportunity can be great, but can detract from your ability to produce valuable work. Combined with high standards, however, you can have an edge on opportunities relevant to you while appropriately filtering out things you don’t care about. Protect your time and energy, but don’t entirely close it off either.
We’re biased against action (Source).
Loss aversion, simply put, means that we feel it’s better not to lose $20, than to find $20. When the upside of an action is equivalent to the avoidance of the downside, it’s far easier to choose avoidance. Despite this, the positive externalities associated with pursing a gain are ignored by those who are comforted by their loss aversion. Factor positive externalities into your decision making process, and you’ll realize that the benefits of action usually outweigh potential losses.
Media I consumed this week
Flexible Minimalist Micro Apartment (link)
A guided tour of a small apartment in Sydney, Australia. I love everything this channel puts out and my dream is to one day have wherever I end up living featured on this channel.
If you want others to follow, learn to be alone with your thoughts (link)
Introspection means talking to yourself, and one of the best ways of talking to yourself is by talking to another person. One other person you can trust, one other person to whom you can unfold your soul. One other person you feel safe enough with to allow you to acknowledge things—to acknowledge things to yourself—that you otherwise can’t.
Final thoughts
After 6+ years of casual photography, I had a picture I took reposted by the official account of image sharing site VSCO, which is a pretty big deal. I personally didn’t feel it was the coolest picture I’ve taken, but it goes to show the value of consistency in a creative practice. Share high quality work consistently, and the results will far surpass your imagination.
Until next time,