Lessons From The Past: Constructive Living, Importance of Structure & Atonement For Past Mistakes
This Week:
What non-fiction I’ve been reading
I recently started reading Constructive Living by David K. Reynolds.
The premise of the book is:
“This book offers a strategy for handling life’s problems by both purposefully redirecting attention and engaging in constructive action-that is, doing something about the problem that caused the upset in the first place. The goal is not to ignore or suppress feelings, but to accept them as they happen to be at the moment . . . and then to get on with doing what is sensible and mature anyway.”
It also teaches how to skillfully live life:
“Constructive Living teaches you to pay attention to all of life’s activities. You practice living moment by moment with all your attention. And you become skillful at living. That’s the way to win in life-become skillful at it.”
I found this book through the recommendation of Recovering Overthinker on Instagram. I’ve only just started reading it so, I’m pretty pumped to unpack the techniques in the book over the next little while.
What I’m listening to
Last week I listened to Greg Mckeown on the Tim Ferriss podcast. Mckeown’s Essentialism has been on my reading list for quite some time and I plan on reading it after I finish Constructive Living.
The conversation between Mckeown and Ferriss was insightful and here are some key pointers I took away.
- Relationships with family will have a much greater influence on your happiness and fulfillment than almost anything else.
- Use reminders for what matters in your life.
- Easy daily structure: Do 1 thing that is essential, 2 things that are urgent and 3 things for maintenance.
- There’s a big difference between 20 years of experience and living the same year 20 times.
- Most fights in relationships are about feeling secure with your partner.
- Effective Dependency: where we feel deeply seen, emotionally seen and understood by the other partner.
- You need structure or a system to take care of the most essential things in your life.
- Without structure or system, you won’t be able to avoid the non-essential things in life.
What I’m watching
I’ve been slowly making my way through the anime, Vinland Saga.
I’m currently on season two of the story and afterward, I plan on picking up the manga. One thing that really stuck with me as we follow Thorfinn’s character arc is the question: How do you atone for your mistakes?
For those not familiar, a young Thorfinn is completely corrupted by the idea of revenge which leads him to commit heinous acts before a revelation changes him for the good. However, just because you’re changed doesn’t mean your previous actions don’t mean anything.
You’re still that guy who committed evil.
So, how can you atone for your sins?
The idea put forth in the anime is to do so much good that you end up tipping the scales in your favour. This seems idealistic and perhaps a little naïve but it might be the only way to atone for your sins.
A training insight
Don’t be obsessed with the idea of replicating someone else’s form or technique.
The perfect form or technique has to be perfect for you and not a universal standard that you try to contort and force your body to fit.
For example, stretch mediated hypertrophy is shown to be valuable for muscle growth. This has led to an emphasis on the stretch and figuring out ways to stretch a particular muscle beyond the normal range of motion.
But I found for myself that when I try to manufacture a stretch beyond the normal range of motion involving my shoulder girdle, I end up having slight pain and discomfort. However, there are plenty of others who can perform those movements without any discomfort.
Consistency and longevity are the name of the game. It may be true that you could miss out on some percentage points of progress, however, the number one killer of progress is injury. If you injure yourself trying to gain a few extra percentage points, then you gambled poorly.
Originally published at http://learnedlivingorg.wordpress.com on April 24, 2024.