Lessons From The Past
What fiction I’ve been reading
I’m currently working through The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco and Wisdom of Crowds by Joe Abercrombie.
The two novels are starkly different and yet both are filled with insights and more importantly, pleasure. Pleasure is important because I wouldn’t want to fake my interest and try hard to find some kind of lesson or insight artificially.
The Name of the Rose centres around a murder mystery plot. Finding truth is at the core of the novel. The theme of truth is explored in various ways but the one that caught my attention is the discussion between truth and falsity. The novel is set in a monastery, so naturally, religious truth is often brought up in passages. Umberto Eco unpacks in length how the line between someone labelled as a heretic or a saint is very thin.
This raises questions about how much our experience and perspective play a role in what is true and what is false. And that perhaps truth and falsehood work on a spectrum. They aren’t set in stone. They change and evolve as we change and evolve.
Perhaps that’s why for centuries people have fought over the idea of truth and attempted to be the righteous ones on the side of truth. However, from someone else’s perspective, that person would be fighting for the wrong cause.
As the cliches goes, ‘One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.’
What non-fiction I’ve been reading
I read Margaret Atwood’s commensuration speech she gave at the University of Toronto in 1983. The speech’s central message was: “You may not be able to alter reality, but you can alter your attitude towards it, and this, paradoxically, alters reality.”
Essentially, how you perceive something is as important as reality itself. This is the difference between someone who fails and never tries again and someone who looks at failure as a lesson to be applied in their next venture. For the latter, failure ceases to exist.
What I’m listening to or watching
On my walks and when I’m driving, I’ve been listening to Chris Williamson’s conversation with Alex Hormozi. The two of them have had two previous insightful conversations revolving around life, productivity, work ethic and so on.
In the most recent conversation, one thing they discussed was the idea of how the stress of trying to be perfect is killing you more quickly than your imperfections. This pertains to the idea of optimizing every part of your life.
I’ve fallen for this optimization idea and am still working through it. The need to have the perfect routines, work conditions, and structure. In chasing this perfection, work often is left undone.
Simplicity has been a word that I’ve been thinking a lot about and the simplest routine is just to get the work done. No matter how you feel.
A training insight
The key to making progress in the gym is to understand your body. Slight changes in joint positioning or bar path can be the difference between joint pain and being pain free.
Too often people try to emulate other people’s forms but not all form is universal. Once you understand the basics of biomechanics and how certain joint angles and range of motions result in greater hypertrophy and strength gain, then it’s a matter of manipulating the form to match you best.
You will know you’re in your goldilocks zone when you are pain free and making progress.
Originally published at http://learnedlivingorg.wordpress.com on February 12, 2024.