We Are Stardust

“Recognize that the very molecules that make up your body, the atoms that construct the molecules, are traceable to the crucibles that were once the centers of high mass stars that exploded their chemically rich guts into the galaxy, enriching pristine gas clouds with the chemistry of life. So that we are all connected to each other biologically, to the earth chemically and to the rest of the universe atomically. That’s kinda cool! That makes me smile and I actually feel quite large at the end of that. It’s not that we are better than the universe, we are part of the universe. We are in the universe and the universe is in us.”

-Neil deGrasse Tyson

Speak Without Talking

I wish I had as much control over my facial expressions as Jude Law in this scene.

There Is A Voice Inside Your Head

This is one of my favorite books. It's short and sweet, which is how I like it (though not in the bedroom). You could read it in a day or two. Now that's my kind of bedroom session.

Ruiz states that after we are born and begin our socialization, we develop a "Voice of Knowledge" which is basically a collection of all of the negative lies we hear: you're not smart enough, you need to be a doctor to be successful, you have to change who you are.

The key to restoring our natural, child-like joy and peace, that which we are born with but becomes lost, is to realize that we have been sold the lie of our imperfection and to stop believing it.

I've contemplated these ideas and have used it to create a personal introspection tool for myself. I periodically ask whether I am speaking and acting from the Voice of Knowledge or the voice which I have named the Voice of Truth.

The Voice of Knowledge is composed of self-doubt, competition, judgment, social conditioning, heaviness, and negativity. It accounts for about 90% of inner dialogue and beliefs. It is completely false. This is the polluted sea.

The Voice of Truth is composed of self-trust, clarity, cooperation, acceptance, honesty, instinct, fluidity. It is the antithesis of the first and is completely true. This is the voice that treads softly along the top of the mind and requires immediate action rather than obsessive thought to access. It accounts for 10% of inner dialogue and beliefs. It is simultaneously the easiest and yet the most difficult voice to access. This is the free-flowing stream that originates from the cold, pure mountain glacier.

Which voice rules your own mind?

Strengths - Via Me

Part of knowing who we are is knowing our strengths and developing them. Most of us are taught to focus on our weaknesses and improve those. However, there are several good arguments against this mode of living, which I'll discuss in a later post. Essentially, this conventional approach fails to maximize our impact on the world.

One resource for helping uncovering our strengths is viame.org, which provides a prototypical psychology test and spits out a ranking of your top strengths. The basic version is free.

According to this test, my top 5 strengths are:

1. Bravery
2. Perseverance
3. Creativity
4. Love learning
5. Curiosity

Thinking about my past experiences, this makes sense to me. The first two in particular are less apparent to others as they are more of an internal quality which I tend not to express while the last three are probably quite apparent to my friends and even strangers.

Keep in mind this is only one resource and cannot define a dynamic individual. Introspection would be another useful tool in addition to the MBTI (which I resisted for a long time but found to be quite useful as of late).