💎 Friday Gems (A Deep hole, Anxiety is expensive, Visualize ideas!, Being content, Being patient, and much more!)
“It’s not events that upset us but our opinions about them.” - Seneca
Hey all!
A few weeks ago I added the new section to the newsletter and the Friday Gems issue called The Mindful Designer which was born from the need to help designers, myself included, embody mindful wisdom so we can thrive and not just survive, and bring joy and move past the struggles, continuously learn for professional growth, enhance our creativity, and most importantly lead with curiosity in our design practice.
I have been going back and forth on whether to create a separate newsletter out of it so I can expand on the topics I talk about.
Your input is important to me, so I would like to get your thoughts:
➡️ Would you find value in a separate The Mindful Designer newsletter?
Hit reply and let me know, thanks! 🙏🏽
On to this week’s gems.
Today's Gems
Self-Awareness
🕳️ A Deep Hole
Change takes time. Changing our unhelpful behaviors also takes time.
Going from being unaware of the problem to coping and eventually knowing how to not fall into the trap takes awareness, time, effort, and small steps forward, falling down and getting back up many times, and then being free from the unhelpful behavior.
Portia Nelson’s poem “Autobiography in Five Chapters” sums up the process beautifully.
Text of the poem from the image:
Autobiography in five short chapters
by Portia Nelson
Chapter One
I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I fall in.
I am lost....I am helpless.
It isn't my fault.
It takes forever to find a way out.
Chapter Two
I walk down the same street
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk
I pretend I don't see it
I fall in again.
I can't believe I am in this same place.
But, it wasn't my fault
It still takes a long time to get out.
Chapter Three
I walk down the same street
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk
I see it is there
I still fall in....it's a habit...but,
my eyes are open
I know where I am
It is MY fault
I get out immediately
Chapter Four
I walk down the same street
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk
I walk around it
Chapter Five
I walk down another street
I dug up this gem from the Low Fidelity archives:
There's A Hole in My Sidewalk!
Looking back just a few years ago I have noticed a pattern playing out in my life over and over again.
Self-Discovery
🤑 Anxiety is expensive
Anxiety is expensive—not just in terms of the mental toll, but in the way it costs us our lives. Every minute spent consumed by worry is a minute lost.
For the past few weeks I have been waking up around 2am and have not been able to go back to sleep. As soon as I wake up thoughts of what happened the day before and what could happen the next day keep racing through my head. This movie keeps playing over and over switching from one worry to the next. Thoughts such as, “why did I say that in the meeting?” or “what if I mess up on my project?” or “what if I miss my alarm and oversleep and end up missing my race?, the list goes on and on.
I mean really, it is quite predictable by now.
Worry leads to more worry, until the cycle becomes self-sustaining.
Each night the cycle continues.
But the problem isn’t with what is going on outside, in the world around us, it’s our reaction to the world.
Work. Your kids. Politics. Flying. These things aren’t the source of your anxiety. You are. They’re just places. Just people. Just things happening in the world. We’re the ones getting upset about them. Certainly, the airport isn’t thinking about us!
Yeah, thoughts that keep me up at night are nowhere else but in my mind.
So is there a way out? Yes!
The Stoics, a group of philosophers in ancient Greece and Rome who were focused on living a well-lived life, provided strategies to deal with this expensive habit that takes a toll on us mentally, physically, emotionally, and robs us of our precious time and attention.
The Stoics offered timeless strategies: stay in the present moment, detach from the illusion of control, and gain perspective. Epictetus reminds us, “It’s not events that upset us but our opinions about them.” Anxiety thrives on those opinions. Letting go of them can be transformative.
To sum it up, we can begin to loosen the grip anxiety has on us by:
Staying in the present moment instead of spending time lost in worry
Detaching from the illusion of control by realizing we don’t have complete power over situations or outcomes
Gain perspective by realizing we can choose to look at events from a helpful and wise lens rather than a negative view lens
But most importantly we can continually remind ourselves the words of Epictetus, a Stoic philosopher, “It’s not events that upset us but our opinions about them.”
Now I know how to tackle the anxious thoughts that wake me up at night. I’m looking forward to a good nights sleep. 💤
🔗 This is My Most Expensive Habit by Ryan Holiday
Visual Communication
✏️ A FREE Graphic recording quick skills course!
Get your sketching on!
You know those moments when everyone on your team seems to be on a different page and have a wildly different understanding of an idea?
In those moments, visual communication can be a savior. By quickly sketching the idea and sharing it we can help ourselves and our teams gain clarity, understanding, have better conversations, and understand complex concepts.
This is where developing your Graphic Recording skills will be useful. The more comfortable you are in communicating visually the faster you can communicate your ideas, get people on the same page, gain and retain knowledge, and cut through complexity.
Good enough is good enough! No time for perfection. Simple is good. Simple is fast.
I learned about Sara Firth from her visually engaging graphic article Making Sense of Complexity on Medium (Sorry, it’s Member Only Story). In her article she makes a case for embracing ambiguity and celebrating uncertainty wherever we come across it, and from my experience complexity is everywhere in our daily work and especially in how we communicate and collaborate with others.
Sharing ideas visually is a secret power that can help free us from the tyranny of endless meetings and long email chains.
Let me know if you take this course. I would love to hear your experience.
FREE Graphic recording quick skills course by Sarah Firth
Wisdom
💡 Being content with who you are
“To think that you will be happy by becoming something else is delusion. Becoming something else just exchanges one form of suffering for another form of suffering. But when you are content with who you are now, junior or senior, married or single, rich or poor, then you are free of suffering.”
― Ajahn Brahm
💡 Be patient, you’re growing
“When we plant a rose seed in the earth, we notice that it is small, but we do not criticize it as 'rootless and stemless.' We treat it as a seed, giving it the water and nourishment required of a seed.
When it first shoots up out of the earth, we don't condemn it as immature and underdeveloped; nor do we criticize the buds for not being open when they appear.
We stand in wonder at the process taking place and give the plant the care it needs at each stage of its development.
The rose is a rose from the time it is a seed to the time it dies. Within it, at all times, it contains its whole potential.
It seems to be constantly in the process of change; yet at each state, at each moment, it is perfectly all right as it is."
― W. Timothy Gallwey, The Inner Game of Tennis: The Classic Guide to the Mental Side of Peak Performance
That’s it for this week’s Friday Gems. Hit reply and share any gems you have found insightful.✌🏽
May curiosity be your guide!
Rizwan, maybe a good experiment is to make it a recurring theme or feature on this newsletter and see how it performs. That should tell you whether it’s worth the extra effort to make another newsletter. Remember once you go to two newsletters your workload more than doubles. :-)