🎊 Happy New Year!
I don’t know about you, but I’m super excited thinking about who I was last year at this time and the growth I’ve experienced simply surrounding myself with the right people and living a more purposeful and conscious life consistently.
I know I haven’t been very consistent with this newsletter over the past few weeks. But that’s going to change.
The truth is that after having a big year in terms of self-growth last year, I decided to take some time to conduct an integration and reflection phase, which was very insightful in revealing my next steps for this year.
In that spirit, I’d love to share the three central ideas I’m basing my 2022 upon from my reflection. Feel free to reply with your plans for the year!
✍ Consume less, act and reflect more – Last year, I spent most of my free time-consuming heaps of new content in the form of books, podcasts, articles and other media. While that was instrumental in expanding my perspective and mind, I received the most significant amount of growth from ideas that I did something with and then reflected upon from direct experience. There is no better teacher than direct experience – you may read a hundred books describing the scent of a rose, but you’ll never know its sweetness until you’ve stepped out into the garden yourself.
🧘♂️ Double down on meditation – I picked up several different habits last year – boxing, writing, journaling, passive-investing, waking up early, etc. Out of these, meditation is the one I’d go back to every time. I won’t go into all the benefits I’ve experienced here because that would make an article of its own, but I will strongly recommend you give it a try if you haven’t. I started with guided meditation last year, which helped me build the practice, and I’m going back to it to create more structure around my practice and expand my knowledge in consciousness and awareness. My app of choice is
Waking Up from Sam Harris, which I highly recommend.
🌄 Optimize for quality of experiences, not money – One of the most influential books I read last year was Die With Zero by Bill Perkins, and its central theme has informed my thinking and decision-making around experiences and money ever since. In short, I will focus on accumulating more precious and life-affirming experiences as I did last year, like watching incredible art like Hamilton, climbing the tallest peak in Australia and having thought-provoking conversations with intelligent friends, even if it means I have to lose money and time in the short term. My health will decline, but my potential to earn a higher income will only increase. Why live a lesser life? You’ve only got one.
I’m creating a more in-depth article with other ideas from my reflections from last year. Stay tuned!
If you have a moment, tell me this:
If there’s one thing you could have accomplished by the end of this year, what would you want that to be?
To our best year yet 🍻
— Tanmay
😍 My Favourite Links
📃 Article – This one from More To That was an excellent reminder that the happiness and the sense of well-being you experience from travel and other novel experiences don’t last because the minds we take with us through each experience are anxiety-generating machines. The only recourse then becomes to explore the restless nature of the mind through practices like meditation, gratitude and reading.
🎥 Video – I found this gem from David Perell right before New Year’s, and it has sparked the critical theme of consuming less and acting more that I’m going for this year. Must watch if your content consumption doesn’t match up with the tangible results you’ve received.
🎤 Podcast – If you haven’t done so yet, use Tim Ferriss’s PYR method from this one to review your last year instead of resolutions like every year. I did mine in under an hour, and it was the most bang-for-buck activity I’ve done over the previous week.
📚 Book – I’m getting my first taste of Dostoevsky’s work with Notes From The Underground, considered to be one of the first existentialist novels. Although it’s fictional, Dostoevsky masterful ability to explore psychological nuance and depth is beyond spectacular and something you must experience first-hand. Given it’s a short book (only about 100 pages), it’s an easy sell for anyone looking to develop their open-mindedness.
💭 Quote of The Week
“No man ever steps in the same river twice. For it’s not the same river, and he’s not the same man.”
— Heraclitus
Follow me on Twitter for more brain food throughout the week! 🧠
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