Thanks for checking out the Weekly Learning Roundup. These bite-sized, weekly posts are designed to give you a quick hit of interesting learnings and articles I came across this week.
It’s a motley assortment of tips, resources, and links that will hopefully give you a bit of inspiration for the upcoming week. Enjoy!
What I’m reading —
The biggest threat facing middle-age men isn’t smoking or obesity. It’s loneliness. by Billy Baker
Whether you’re a middle-age man or not, this is a really good reminder of the importance of close friendships. According to research, women can maintain friendships over the phone but men need to do something together to maintain a friendship. The author suggests a standing, weekly get together for guys to do something – anything – to keep their friendships strong. Good advice.
Books, documentaries, or podcast episodes I’m enjoying —
The Book of Five Rings by Miyamoto Musashi (translated by Stephen F. Kaufman)
I read this book by one of Japan’s most important samurai warriors while I was traveling in Japan recently. Broken into five parts – the books of Water, Fire, Earth, Water, and No-thing – Musashi breaks down his philosophy on martial art and how to apply it in our day-to-day. The circumstances between samurai life five hundred years ago and today are stark (i.e. life and death literally meant life and death) but there are certain things like the commitment to your craft and finding any way to get the job done still ring true today. It’s a book that I plan on revisiting on a yearly basis moving forward.
A quote that’s inspiring me —
To handle yourself, use your head. To handle others, use your heart.
— Eleanor Roosevelt
“ah-ha!” thought of the week —
The power of self-talk.
I’ve been reading a book called You Can Change Your Life by Tim Laurence. It’s a book about a process called “The Hoffman Process” which helps individuals overcome emotional challenges from their childhoods. The thesis is that most – if not all – of our emotional challenges as adults come from what we observed and experienced as children.
Without getting into too much detail, one of the key insights the book shares is about the importance of finding fulfillment in what they call the “Quadrinity” which consists of your Emotions, Intellect, Spirit, and Body. A disconnect between any part of the Quadrinity can result in a disruption or frustration in our lives.
To me, one of the biggest insights was the importance of creating the space for self-talk between my Emotional self and my Intellectual self. I generally operate out of my Intellectual self more than my Emotional self but what I realized is that I’m often repressing important emotions that need to be expressed (or at least acknowledged!) So I took some time this week to just sit down and let my Emotional and Intellectual selves talk to each other in my head. It was like any other back-and-forth conversation but it was extremely refreshing to be able to see both sides talking to each other.
If you tend to live more in the Emotional self or Intellectual self, I recommend letting them come together for a conversation at some point. You might be surprised what comes out of it.
Product or service I’m loving —
If you’re looking for flights, check out hipmunk.com for low-cost airfare. I recently came back from a trip to Japan with my girlfriend and we were able to find a direct flight from Vancouver to Tokyo for $722.94 CAD. (Albeit we did book about 6 months in advance). The website has a really easy-to-use tool to find the lowest fair by switching dates and adjusting the “agony” level if you’re okay with going on a longer flight.
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As always, thanks for checking out this Weekly Learnings Roundup. Follow me on Twitter @peternakamura to see the full list of articles that I share on a daily basis.
Peter Nakamura 