Mind Candy is a newsletter on practical philosophy—ideas meant to be lived. Each month, we explore a new theme and examine what it demands of our lives.

This month we’re exploring adaptability.

Welcome to Wednesday Wisdom, our 3x3 Newsletter where I distill worldly advice for better living with 3 quotes, 3 observations, and 3 questions.

Subscribe now

Friction

🤨 Quote

“Some things benefit from shocks; they thrive and grow when exposed to volatility, randomness, disorder, and stressors.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Source: Antifragile

🧐 Observation

Throughout history, life was a struggle: for food, for freedom, in labor. But today, much of life has become frictionless.

We can acquire what we need without moving, say what we want and hide behind an avatar, and not depend on others if we choose not to.

But there is no adaptation without friction. Friction is the necessary building block to adapt to. A smoothed out life does not allow for someone to become who they can be, it does not allow for potential to be reached.

Like muscles, we must be strained, pushed, and pressured in order to grow.

A life without friction is a life that slowly, and quietly, shrinks us.

🤔 Question

What discomfort exists within my life I should keep rather than eliminate in order to help me grow?

Pressure

🤨 Quote

“…without any pressure, nothing important can ever be at stake.”

Paul Auster

Source: Hand to Mouth

🧐 Observation

We often see pressure as something we need to escape from, that we need a release from, something we need to manage.

But pressure is responsibility, and it is information.

Pressure reminds us that stakes are involved, that we are dealing with something that truly matters to us in some way.

A pressure-free life is not luxury, it’s apathy.

The weight we feel from pressure is our reminder that we care, deeply, about what we’re involved with.

🤔 Question

Where is the most pressure within my life and what are the stakes associated to that?

Stress Tests

🤨 Quote

“Difficulties strengthen the mind, as labor does the body.”

Seneca

Source: Letters from a Stoic

🧐 Observation

We do something with our mind we’d never do with our body: we attempt to circumvent the slightest discomfort.

Insults, setbacks, public failures, we try to avoid these at all costs. We see these as hindering us rather than being the friction we need to grow.

Yet when it comes to our body, we intuitively understand in order to build muscles, to get faster, to be more agile, they need to be trained, pressured, and put to the test.

Why when it comes to our mind do we look for the quickest path of escape but are willing to suffer through for the body?

It isn’t the work, it’s conditioning.

We’ve conditioned ourselves to expect stress in our muscles in order to train them. Likewise, we must train our brain to become comfortable with discomfort, sitting with failure, being rejected, the unhappiness of a situation.

It doesn’t mean we’re failures or we’re not good enough. It means we’re learning to train our mind the way we do our body.

Through repeated exposure to pressure.

🤔 Question

What difficulty do I have at the moment that I am trying to get through rather than grow from?

It’s through sharing that our newsletter spreads its wisdom.

Share

Hit the ❤️ button below if this resonated.

Share Mind Candy

This week’s Monday Meditation:

Until next time,

D.A. DiGerolamo

We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.

Mind Candy is a newsletter on practical philosophy—ideas meant to be lived. Each month, we explore a new theme and examine what it demands of our lives.

This month we’re exploring adaptation.

Welcome to Wednesday Wisdom, our 3x3 Newsletter where I distill worldly advice for better living with 3 quotes, 3 observations, and 3 questions.

Subscribe now

Impressions

🤨 Quote

“Make it your study, then, to confront every harsh impression with the words: ‘You are but an impression and not at all what you appear to be.’”

Epictetus

Source: Enchiridion

🧐 Observation

Thoughts naturally stir within us and because of this, we automatically assume they’re true.

First impressions strike us, making us feel as though they are reality.

The problem is, impressions are not themselves events, only our interpretation of those events.

We cannot adapt to life when we cannot see it clearly. If we don’t challenge our impressions, we can’t see reality.

Only what our mind decides reality is.

🤔 Question

What is something you are treating as a fact that could be an impression?

Guarding Our Thoughts

🤨 Quote

“Your ability to control your thoughts—treat it with respect. It’s all that protects your mind from false perceptions—false to your nature, and that of all rational beings. It’s what makes thoughtfulness possible, and affection for other people, and submission to the divine.”

Marcus Aurelius

Source: Meditations

🧐 Observation

We don’t control our thoughts.

We like to think we do, we like to believe we can dictate what will give rise next within our minds.

But our thinking is driven at a much deeper level.

Someone makes a comment, or looks at us a specific way, or has a shift in tone, and before we even fully understand what is happening, a story starts to play. our thinking shifts. Our perspective of the individual changes.

And then our behavior follows.

Our behavior doesn’t change because of the event, but because of what the event represented to us, how it triggered a story within us.

And we allowed that to direct our actions.

If we don’t guard our thoughts something or someone will direct them for us.

🤔 Question

When was a time someone’s words or actions influenced you? If you cannot think of a time, start paying closer attention.

Imagination vs Reality

🤨 Quote

“We are more often frightened than hurt; and we suffer more from imagination than from reality.”

Seneca

Source: Letters from a Stoic

🧐 Observation

Most of what we react to never comes to fruition.

We fill gaps, assume intent, build neat stories.

Why? Because our mind craves certainty, even if it needs to invent it.

This drives us to follow our emotions and the way these stories make us feel. We stop questioning our thoughts, and are guided by our feelings.

The problem is, when the emotion takes over, it feels real to us.

But when this happens, we stop thinking and just start reacting.

🤔 Question

Reflect upon a recent event. If we were to strip away the story tied to it, what would we find instead?

It’s through sharing that our newsletter spreads its wisdom.

Share

Hit the ❤️ button below if this resonated.

Share Mind Candy

This week’s Monday Meditation:

Until next time,

D.A. DiGerolamo

We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.

Mind Candy is a newsletter on practical philosophy—ideas meant to be lived. Each month, we explore a new theme and examine what it demands of our lives.

This month we’re exploring adaptability.

Welcome to Wednesday Wisdom, our 3x3 Newsletter where I distill worldly advice for better living with 3 quotes, 3 observations, and 3 questions.

Subscribe now

Updating Our Thinking

🤨 Quote

“Great thinkers don't harbor doubts because they're impostors. They maintain doubts because they know we're all partially blind and they're committed to improving their sight.”

Adam Grant

Source: Think Again

🧐 Observation

Doubt is often thought of as a weakness, showing a lack of conviction in one’s thinking.

Yet doubt is there to expose flaws in our thoughts.

When we stop asking questions, when we assume what we know is all there is to know, we not only stop growing, we put ourselves in a box and throw away the key.

When we stop updating our knowledge, we risk seeing the world for how it was, not how it is.

🤔 Question

What is a thought, belief, or opinion you hold that may no longer match reality?

Resisting Instability

🤨 Quote

“If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favorable.”

Seneca

Source: Letters from a Stoic

🧐 Observation

While we want our thinking to be agile, it cannot be unanchored.

Change does not always equal progress.

Constantly reacting to life—changing our minds, adjusting our beliefs, repeating things we hear others say—without ever truly owning them ourselves, doesn’t move us forward, it just scatters us and makes us intellectually shallow.

Without direction, we are adrift.

When we haven’t committed to anything, when we haven’t set a direction, expectation, or bar, we’re moved by whatever feels right in the moment. It’s untethered to reality and driven by feeling rather than reason.

Adaptability requires we update our thinking, but not at the expense of structure.

🤔 Question

Think of something you are attempting to optimize for at the moment. Do you have clear enough direction or guidance to make the right decisions?

Finding Our Filter

🤨 Quote

“The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook… Any number of impressions of any number of sensory objects may be leaping and dancing before our eyes at once, but only those which we attend to are effective.”

William James

Source: The Principles of Psychology

🧐 Observation

In order to be adaptable, we need to update our beliefs and opinions, but we cannot update all of them.

We fix this by creating a filter.

But rather than update everything, we tend to only update our beliefs from information that is presented to us that we agree with, or makes us comfortable.

Typically, we do not update our thinking when we are presented with information that runs counter to what we already believe or doesn’t sit well with us.

The problem is, this isn’t wisdom, it’s comfort. It’s preference. It’s easy acceptance.

If we build our filtering mechanisms around what brings us comfort, then we will always allow things that we already believe and reject what we don’t. Anything that rubs us the wrong way, doesn’t immediately land, or challenges us are easily ignored.

Wisdom isn’t about accepting what makes us feel right, it’s about understanding why it is right.

Our attention is limited, it’s our most valuable asset.

We must direct it with intention.

🤔 Question

What is one thing you accept too readily? What is one you reject?

It’s through sharing that our newsletter spreads its wisdom.

Share

Hit the ❤️ button below if this resonated.

Share Mind Candy

This week’s Monday Meditation:

Until next time,

D.A. DiGerolamo

We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.

Mind Candy is a newsletter on practical philosophy—ideas meant to be lived. Each month, we explore a new theme and examine what it demands of our lives.

This month we’re exploring adaptability.

Welcome to Wednesday Wisdom, our 3x3 Newsletter where I distill worldly advice for better living with 3 quotes, 3 observations, and 3 questions.

Subscribe now

False Footing

🤨 Quote

“Time is a river, a violent current of events, glimpsed once and already carried past us, and another follows and is gone.”

Marcus Aurelius

Source: Meditations 4.43

🧐 Observation

We inherently know life is filled with change, yet, we don’t like to live like it does.

We move throughout our days as though they are stable—same routines, same interactions, same general expectations. And this gives us a false sense of stability, like we’re standing on solid ground.

Until it doesn’t.

Something inevitably breaks the illusion and we’re forced to confront the reality that we’ve had a false footing the whole time.

A diagnosis.

A layoff.

A loss.

Each event a jolt to our nervous system, each a stark reminder we were under the false pretense life was in some ways stable.

The truth is, things are always shifting, the world is always moving toward a state of chaos, it just happens to be doing so at a speed we seldom notice.

Until it’s too late.

🤔 Question

What is one area of your life that you’re assuming stability in but truthfully haven’t given it enough attention?

Adaptability in Action

🤨 Quote

“…adapting to a changing environment isn’t something a company does--it’s something people do in the multitude of decisions they make every day.”

Adam Grant

Source: Think Again

🧐 Observation

Adaptability is not simply a mindset, it’s action.

We want to think of ourselves as adaptable, we want to think of ourselves as being able to pivot or adjust on the fly in an ever-changing world.

But then we encounter a situation that requires us to change something we’re comfortable in.

This is where our patterns burst to the surface and we see what our actions are truly made of:

• Formed habits

• Stock reactions

• An embedded identity

Adaptability is not simply a thought experiment. And it’s not about changing when things are easy.

Adaptability is best tested when our current operating model no longer works. This requires we rise to the challenge, that we be brave before the test.

“Fire tests gold and adversity tests the brave,” the Stoic philosopher Seneca wrote.

True adaptability is when we encounter a situation and we realize we must update to stay relevant…

…or fall behind.

🤔 Question

What is one behavior you’ve recently changed and what forced that change?

Letting Go

🤨 Quote

“When the facts change, sir, I change my mind. What do you do?”

John Maynard Keynes

Source: How to Think

🧐 Observation

We all resist change to an extent.

We choose not to change our mind because it’s an admission we were wrong.

And this is hard because we often have to admit we were wrong both in private and public.

Rather than face the criticism, the rejection, we defend our old views.

The problem is, reality never stops moving.

While we’re defending an old position, life has moved on. The longer we dig in those heels, the more expensive our admission becomes.

Adaptability begins when we can let go of an outdated version of ourselves and join reality where it is.

🤔 Question

What’s something you’re holding onto because you committed to it?

It’s through sharing that our newsletter spreads its wisdom.

Share

Hit the ❤️ button below if this resonated.

Share Mind Candy

This week’s Monday Meditation:

Until next time,

D.A. DiGerolamo

We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.

Mind Candy is a newsletter on practical philosophy—ideas meant to be lived. Each month, we explore a new theme and examine what it demands of our lives.

This month we’re exploring agency.

Welcome to Wednesday Wisdom, our 3x3 Newsletter where I distill worldly advice for better living with 3 quotes, 3 observations, and 3 questions.

Subscribe now

Simulation

🤨 Quote

“When you are considering your options, you evaluate each possible act and its experiential outcomes by imagining or running a mental simulation of what it would be like…”

L.A. Paul

Source: Transformative Experience

🧐 Observation

We’re told decisions require forethought, that they need planning and research.

Imagine the future. Think of the outcome. Decide if this is what we want.

The problem with it is that it only accounts for the present. We can’t know the future or our future selves.

How can we simulate a perspective for someone who does not yet exist?

The version of us imagining is not the version of us who will be experiencing the end result of that decision.

The simulation fails, not because we can’t imagine, but because some things in life require experience.

We must become that future self to truly understand the decisions we’ve made.

🤔 Question

What decision are you currently struggling with that would benefit from you just experiencing it instead?

Presence

🤨 Quote

“Awe enables us to see that life is a process, that all endless forms most beautiful are deeply interconnected, and involve change, transformation, impermanence, and death.”

Dacher Keltner

Source: Awe

🧐 Observation

When we cannot simulate transformation, we look outside of ourselves for it.

We search for moments that will change us.

• The right opportunities to advance our careers.

• The right paths that lead to our success.

• The right experience to provide us proper knowledge.

But transformation is hardly ever revealed this way.

Instead, it unfolds slowly, and in the places we stopped paying attention to.

• It appears within the moments that rush by.

• Or in experiences we don’t yet recognize as meaningful.

• And in the life that is unfolding right before us.

When we can refocus ourselves to the experience we are having, we begin our journey of transformation.

🤔 Question

Could you be missing the needed piece for future change because it’s rushing past you?

Reshape

🤨 Quote

“I thought that I was vanishing, but instead I was only coming true.”

Maggie Smith

Source: You Could Make This Place Beautiful

🧐 Observation

We cannot predict who we will become or what event will transform us.

Often, it first feels like a loss.

A sense of instability, a sense that something is slipping away.

And that’s because it is. A version of ourselves we knew, that we were comfortable with, is fading out.

So we try to control it. We resist change. We dig in our heels and fight back.

But the transformation will happen either way.

Will it drag us to our future selves, bringing with it unnecessary baggage? Or will we accept the challenge and walk through the experience knowing the weight it carries?

Life will change us.

It’s up to us to decide how.

🤔 Question

What in life feels painful but may in fact be a reshaping of who you are?

It’s through sharing that our newsletter spreads its wisdom.

Share

Hit the ❤️ button below if this resonated.

Share Mind Candy

This week’s Monday Meditation:

Until next time,

D.A. DiGerolamo

We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.

Mind Candy is a newsletter on practical philosophy—ideas meant to be lived. Each month, we explore a new theme and examine what it demands of our lives.

This month we’re exploring agency.

Welcome to Wednesday Wisdom, our 3x3 Newsletter where I distill worldly advice for better living with 3 quotes, 3 observations, and 3 questions.

Subscribe now

Constraints

🤨 Quote

“Man is born free, but he is everywhere in chains”

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Source: The Social Contract

🧐 Observation

Constraints on our freedom are often thought of by external forces—government, laws, institutions.

But we seldom ever think of these constraints as coming from somewhere else. Rather than be external, they’re internal, coming from decisions made.

• We accept situations.

• We internalize our position in life.

• We repeat bad patterns.

When we take a step back, we see most of our constraints—the ones that impact our day-to-day lives—are in fact self-imposed.

What we took as limitations is actually structure we apply within our lives—habits, personality traits, beliefs.

Chains aren’t always visible, they don’t always come from external forces.

Sometimes, the ones that carry the most weight, are the ones we impose upon ourselves.

🤔 Question

What is a constraint in your life that may only exist because you’ve accepted it?

Discipline

🤨 Quote

“Freedom has been defined as the opportunity for self-discipline.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower

Source: The Road to Character

🧐 Observation

The freedom we desire isn’t more control, it isn’t more space, or safety, it’s comfort.

But true freedom is one that requires responsibility—ownership for our life and the decisions we make within.

• No one else to blame.

• No pre-written script.

• No structure outside of what we ourselves make.

Discipline is there to make freedom usable, to give it its true weight.

Without discipline, we fall back into blaming, expecting others to fix our lives, to build the path for us.

If we want freedom, we should want discipline, it’s the only way to truly live free.

🤔 Question

Where do you have freedom in your life but are not applying discipline?

Conformity

🤨 Quote

“He who has attained to only some degree of freedom of mind cannot feel other than a wanderer on the earth-though not as a traveler to a final destination: for this destination does not exist.”

Friedrich Nietzsche

Source: Hiking with Nietzsche

🧐 Observation

To think freely is to think dangerously.

There are costs to thinking for oneself:

• We step outside our group.

• We refuse to pick a side.

• We don’t accept easy answers.

But this type of thinking creates friction in our lives. It creates isolation. It creates fear through thinking differently, from being different, through being outcast.

Which is why we don’t go this route. Instead:

• We conform.

• We follow our group.

• We repeat what others say, do, and think.

Not because we can’t think for ourselves, not because we don’t want to, but because we’re afraid of the cost.

To truly be free is to be enough to walk one’s own path, knowing the weight of that decision.

🤔 Question

Where have you leaned into group thought over your own individual ideas?

It’s through sharing that our newsletter spreads its wisdom.

Share

Hit the ❤️ button below if this resonated.

Share Mind Candy

This week’s Monday Meditation:

Until next time,

D.A. DiGerolamo

We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.

Mind Candy is a newsletter on practical philosophy—ideas meant to be lived. Each month, we explore a new theme and examine what it demands of our lives.

This month we’re exploring agency.

Welcome to Wednesday Wisdom, our 3x3 Newsletter where I distill worldly advice for better living with 3 quotes, 3 observations, and 3 questions.

Subscribe now

Meaning’s Responsibility

🤨 Quote

“Man transcends himself either toward another human being or toward meaning… Conscience is that capacity which empowers him to seize the meaning of a situation in its very uniqueness… Ultimately every person is irreplaceable...”

Viktor Frankl

Source: The Will to Why

🧐 Observation

We tend to think of meaning like a mystical destination, something we must discover somewhere in the world.

But meaning isn’t waiting for us to find it. In fact, meaning is right before us.

Life demands we answer the call. And this is what makes life so hard. It demands we take responsibility for our lives.

Situations will appear. Decisions will have to be made. And this means we’re in control, we’re the ones who need to respond.

We’re the ones who must take action. If we don’t, we’re not just avoiding, we’re throwing away moments that lead to the meaning of our lives.

If we’re looking for meaning, we should start with taking responsibility for our lives.

🤔 Question

What is something in your life you’ve been waiting to act on?

Find Your Why

🤨 Quote

“If we possess our why of life we can put up with any how.”

Friedrich Nietzsche

Source: In Emergency, Break Glass

🧐 Observation

Most of us avoid suffering because we see it as a problem.

And yet, upon closer inspection, we can see this is a lie we tell ourselves to avoid the deeper truth.

We avoid meaningless suffering, but we are more than willing to suffer for something we see meaning in.

• We suffer for a creative endeavor or job we want.

• We suffer through exercise to get in shape or be better than the day before.

• We suffer for love and connection.

If we’re invested in it, we’ll suffer for it.

So, the issue we face is not about suffering, it’s about finding the reason we’re willing to suffer.

It’s not that we don’t know life is hard, it’s that we know it’s hard and struggle when we can’t establish a reason for the work it requires.

When we encounter this, we tend to meander, wait for inspiration, and tell ourselves we need clarity

If we are suffering, the first step shouldn’t be to alleviate the suffering, it should be to look for the meaning within the suffering itself.

Once we can articulate this, the suffering lessens and we’re more inclined to tackle the task at hand.

🤔 Question

What is one thing or area you’ve been struggling with that you have yet to find your why for?

Agency Over Comfort

🤨 Quote

“…the tension between agency and autonomy can manifest in the meanings of things themselves, or rather in our relationship to them.”

Matthew Crawford

Source: Shop Class as Soulcraft

🧐 Observation

Even when we discover the meaning we need for our lives, we will work to reject it.

One reason for this is we experience freedom and come to understand the weight of responsibility that comes with having our own agency.

It demands we take control. We show up. We follow through. We own the responsibility of our lives.

This is daunting. It places the burden of right or wrong, success and failure, right in our laps.

So instead, we drag our feet, we self-sabotage, we avoid commitments.

It’s not that we can’t handle it, it’s not that we lack the decision-making power, it’s that we freely give it up so we don’t have to be bound to the responsibility for our lives.

🤔 Question

Where in your life are you rejecting responsibility by purposely keeping distance?

It’s through sharing that our newsletter spreads its wisdom.

Share

Hit the ❤️ button below if this resonated.

Share Mind Candy

Catch up on this week’s Meditation:

Until next time,

D.A. DiGerolamo

We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.

Mind Candy is a newsletter on practical philosophy—ideas meant to be lived. Each month, we explore a new theme and examine what it demands of our lives.

This month we’re exploring agency.

Welcome to Wednesday Wisdom, our 3x3 Newsletter where I distill worldly advice for better living with 3 quotes, 3 observations, and 3 questions.

Subscribe now

Attitude

🤨 Quote

“A pessimistic attitude may seem so deeply rooted as to be permanent. I have found, however, that pessimism is escapable. Pessimists can in fact learn to be optimists, and not through mindless devices like whistling a happy tune or mouthing platitudes… but by learning a new set of cognitive skills.”

Martin Seligman

Source: Learned Optimism

🧐 Observation

We operate from the narratives we live with.

The stories we tell ourselves about failure inform how we tackle the future.

Do we accept the setback knowing we have agency? That we can take action? Or do we surrender to the belief we are no longer in control?

When we hold setbacks as proof we are incapable, we learn to stop trying. We conclude our efforts are not even worth it.

As Seligman has written:

“Optimism is invaluable for the meaningful life. With a firm belief in a positive future you can throw yourself into the service of that which is larger than you are.”

Pessimism may feel justified in the moment, it may guide us into believing the emotions that surface, but it’s ultimately just a story.

When we look at the larger arc of our lives, we see a setback is but a moment in time.

It is not the final verdict.

🤔 Question

What’s a setback you’ve had recently that you told yourself is permanent?

Identity

🤨 Quote

“It’s not things themselves that disturb us, but our judgments about them.”

Epictetus

Source: How to be Free

🧐 Observation

Setbacks are rarely an isolated occurrence. We tend to turn them into conclusions about ourselves, about who we are.

• A job rejection becomes a symbol for a lack of purpose.

• A mistake becomes a catastrophe.

• A setback is evidence we’re a failure.

This is the trap of judgment.

Judgments build, beliefs solidify, and before we know it, a setback turns into an identity.

If we don’t watch the judgments we’re making, if we’re not careful with the story we’re telling ourselves, we become the narrative we most often repeat.

🤔 Question

What is a conclusion you’ve made about yourself that you took as a fact rather than the story you were telling?

Potential

🤨 Quote

“People’s beliefs about their abilities have a profound effect on those abilities. Ability is not a fixed property; there is a huge variability in how you perform.”

Albert Bandura

Source: Self-Efficacy

🧐 Observation

We are not carved in stone, forever set in place.

We humans are extremely adaptable creatures, able to flex for what situations demand.

Yet, we place limits on ourselves that easily overpower reality. When we assume an outcome before a finger has been lifted, we cut ourselves in half.

When we allow this hesitation, we retreat, we question, we lower our worth.

We don’t hit our limits and fail, but rather, fail to hit our limits because of a lack of trying.

And when we allow this to continuously happen, we become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

🤔 Question

Think of a time you stopped a pursuit because you already assumed the outcome, regardless of whether or not it was true.

What did you learn from that experience?

It’s through sharing that our newsletter spreads its wisdom.

Share

Hit the ❤️ button below if this resonated.

Share Mind Candy

This week’s Monday Meditation:

Until next time,

D.A. DiGerolamo

We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.

Mind Candy is a newsletter on practical philosophy—ideas meant to be lived. Each month, we explore a new theme and examine what it demands of our lives.

This month we’re exploring agency.

Welcome to Wednesday Wisdom, our 3x3 Newsletter where I distill worldly advice for better living with 3 quotes, 3 observations, and 3 questions.

Subscribe now

Decisions

🤨 Quote

“Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.”

Jean-Paul Sartre

Source: Existentialism is a Humanism

🧐 Observation

It is inevitable. At one point or another, we will all have to stand on our own two feet and take responsibility for our lives.

It’s easy to hide behind excuses, to point the finger, to blame fate. But we often ignore our decisions in the matter.

It’s our decision to stay silent when a coworker is humiliated in front of colleagues.

It’s our decision to leave for work at a particular time knowing if we hit traffic we will be late.

It’s our decision to not try and save money when our future self will be wishing we had.

Refusing to speak is a choice.

Refusing to plan is a choice.

Refusing to have foresight is a choice.

We all have choices and from those choices decisions must be made. Even not making a decision is in itself a decision.

The truth is, we choose not to accept responsibility not because we don’t know the right decision, but because the right decision feels too costly.

Difficult decisions don’t go away, they just become heavier with time.

🤔 Question

Where in your life are you avoiding a decision by telling yourself you have no choice?

Circumstance

🤨 Quote

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances.”

Viktor Frankl

Source: Man’s Search for Meaning

🧐 Observation

We often believe circumstances determine outcome, but the truth is, they only partially do.

They constrict.

They limit.

They hinder.

But circumstance does not dictate outcome.

The result is not inevitable. It is not written in stone. It is not prophecy.

“Not to assume it’s impossible because you find it hard,” Marcus Aurelius reminded himself. “But to recognize that if it’s humanly possible, you can do it too.”

Every circumstance has two handles the Stoic philosopher Epictetus would say, one to assist us and one to hinder us.

It is up to us to choose which handle we want to grab.

Every circumstance will be different, but every decision is the same: do we take action, regardless of how hard it is, to help ourselves? Or do we choose the other path, taking the path of least resistance which will eventually hinder us?

🤔 Question

How are you framing your current circumstances as building blocks for your desired life?

Responsibility

🤨 Quote

“So whenever we are frustrated, or troubled, or pained, let us never hold anyone responsible except ourselves, meaning our own opinions.”

Epictetus

Source: How to be Free

🧐 Observation

We’re all going to encounter external events that challenge us, that stand in our way, that make us want to back down. But not all of us will view them the same way.

We each see the event through the lens of our own experiences. We create judgments and beliefs, we decide internally how we will handle the situation at hand.

But it ultimately is our situation to handle.

No one but us can hold the judgment over the event. No one but us can shift our perspective of the scenario that lay before us.

To accept the interpretation of the event is to take responsibility for our lives and our perceptions of it. It does not guarantee safety, but it does provide clarity.

Clarity of what we hold within our power, of what we must do, of what the moment requires of us.

When we refuse the opportunity to take ownership of our judgments, we relinquish control of our perceptions of the world.

By doing so, we freely hand the reins to anyone willing to take them.

🤔 Question

Who are you voluntarily granting power of your life to?

It’s through sharing that our newsletter spreads its wisdom.

Hit the ❤️ button below to share some candy.

Share

Share Mind Candy

Until next time,

D.A. DiGerolamo

We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.

Mind Candy is a newsletter on practical philosophy—ideas meant to be lived. Each month, we explore a new theme and examine what it demands of our lives.

This month we’re exploring emotional agility.

Welcome to Wednesday Wisdom, our 3x3 Newsletter where I distill worldly advice for better living with 3 quotes, 3 observations, and 3 questions.

Subscribe now

Character Formation

🤨 Quote

“Moral virtue comes about as a result of habit.”

Aristotle

Source: Nicomachean Ethics

🧐 Observation

Our lives are not the result of a single dramatic moment, but instead are the sum every day small events, seen only by the individual.

Virtue isn’t something we have, it’s something we do. Daily. Through every choice we make.

Every thought we entertain or action we take is another piece in the architecture of the individual we become.

The calm pilot during a technical malfunction, the firefighter running into a burning building, the level-headed leader driving the company that’s been beaten down—all examples of individuals forged not in crisis but daily choices and actions. They built their muscles long before they were needed. Character is built in the quiet moments of the mundane of life.

Every day is a vote for the person we wish to become.

Vote accordingly.

🤔 Question

What is a quiet habit you’re currently building?

Repetition

🤨 Quote

“Habit is the enormous fly-wheel of society.”

William James

Source: The Principles of Psychology

🧐 Observation

Every thought, every emotion, every choice we make forms a groove into who we become.

The mind is malleable but repetition hardens it into a pattern.

A football player’s head placement for a proper tackle. A musician’s hands on the correct chords. A surgeon’s precision.

But herein lies the double-edged sword of habit: it can make excellence ingrained, but can also make dysfunction automatic.

When an emotion arises and we react—slamming the door when angry, or balling our fists—we’re practicing, ingraining that action deeper.

We can blame circumstances all we want but the truth is, our emotional responses are trained.

And if they’re not what we want, then they must be retrained.

The grooves we carve today become the reflexive response we have tomorrow.

Choose them deliberately.

🤔 Question

What reflexive response do you need to adjust?

Thought Patterns

🤨 Quote

“The soul becomes dyed with the color of its thoughts.”

Marcus Aurelius

Source: Meditations

🧐 Observation

Dye doesn’t immediately transform fabric. The process is slow, moving thread by thread. Likewise, a single thought doesn’t change behavior.

Being anxious over an upcoming meeting doesn’t make you an anxious person. But anxiety that occurs over days, and situations, that’s not just emotion, it’s identity.

This is what makes unconscious patterns dangerous. They aren’t loud, they don’t announce themselves. Instead, they creep in, slowly, under the radar.

Patterns like this eliminate choice, they remove our control, because they make us feel like our emotions are just who we are, rather than see they are simply a reinforced thought pattern waiting to be dispelled.

What we return to mentally, what we reinforce with our thoughts becomes who we are, how we act, and how we decide.

If left unchecked, we lose ourselves and in turn become our thought patterns.

🤔 Question

Looking back at the emotional states of the week, what patterns can you recognize?

It’s through sharing that our newsletter spreads its wisdom.

Hit the ❤️ and button below to share some candy.

Share

Share Mind Candy

Until next time,

D.A. DiGerolamo

We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.

Mind Candy is a newsletter on practical philosophy—ideas meant to be lived. Each month, we explore a new theme and examine what it demands of our lives.

This month we’re exploring emotional agility.

Welcome to Wednesday Wisdom, our 3x3 Newsletter where I distill worldly advice for better living with 3 quotes, 3 observations, and 3 questions.

Subscribe now

Inner Authority

🤨 Quote

“The mind is that which is roused and directed by itself. It makes of itself what it chooses. It makes what it chooses of its own experience.”

Marcus Aurelius

Source: Meditations

🧐 Observation

Emotions are powerful forces that arise within us. When they arrive, it can easily feel like they are taking control—our heart begins racing, we get tightness in the chest, our palms sweat.

But these are merely bodily reactions to the emotions. It is only half of the equation.

Our mind does not simply receive the emotions but helps shape them.

The same experience can be interpreted multiple ways. And it is the mind that helps make these distinctions.

It is not a passive observer but a director, the one who instructs the emotions and our interpretation of them.

If we want to master recovering from our emotions quicker, we have to learn the mind has the ultimate authority.

If we want to become a specific version of ourselves, one not enslaved by our emotional states, then we have to remind ourselves of the power of the mind.

As Marcus Aurelius reminded himself:

“You have a mind?

—Yes.

Well, why not use it? Isn’t that all you want—for it to do its job?”

🤔 Question

When an emotion strikes today, pause and ask yourself, “Is this the reaction I want from this emotion?” If not, what do you have to do to reorient yourself?

Delay

🤨 Quote

“When angry, count to ten, before you speak; if very angry, an hundred.”

Thomas Jefferson

Source: Thomas Jefferson: His Essential Wisdom

🧐 Observation

Anger has the ability to warp time.

When it grabs hold of us, time speeds up. Urgency seems critical:

• Retort immediately

• Defend ourselves

• Go on the offensive

But while an emotion may arise involuntarily, our response to it is completely voluntary.

We don’t need to feel the emotion and immediately react. For every impulse of immediacy, there is one of control, of delay, of adjustment.

We hold within our power the ability to control our actions, that includes our responses to emotions.

• Delay is not weakness.

• Silence is not complicity.

• A breath is not a waste of time.

They’re sovereignty.

We don’t need to let anger, or any emotion, choose our actions for us.

🤔 Question

When anger strikes, what would an extra breath, an extra moment, provide you?

Reinforcement

🤨 Quote

“Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become.”

James Clear

Source: Atomic Habits

🧐 Observation

We seldom think of all the small choices we make daily and how they reinforce our future self.

• The quick retort.

• The frustrated reaction.

• The avoidance of connection.

But each of these decisions, while driven by our emotional state, casts a vote for who we will become.

When we’re driven by our emotions and we don’t seize control, our votes become reactive.

But we have the ability to be deliberate, to choose discipline over reaction, restraint over impulse.

Who we become is built through the repeated choices we make daily.

🤔 Question

Reflecting on your decisions, what version of yourself are you voting for today?

It’s through sharing that our newsletter spreads its wisdom.

Hit the ❤️ and button below to share some candy.

Share

Share Mind Candy

Until next time,

D.A. DiGerolamo

We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.

Mind Candy is a newsletter on practical philosophy—ideas meant to be lived. Each month, we explore a new theme and examine what it demands of our lives.

This month we’re exploring emotional agility.

Welcome to Wednesday Wisdom, our 3x3 Newsletter where I distill worldly advice for better living with 3 quotes, 3 observations, and 3 questions.

Subscribe now

Beliefs

🤨 Quote

“The beliefs we hold about ourselves, the world, and the future shape our emotional experiences.”

Aaron T. Beck

Source: Cognitive Therapy and the Emotional Disorders

🧐 Observation

We like to believe we are the sole authors of our lives.

But we are in fact highly influenced by beliefs we didn’t choose—beliefs from our parents, failures, even expectations of how life is supposed to work.

When an event occurs, we’re not interacting with the event itself, we’re colliding with our held belief of it.

• Disagreement is conflict

• Feedback is judgment

• Sadness is weakness

When we can find the belief that underlies the feeling within ourselves, when we can find what is truly shaping us, we regain authorship over our reactions.

In turn, we pinpoint our faulty understandings of the world and begin to rewrite the logic of our lives.

🤔 Question

What was the last belief you realized was shaping your actions or thoughts?

Distortions

🤨 Quote

“We suffer more in imagination than in reality.”

Seneca

Source: Letters on Ethics

🧐 Observation

Think about a failure. How does that impact our mindset? For many, the first thought after failure is projection and catastrophizing.

We project into the future our current state. Fail once and it is easy to fall into the trap of thinking success will never come.

Our emotions take over and our mind easily follows along, even if the future is just imagined.

But imagination does not need to be obeyed. Not every thought we have is truth. Not every impression is reality. When we look at our mentality and the emotions arising from it, we can begin to see the distortion we make within our judgment.

We must remember, just because we discipline our imagination doesn’t mean we eliminate our emotions—it grounds them.

The mind will always look to the future. It will always spin up scenarios and possibilities. But when we can ground it in reason rather than fear, our emotions become information, not justification.

🤔 Question

Is the emotion I am feeling a response to reality or a story I’m telling myself?

Autopilot

🤨 Quote

“Being emotionally agile involves being sensitive to context and responding to the world as it is right now.”

Susan David

Source: Emotional Agility

🧐 Observation

Have you ever encountered a scenario and found your emotions automatically reacting to it?

When the dog misbehaves you become irritated, or when preparing for feedback become anxious. Or possibly dismissive when someone challenges your idea?

Each of these situations are habituated, patterns built into the way we think, act, and feel.

Each situation is new and unique but our automatic responses persist.

In order to become emotionally agile, we must, literally, breakup the pattern. We can do so through detached observance.

As the automatic emotion arises within us, we have an ability to be the observer rather than the driver of the moment. We can see the anger rising, or the anxiety bubbling, we can watch rather than act.

By creating intentionality with our attention, by moving from passive participant to active observer, we break the barrier of automation and begin to respond to the present moment rather than relive the past.

🤔 Question

Which experience did you go through today where you repeated an old script versus responding to the moment?

It’s through sharing that our newsletter spreads its wisdom.

Hit the ❤️ and button below to share some candy.

Share

Share Mind Candy

Until next time,

D.A. DiGerolamo

We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.

Mind Candy is a newsletter on practical philosophy—ideas meant to be lived. Each month, we explore a new theme and examine what it demands of our lives.

This month we’re exploring emotional agility.

Monday’s meditation 👇🏻

Welcome to Wednesday Wisdom, our 3x3 Newsletter where I distill worldly advice for better living with 3 quotes, 3 observations, and 3 questions.

Subscribe now

Misplaced Blame

🤨 Quote

“So whenever we are frustrated, or troubled, or pained, let us never hold anyone responsible except ourselves—meaning our own opinions.”

Epictetus

Source: How to be Free

🧐 Observation

When we become angry, frustrated, or annoyed, our first reaction is to look outward at the thing that triggered the emotion—the person, situation, or cause.

Someone criticizes us. It lands. We feel the anger, the hurt, the resentment rise within us.

We don’t question the emotion, we just react. We put up our defenses, shield anymore “attacks”, go on the offensive—we say something negative back, we try to get even, we build ourselves up to feel better.

But it’s not the words that were spoken that trigger us, it’s our judgments of them.

Judgments give emotion their bite.

But judgments are not facts.

The sooner we can accept this, the sooner we can ignore the things that hold no weight over us, the sooner we can have our own inner sanctuary.

🤔 Question

Reflect upon the last judgment you made. Are you treating it as fact or fiction?

Identity Fusion

🤨 Quote

“To be like the rock that the waves keep crashing over. It stands unmoved and the raging of the sea falls still around it.”

Marcus Aurelius

Source: Meditations

🧐 Observation

When an emotion strikes, it does so with great passion.

Anger can easily drop us into a rage, destroying everything in our path. Fear can paralyze us. Jealousy can make us paranoid.

The issue isn’t the emotion, they will naturally stir within us. The issue is when we fuse our identity with it.

When in the heat of an emotion, we move with it, allowing it to define not just our actions but who we become at that moment. Everything we think, say, and do is filtered through this and we lose a sense of ourselves.

We get wrapped up in a cycle of reactivity, everything in our lives being swooped up in our emotional state.

The rock metaphor is not meant to justify an emotionless state, rather, it represents one’s ability to not become the ocean when the water is constantly washing over it.

The sea can rage. The waves can strike. But the rock is unmoved by it.

Distance.

Observation.

Reflection.

These are what allow us to see the emotion but not become wrapped up within it.

🤔 Question

The next time your experience the heat of an emotion, ask yourself, are you experiencing the emotion or identifying with it?

Behavioral Surrender

🤨 Quote

“There is no proof of greatness so sure as when nothing that can occur can provoke you... the lofty mind, ever calm, situated in a tranquil resting place, keeping down below itself all things that anger it, is moderate and reverend and well ordered.”

Seneca

Source: How to Keep Your Cool

🧐 Observation

Regret starts in the emotions. It is driven by our actions and how we feel about them.

Anger leads us to say and do things we otherwise wouldn’t.

Fear whispers into our ear and seeds doubt and inaction.

Grief asks we isolate from those who could remind us we’re not alone.

Emotions are not the issue. They are there to instruct, to protect, to ask us to pause and think.

It’s the instructional aspect, the automatic responses we have when consumed by an emotion which are dangerous.

The key is not ridding ourselves of emotions but rather understanding they don’t have to control us.

Emotions inform but reason leads.

A calm mind is curated when we can realize that our emotional state does not need to be what drives our behavior.

🤔 Question

When an emotion arises, ask yourself, what behavioral direction is this trying to push me towards and why? And then ask, do I need to obey it?

It’s through sharing that our newsletter spreads its wisdom.

Hit the ❤️ and button below to share some candy.

Share

Share Mind Candy

Until next time,

D.A. DiGerolamo

We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.

Mind Candy is a newsletter on practical philosophy—ideas meant to be lived. Each month, we explore a new theme and examine what it demands of our lives.

This month we’re exploring restraint.

Welcome to Wednesday Wisdom, our 3x3 Newsletter where I distill worldly advice for better living with 3 quotes, 3 observations, and 3 questions.

Subscribe now

Moral Pedestals

🤨 Quote

“…people place themselves on moral pedestals that they deny their peers.”

David Dunning

Source: Grandstanding

🧐 Observation

We give ourself every excuse in the book for our actions—our upbringing, past experiences, lack of sleep the night before. But when we see the same actions in others, we don’t give them the benefit of the doubt, instead, we explain their actions as a character flaw or defect.

It’s a strange paradox we hold, providing ourselves grace while condemning someone else for the same complexities we share. Part of the reason seems to be first person experience, we feel and know ourselves. We know it’s complicated for why we acted a certain way. We have a direct line of insight into our own subjective experience.

Yet, when it comes to others, especially around morality, we hold a certainty that in the same situation we would not have responded the same way as they did.

We forget, or perhaps ignore, that if we were placed in the same situation—same place, scenario, stress—we might respond the exact same way.

We begin to exercise moral restraint when we disavow moral certainty, refusing to excuse our own actions over someone else’s.

It is humility to provide grace to others knowing we too could be standing, or have stood, in their exact same shoes.

🤔 Question

The next time you jump to a conclusion about someone, pause and think to yourself, if I were in that same situation, is it possible I may have acted the same way?

Moral Progress vs Performance

🤨 Quote

“There are those whose wish is to be noticed rather than to make moral progress. Don’t be like them, altering your dress or way of life so as to attract attention... perverse form of self-aggrandizement are things you should avoid.”

Seneca

Source: Moral Letters, Letter 5

🧐 Observation

Today’s culture praises visibility over authenticity. Alignment shows belonging whereas honesty risks exile.

In a world whose focus is on appearances rather than actions, we risk compromising not just our identity but our moral character.

It’s easier to get in line than stand outside it.

Easier to refute opposing arguments than steel-man them.

Easier to look the part than be apart.

Truly free thinkers know that moral restraint resists the allure of the group optics. It isn’t about being seen as the group wants, but rather, about seeing every event without ideological glasses on.

We need the willingness to buck the group, think independently, disagree passionately, and value truth above all else.

🤔 Question

Think of a time when you disagreed with a group you associate with. What are three reasons why you did not want to stand outside the group and either stayed silent or went along with everyone else?

Knowing One Side

🤨 Quote

“He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that.”

John Stuart Mill

Source: On Liberty

🧐 Observation

It is easy to assume moral clarity comes from certainty and conviction.

But the truth is, clarity, regardless of what kind, comes not from ourselves but from all of those around us.

Clarity comes from understanding multiple views, hearing different sides of an argument, avoiding the convictions of dogmatic thinking.

Moral restraint slows down judgment long enough for us to listen, to ask questions, to think about each side.

If we want to truly understand our own side, we have to start by resisting the urge to dismiss the opposing view.

This is how judgment remains reasoned.

🤔 Question

What harm is done to you by hearing someone else’s argument without rejecting it outright?

It’s through sharing that our newsletter spreads its wisdom.

Hit the ❤️ and button below to share some candy.

Share

Share Mind Candy

Until next time,

D.A. DiGerolamo

We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.

Mind Candy is a newsletter on practical philosophy—ideas meant to be lived. Each month, we explore a new theme and examine what it demands of our lives.

This month we’re exploring restraint.

Welcome to Wednesday Wisdom, our 3x3 Newsletter where I distill worldly advice for better living with 3 quotes, 3 observations, and 3 questions.

Subscribe now

Control

🤨 Quote

“Right now, then, make it your habit to tell every jarring thought or impression: ‘You are just an appearance and in no way the real thing.’ Next, examine it and test it by these rules that you have. First and foremost: does it involve the things up to us, or the things not up to us? And if it involves one of the things not up to us, have the following response ready: ‘Not my business.’”

Epictetus

Source: How to be Free

🧐 Observation

We assume our restraint fails because we want too much, and if only we desired less, discipline would be easier. But the problem is not desire itself, but rather, what we respond to without stopping to pause.

Impressions arrive with a sense of urgency—they feel important and personal, the impulse to respond immediately.

But Epictetus reminds us that impressions are just appearances, not commands. Restraint falls apart the second we conflate appearance with obligation.

Not everything requires our response, and very few things are hindered by taking a moment to analyze what is before us.

Before restraint can be established, we must ask: “is this within my control?”

Space eases the impulse of urgency. The truth is, most things can wait, we can give space, we can allow the moment some breathing room.

Appearances are not obligations, and discipline is built when we can recognize that in our daily lives.

🤔 Question

What is something you’ve been taking responsibility for that is not in fact up to you?

Judgment

🤨 Quote

“Discard your misperceptions.

Stop being jerked like a puppet.

Limit yourself to the present.

Understand what happens—to you, to others.

Analyze what exists, break it all down: material and cause.

Anticipate your final hours.

Other people’s mistakes? Leave them to their makers.”

Marcus Aurelius

Source: Meditations

🧐 Observation

We rush to judgment because we live in reactive environments—always responding, rarely examining. Impressions take hold when we lack proper judgment.

Emotions grab us.

External events control us.

Rationality goes out the window.

Restraint dies in these scenarios.

Misperception fragments our attention, it forces us to work with one arm behind our back. We willingly give up agency when we allow ourselves to be so scattered.

The result?

Chaos.

Disorganization.

Anxiety.

We have no chance of implementing restraint into our lives if we cannot examine what is before us—substance, cause, impression.

Without proper judgment, we miss out on the ability to make life more manageable. Restraint requires judgment—judgment simplifies. It provides space and clarity, and without that, we can do nothing but react.

With proper judgment, life becomes manageable once again.

🤔 Question

Think about yesterday. Where is one area you find yourself reacting to rather than examining?

Reflection

🤨 Quote

“When the daylight has faded from view… I become an inspector and reexamine the course of my day, my deeds and words. I hide nothing from myself. I omit nothing.”

Seneca

Source: How to Keep Your Cool

🧐 Observation

Restraint has no ability to succeed without reflection. Too often we allow life to quickly sweep us along without stopping to reflect on the day that is being laid to rest.

Without reflection, impressions slip through, we become reactive, judgments are misaligned with impressions.

Reflection provides clarity through creating distance. Picking apart our day, what went right and what didn’t is not punishment but instead humility. It’s this honesty that builds restraint, that uncovers our blindspots.

Restraint is built through reflection, not force.

🤔 Question

If you were to remove excuses, what would an honest reflection of your day look like?

It’s through sharing that our newsletter spreads its wisdom.

Hit the ❤️ and button below to share some candy.

Share

Share Mind Candy

Until next time,

D.A. DiGerolamo

We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.

Mind Candy is a newsletter on practical philosophy—ideas meant to be lived. Each month, we explore a new theme and examine what it demands of our lives.

This month we’re exploring restraint.

Welcome to Wednesday Wisdom, our 3x3 Newsletter where I distill worldly advice for better living with 3 quotes, 3 observations, and 3 questions.

Subscribe now

Facing Facts

🤨 Quote

“…it is nearly always more advantageous to face the facts with which we must deal than to remain ignorant of them.”

Harry G. Frankfurt

Source: On Truth

🧐 Observation

Restraint doesn’t fail because of a lack of discipline but rather because we choose ignorance over truth.

Our actions, our habits, our daily thoughts and mental conversations with oneself, we avoid looking at critically because it forces us into reflecting on a version of ourselves we may not necessarily like to see.

Consider how we start a new routine such as going to the gym. We may start out strong, going consistently, but after a while, we skip a day here or there. Then a day turns into two. We say work gets in the way, or other obligations, but if we are honest, we can see these are excuses.

The routine falls apart not because of a single missed day but because we did not hold ourselves accountable time after time.

Ignorance protects our feelings and allows us to lean into impulse. But if we want real change, lasting change, we need to be honest.

You can’t create discipline around what you choose not to accept and see.

🤔 Question

What area or pattern exists in your life you purposely have avoided looking at?

Conscious Ignorance

🤨 Quote

“Thoroughly conscious ignorance is the prelude to every real advance in science.”

Stuart Firestein

Source: Ignorance

🧐 Observation

The only way out of ignorance is an acceptance of it. Ignorance acknowledged moves from a liability to a strength.

The first thing we do when we look ignorant, our one-jerk reaction, is to lie and pretend like we know. But this creates an even larger gap between knowledge and ourselves.

When we admit that we don’t know something, we breakdown the barriers of ignorance and allow for deliberate learning.

Conscious ignorance gives us space to accept our shortcomings. It quells the impulse to appear like we have all the answers.

Greater judgment comes from the restraint and humility to be honest and know when to say, “I don’t know.”

Weakness becomes strength through honesty and acceptance.

🤔 Question

Where in your life are you being willfully ignorant and how can moving to a “conscious ignorance” mindset shape the next three months of your life?

White Lies

🤨 Quote

“Reality cannot be ignored except at a price; and the longer the ignorance is persisted in, the higher and the more terrible becomes the price that must be paid.”

Aldous Huxley

Source: Me, Myself, and Us

🧐 Observation

We like white lies, especially white lies we tell about, and to, ourselves.

Our habits, what we consume, the way we act with others, they’re all malleable in our minds if it means not having to look in the mirror.

But at what cost? Reality continues on regardless of whether we choose to accept it. The longer we tell the lie to ourselves, the longer we remain ignorant, the more we compound the problem. A white lie turns into a snowball whenever we allow it free rein over the knowledge of ourselves.

We desire to feel comfortable. We desire to see ourselves in a positive light. But restraint isn’t there to deny the comforts we seek, but rather, to help reposition our minds for long-term pleasure through radical honesty with ourselves.

Ignorance has a steep cost, and it comes with interest if we’re not careful.

🤔 Question

Reflect on a truth you’ve postponed admitting to yourself. What was the true cost?

It’s through sharing that our newsletter spreads its wisdom.

Share

Hit the ❤️ and button below to share some candy.

Share Mind Candy

Until next time,

D.A. DiGerolamo

We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.

Mind Candy is a newsletter on practical philosophy—ideas meant to be lived. Each month, we explore a new theme and examine what it demands of our lives.

This month we’re exploring restraint.

Welcome to Wednesday Wisdom, our 3x3 Newsletter where I distill worldly advice for better living with 3 quotes, 3 observations, and 3 questions.

Subscribe now

Decision Systems

🤨 Quote

“The purpose of setting goals is to win the game. The purpose of building systems is to continue playing the game. True long-term thinking is goal-less thinking. It's not about any single accomplishment. It is about the cycle of endless refinement and continuous improvement. Ultimately, it is your commitment to the process that will determine your progress.”

James Clear

Source: Atomic Habits

🧐 Observation

Restraint is too often thought of as willpower when in reality it is the systems we build into our lives.

Restraint is a losing battle if we cannot recognize what we’re up against. Society is built around attention and addiction, with the singular purpose engagement.

So many of our actions are predetermined by the habits we’ve formed around these addictions already—the compulsive checking of the phone, the snacking, the purchases.

Restraint is destroyed when we don’t recognize our willpower is setup against endless machinery meant to bypass judgment.

The only way to combat it is through specific system design for our lives—dedicated decisions, based upon the scenario, for change.

We may rise to occasions but we fall without systems to counteract the power of our environment.

🤔 Question

Which impulse do you keep leaning into and haven’t been able to shake?

Willpower and Discipline

🤨 Quote

“…just as we differ in our actual musculature, we also differ in strength of willpower.”

Paul Bloom

Source: The Sweet Spot

🧐 Observation

We tend to treat discipline as a white-knuckled virtue—the more you can resist, the stronger you are. Failure is viewed as us not wanting it enough.

But research into willpower by the psychologist Roy Baumeister demonstrates this is completely false.

“Self-control is like a muscle. When it is exercised, it gets tired. If it has to keep working nonstop, it becomes exhausted and weak.”

Willpower is but a tool in our arsenal, not the entire chest.

It should not be viewed as the single point of discipline. Our ability to restrain ourselves from certain desires or impulses works best when we use it sparingly—knowing when to push and when to ease off.

🤔 Question

Where are you applying willpower over system design and how can you reverse the two?

Systems and Action

🤨 Quote

“Action isn’t a burden to be hoisted up and lugged around on our shoulders. It is something we are. The work we have to do can be seen as a kind of coming alive.”

Joanna Macy

Source: Meditations for Mortals

🧐 Observation

The new year always starts with energy and excitement—a time for fresh beginnings and with that New Year’s resolutions. The problem is we’re often tempted to change everything at once—vices, distractions, health.

But change doesn’t actually happen with the flip of a button. We’re shaped by what we’ve historically done. Each decision we’ve made dictates whether we succeed or fail in our future endeavors.

Change starts with proper system design that allows for success. Decisions lead to action. Actions lead to outcomes. Actions and outcomes reinforce our habits.

Without the proper system, decisions, and actions, our restraint collapses and we’re left with the inevitable—backsliding.

🤔 Question

What change are you looking to make that your environment would prevent you from succeeding?

It’s through sharing that our newsletter spreads its wisdom.

Hit the ❤️ and button below to share some candy.

Share

Share Mind Candy

Until next time,

D.A. DiGerolamo

We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.

Mind Candy is a newsletter on practical philosophy and human flourishment—aka how to live “the good life.” Each month we tackle a new theme.

This month we’re exploring the theme of the self.

Welcome to Wednesday Wisdom, our 3x3 Newsletter where I distill worldly advice for better living with 3 quotes, 3 observations, and 3 questions.

Subscribe now

Urgency

🤨 Quote

“This space that has been granted to us rushes by so speedily and so swiftly that all save a very few find life at an end just when they are getting ready to live.”

Seneca

Source: On the Shortness of Life

Observation 🧐

We often treat life as something waiting to begin—we wait for the right job, the right diet, the right person.

But time does not care about our desire for the perfect moment, it continues marching on regardless. The same goes for the self, it doesn’t wait for perfect conditions, it forms every day, regardless of if action is taken.

Each day we delay proper habits, the important conversation, the diet we need to start, the more we instill a certain characteristic within ourselves. Rather than building the person we want to be, we build a suboptimal version stuck waiting for the perfect moment.

By the time we’re ready to move, we’ve burdened ourselves further with years of inaction.

We must act today with urgency.

Don’t delay.

Just start.

Action helps bring forth the clarity we were waiting for in the first place.

🤔 Question

What part of your life are you postponing until the moment feels right? What is the downside of acting today rather than waiting?

Limitation

🤨 Quote

“…the problem with trying to make time for everything that feels important—or just for enough of what feels important—is that you definitely never will.”

Oliver Burkeman

Source: Four Thousand Weeks

Observation 🧐

We look to our calendars and see it filled with obligations, commitments, expectations.

We think it’s life’s finite nature is what forces us into a never ending game of needing more time to do everything.

But this isn’t true, it’s just a story we tell ourselves.

The truth is, we can’t do everything. The life we wish to live requires we make decisions about how we occupy our time. If we don’t prioritize what we want our lives to be, the world has a tendency to prioritize for us.

We form the life we want not by trying to cram it all in but by making the decisions necessary to do what we want.

This means we must choose not just what we want to do, but also what we do not want to do.

It starts with a decision.

What is the life you want to live?

🤔 Question

Where and when has your time been taken from you because you did not first claim it yourself?

Integration

🤨 Quote

“Temporality is the condition which makes possible the Being of Dasein, as care. The three dimensions of temporality — the future, the having-been, and the present — are not simply sequential. Rather, they are ecstases: Dasein stands out into them.”

Martin Heidegger

Source: Being and Time

Observation 🧐

We think of ourselves as an object within time, something we can manage and measure.

But really, time is an ongoing conversation with the future we’re aiming toward, the past we’ve experienced, and our interactions with the two in the present moment.

If we wish to truly live a flourishing existence, we must choose what we wish to project for our future self—what we aim at, while simultaneously coming to terms with where we’ve been.

When we take control of these narratives, when we make the conscious effort to write our existence through time rather than be swept away in it with the crowd, then we find a flourishing existence.

🤔 Question

If our lives are trajectories, then where are you aiming yours? And what should you adjust so it is pointed in the direction you want?

It’s through sharing that our newsletter spreads its wisdom. Hit the ❤️ and button below to share some candy.

Share Mind Candy

Until next time,

D.A. DiGerolamo

We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.

Mind Candy is a newsletter on practical philosophy and human flourishment—aka how to live “the good life.” Each month we tackle a new theme.

This month we’re exploring the theme of the self.

Welcome to Wednesday Wisdom, our 3x3 Newsletter where I distill worldly advice for better living with 3 quotes, 3 observations, and 3 questions.

Subscribe now

Work

🤨 Quote

“A society of laborers which lacks enough labor to keep it contented is a society of jobholders.”

Hannah Arendt

Source: The Human Condition

Observation 🧐

In order to survive, we must work. We all require money to keep the lights on, to buy food, to have security.

But work for survival only erodes the self quietly over time. Whereas we may have seen ourselves as part of something meaningful we can easily slide into seeing ourselves as nothing more than a cog in the machine.

It’s a subtle slide that isn’t always recognizable right away but we can feel it, that shift, that unhappiness that creeps into the day-to-day work, the anxiety of a Monday.

It’s not that we have to work, but that we begin to be seen as just our work product. We’re not seen for who we are but rather for what we can do for the bottom line,

When work becomes the only lens from which we view our worth, the meaning we desperately desire in life crumbles beneath us, leaving the feeling of being afloat in the ocean with no direction to turn to.

The meaning we desire, however, doesn’t come from the job we hold. Rather, it is what we ourselves bring to that role.

A life of reflection, conscious decisions, and a sense of purpose brought into our role is what creates meaningful work for our souls.

🤔 Question

How do you infuse the idea of meaning for your life with your current job?

Vocation

🤨 Quote

“I exist in order to act.”

Johann Gottlieb Fichte

Source: The Vocation of Man

Observation 🧐

We are no mere observers of life but active participants within it. Each of our lives takes shape based upon action—the decisions we make, the things we commit ourselves to, the persistence we apply within our lives.

The meaning of our lives is revealed here, in our action.

Yet we often conflate this with the job we have. It’s easy to become wrapped up in the idea that our title, salary, or career path define our vocation. But we learn this isn’t true the second anything changes—positions are cut, responsibilities change, companies are acquired and roles terminated.

When we tie our identity to our job rather than the underlying meaning of our lives, we find ourselves adrift and missing a purpose that disappears second something interferes with that job.

Vocations are not tied to the role but to the underlying direction we place for our lives. The job is but the vehicle for us to express this underlying meaning.

It’s always worth remembering: work is where we apply purpose, not where it originates.

🤔 Question

If your job was eliminated tomorrow, what is the underlying force that is driving your direction?

Beneath the paywall this week we explore the wisdom of Daniel Pink. Click below to support and get access.

Subscribe now

Read more

Mind Candy is a newsletter on practical philosophy and human flourishment—aka how to live “the good life.” Each month we tackle a new theme.

This month we’re exploring the theme of the self.

Welcome to Wednesday Wisdom, our 3x3 Newsletter where I distill worldly advice for better living with 3 quotes, 3 observations, and 3 questions.

Subscribe now

Free Will

🤨 Quote

“Embracing free will is the first step in affirming optimism about our ability to adapt and grow in the face of life’s challenges.”

John Kaag

Source: Sick Souls, Healthy Minds

Observation 🧐

The idea that we have free will may be an illusion. Many philosophers and scientists have argued that our thoughts and actions are byproducts of biological, cultural, and environmental processes hidden to the conscious mind. And yet, reductionism in this sense is not the same as wisdom.

There is a difference between understanding the underlying workings of something and how one ought to live.

Our foothold in this world, our confidence, hope, determination, is all based upon our ability to believe in our own agency. Adaptation to life’s events, or responsibility for our actions, is what stitches together our individual lives.

Free will may be an illusion. Or it may not be. But a sense of agency, of control over one’s life, is what gives it meaning and purpose.

🤔 Question

At what point does breaking the illusion of free will hinder your ability to live a good life?

Determinism

🤨 Quote

“It seems clear that we can’t decide what to think or feel, any more than we can decide what to see or hear. A highly complicated convergence of factors and past events-including our genes, our personal life history, our immediate environment, and the state of our brain is responsible for each next thought.”

Annaka Harris

Source: Conscious

Observation 🧐

We feel as though we are the authors of our lives, yet determinism says otherwise. It states everything comes forth through prior causes, a countless domino effect of various factors.

What makes this doubly hard to comprehend is the majority of the factors are outside of our direct view—hormone levels, stress, sleep quality, past experiences.

From this perspective, our thoughts, beliefs, and actions are but the byproduct of much deeper processes. In essence, what we are consciously aware of are but the tip of the iceberg.

When our sense of control recedes, our reaction is to try and double down on controlling our lives. Determinism doesn’t deny our experience, but it does ask us to reframe our experience of the world.

Rather than deny it, we can think of ourselves as part of a much larger chain of cause and effect.

And that’s ultimately what much of life is, a continuous chain through time.

🤔 Question

If we are mostly shaped by events outside of our view, how does that alter the way you see yourself, and others?

Beneath the paywall this week we explore the wisdom of W. Somerset Maugham. Click below to support and get access.

Subscribe now

Read more