On Finding One's Fulfillment and Happiness through Mastery and Vocation
Sweet Bites for May 31, 2024
Hi all,
Welcome to another edition of Sweet Bites, Mind Candy’s bite-sized newsletter with thought-provoking finds to send you into the weekend with.
This week we rounded out our May theme of fulfillment with an exploration into vocations and finding purpose in life (all links below).
But before you dive in…
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Now, onto the show…
Choose Your Dessert for the Week
🦉 Wisdom
“There is only one vocation. Whether you teach or live in the cloister or nurse the sick, whether you are in religion or out of it, married or single, no matter who you are or what you are, you are called to the summit of perfection: you are called to a deep interior life perhaps even to mystical prayer, and to pass the fruits of your contemplation on to others. And if you cannot do so by word, then by example.”
Thomas Merton
Source: The Pocket Thomas Merton
🍰 Mini Bite # 1 - Just Get Started
Bruce Springsteen knew he wanted to play music at age seven when he first watched Elvis Presley on The Ed Sullivan Show and saw the “life-blessing, wall-destroying, heart-changing, mind-opening bliss of a freer, more liberated existence.”
Springsteen would find a way to rent a guitar from the local music store but quit within weeks as it was too hard. But like the Elvis experience that spoke to something deep within him, Springsteen would have another calling while watching The Ed Sullivan Show. This time, in 1964, he saw The Beatles.
Springsteen set out again, and this time, stuck with it. He learned to play the guitar. He joined a band. He got kicked out of that very band. He figured out exercises to master the guitar like listening to albums, or seeing a guitarist live, and then going home and staying up all night trying to replicate the chords.
He joined bands and played every place he could from YMCAs to small venues. Then one night, he found his way into a bar in Jersey where they had a speaker and open mic. He played 30 minutes. People took notice.
But it would be years until he got his big break.
David Brooks says the most important thing when trying to become a master and embark on one’s vocation is to just get started. “Don't delay because you think this job or that degree would be good preparation for doing what you eventually want to do. Just start doing it.”
For Springsteen, that meant not only mastering the guitar, but learning to build bands, make connections, find the people that fit best with what he wanted and expected. It wouldn’t be until he was 22, over 14 years after starting to learn to master the guitar, that he would get his big break and put out an album. And yet, it wouldn’t be until years later that he would find mainstream success with his third album Born to Run.
We think that careers and vocation are built by mastering a single skill, but in actuality, the skill just opens the door. We need to look at the ancillary skills necessary for success in the area to round out our vocation. For Springsteen it was figuring out how to run a band, who to trust, what type of music he wanted to create, all things secondary to his mastery of the guitar. Getting started early gives one a longer runway to figure out these other skills necessary for success.
As Brooks says, “Get to yourself quickly. If you know what you want to do, start doing it.”
📰 Article Worthy of a Read
Feel free to stop striving: learn to relish being an amateur by Xenia Hanusiaki
Hanusiaki tackles a problem many of us face in today’s world of constant productivity: a desire to let go of the desire to be productive.
“Enough already! Can’t we stop succeeding for just one moment? Cease trying to be exceptional at something? The answer is yes, but to do so you must embrace your inner amateur.”
In this article, she looks into ways we can reclaim that beginner’s mind mentality and just learn to once again enjoy our pursuits.
“The art of amateurship pivots on us knowing our capabilities and realising the boundaries of what we seek. Once we remove goal-seeking from the amateur’s aspirations, we can focus on the psychology of optimal experience articulated by the psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s theory of flow…”
🍰 Mini Bite # 2 - Your Role Doesn’t Matter
When NASA was in a space race with Russia for who could land on the moon first in the 1960s, John F. Kennedy paid a visit to NASA to see all the work the team was doing. While there, he encountered a janitor and asked what his role at the company was.
The janitor happily replied, “helping put a man on the moon.”
A vocation doesn’t need to be flashy. It doesn’t need to be building one’s own company or curing cancer. One’s vocation can simply be helping achieve something greater for society.
🤯 A Review of Finding One’s Purpose
In this video, Robert Greene, author of Mastery, discusses with Theo Von how one can find their purpose in life. Greene recommends looking at what you were passionate about in your adolescence, especially your teen years as these were the years you were discovering yourself and rebelling against what others wanted you to be.
🍰 Mini Bite # 3 - Philosophy as Vocation
Williams James was a man born into a family that could have allowed him the ability to live his life off their reputation alone. His father was a theologian and his brother was a famous writer.
James, however, chose his own path.
He unfortunately suffered from melancholy, what we would call depression today. As a way of coping with his suffering, he became extremely interested in the growing field of psychology. The best way to summarize James’ life philosophy would be through his own words:
“The greatest use of life is to spend it on something that will outlast it.”
James struggled with what it meant to have purpose and meaning in the world. But through teaching, through trying to better understand himself, he found if not a cure, a coping mechanism for the dark times. He also spread his own knowledge and theories to his students, helping them to better understanding themselves and live more manageable existences.
“Philosophy I will nevertheless regard as my vocation and never let slip a chance to stroke at it.”
Sometimes our vocations are saving graces, built first and foremost through our own interests and dilemmas.
💡 Concept
In this talk between David Brooks and Arthur Brooks, the two dive into what it means to have a vocation and how to find meaning in one’s work. The two speak about different philosophies that have influenced them and how each define what it means to have a vocation.
🍰 Mini Bite # 4 - Releasing the Ego for Happiness
Jim Carrey found himself as one of the biggest stars in Hollywood in the 1990s after two small comedies, Ace Ventura: Pet Detective and Dumb and Dumber became Box Office hits.
Carrey was quickly swept up in the fame, attention, and money.
“I believed that I had to become a famous, you know, idea and get all the stuff that people dream about and accomplish a bunch of things that look like success…” he once said.
But it was in giving up those things years later, turning his back on the fame and looking inward, that he found true fulfillment.
“It’s been part of the evolution. Ego is to spend the first half of your life acquiring, and adding, thinking you can add to yourself. And it looks great. Looks great when you’ve got a cool car, nice clothes and you’ve done something people admire but it can never fulfill you, it cannot make you happy. It’s not where happiness comes from.”
This is what David Brooks calls the second mountain, our second career, what we do with the second half of our lives.
We believe these material things will bring us happiness and fulfillment because that’s the story that is around us everywhere. But it’s been proven time and time again in studies that it is actually the pursuit of something, not the actual achievement of it, that provides the greatest satisfaction.
The chase, the anticipation, the learning and struggle, the connections and growth, we get the most joy and fulfillment in life out of these times, not the materials that success can ultimately bring.
📖 Monthly Recap
On Discovering the Authentic Self
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On Finding Fulfillment through Perspective Shifting
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On the Failures of Perfectionism and Triumphs of Mastery
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On Finding One’s Purpose
Until next time,
D.A. DiGerolamo
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