Infusion is my title for any time I am responding to another person’s review or a curated set of material I’ve already come across — usually combinations of at least “1 primary and 1 secondary source”. It’s a weaving process similar to knitting where you move back and forth, passing the piece from side to side on the needles. Today it happens to be the work of Tony Robbins through the summary of Tiago Forte.
change your mind (inspired by Pollan’s How to Change Your Mind) is a micro series where I try to say something about my own mental frameworks or a pattern I notice in human psychology.
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Has any summer left a huge impact on you? The summer after finishing my post grad internship at Sidewalk Labs (2019) I was most definitely undergoing mental transformation on the new york subway — burying my head deep into Tiago’s Storm of Tweets Micro-Essays on Work, Life, the Universe, and Everything along with others. The following is me paraphrasing and pausing to infuse throughout Tiago’s original tweet thread while also sharing my favorite highlights of his book.
Each “~” is one of his tweets and each “→” is some short story I want to tell. Here we go.
~ Tony Robbins has a model called state, story, and strategy. It’s a simple, yet powerful model for changing your state of mind.
~ So much of productivity media centers on finding new strategies, others on changing stories, and only some on changing your state
→ Breaking into and/or entering a routine, brief physical exploration, traveling mode, or living relocation often ties significantly to state change.
→ This is the only time I feel like promoting class pass and so with this platform, I will. By exploring fitness studios you can find more of what you like as far an indoor exercise goes — maybe it’s boxing, pilates, cycling, HIIT, or a unique gym. It’s up to you.
→ I went to the gym to lift weights with the lovely Jamie on tuesday and friday 2 weeks ago and DAMN I’ve never been more excited to get swole + shredded this summer through both diet and exercise. Since starting weights again, I also tried Hot Yoga in Tribeca which I loved (it sucked with a mask on) and Rumble Boxing. Boxing was a huge effort on my end, one of the best workouts I’ve had since trying the Peloton about a month ago. It’s a shame their treadmill got recalled but like — treadmills suck anyways ;)
→ With all this socially infused exercise, I’ve notice that my appetite does the thing where it shoots up a lot despite trying to regulate it through moderate fasting. I’ll talk about fasting another time since I’m focused on thinking about the body in a much more broad way here.
→ Supposedly, diet accounts for 80% of how you look and the other 20% comes from how you exercise or whichever other caloric burning activities you do. I’m sure it’s slightly dependent on how much attention you might give to each one of those actions (input / output), combined with the other non-choice factors like genetics and how your metabolism responds to different things. What does it mean to modify our genetics to the point where we modify metabolism? I don’t have much research or answers yet but genetics is something I’ve been wondering about, especially epigenetics. I’ve been on a weird beans + eggs + spinach diet lately and introducing chicken and some red meat (on occasion) back into my diet, so we’ll see where that takes me.
→ It’s been over a year since my last time doing yoga in a studio. My previous employer, Yoga Maya, had shut down due to the pandemic. I don’t know if any of you knew this but my “yoga resume” proudly includes:
Reception @ Yoga Maya (2020)
Studio Experience Team (SET) @ Core Power Yoga Bryant Park (2019)
SET @ Core Power Yoga SF with the wonderful Shervin (2018)
→ Despite the interface of the ClassPass website looking like a Zillow 😅 here’s the abundance of fitness studios in NYC.
→ How we justify how we spend our money on ourselves says a lot about what we value. Something I joked about not feeling guilty if I didn’t cancel your membership on time, because I would have to go to more classes. It’s pretty rewarding to physically feel the leveraging of your own investment in new strength and new states in yourself
~ it’s pointless trying to change your strategy and story when your current state remains mired in negativity
→ The more I recognize where negativity seems to bubble up for me in life (and when I announce it or share it aloud with anyone else I know) the more I realize how important it is for me to push myself to be more courageous and more neutral or perhaps more off the cuff, more interesting, or perhaps more bold? For everyone’s sake not just my own. Realizing that you don’t want to be Negative Nancy around other people and thus around yourself, turns into the identification and distinction in what to save for therapy and what can count in a frientervention. Energetically, when you try to raise the bar or the vibe — depending on your environment, you will often encounter some form of resistance. How can we be genuine about our own complexity? How can we lift our own vibes and then others? It’s something I’ve really started noticing makes people distinct from one another is their ability to vibe raise.
→ Sometimes I wonder if it takes more time to get to know people IRL (especially as a woman tbh) because we’re so focused on trying to be neutral or even seen as liked / likable / agreeable, which is another thing I’ve been meaning to chat with some friends about. What does being honest about our hardships mean when we’re constantly expected or desiring to meet new people and to see a window into their lives too? Last night I found myself somehow able to bring out an ironic, deadpan humor side of myself, that I don’t usually see, in front of Andrew and I realized I must have felt more comfortable if I was able to share things in such a light. I appreciate the space he held for me in trying to really understand my language that I had for my feelings about specific people in my life too!
→ I learned today that living with new people really has this effect on you where because you’re sharing so much space, you’re automatically exposed to more dynamic and conductive sides to a person’s past, present, and future. I’m super lucky to have Vrishti and Phillip for providing really unique perspectives on this lately, I’m seeing so much into the lives of two beautiful human beings. Intimacy often does respond to proximity, but what are our thoughts on proximity without intimacy?
→ With the internet’s influence, how fast is too fast (or too slow) to get vulnerable with someone? With the image in our heads that we might increasingly and massively meet up with people we originally saw or were exposed to online, where does that take us in 1-3-7 years? Our social graphs are rapidly changing (or being accelerated for ripe experimentation via twitter). The other day I got invited to dinner via Notion — as despite my previous experience as a Notion Pro / Notion Ambassador — it’s still both shocking and wonderful in that I never would have imagined myself doing this in NYC. People are pushing how social planning and optimization for accommodation / gathering works whether you like it or not.
~ Yet most effective ways of changing state fall outside the scope of productivity: exercise, meditation, nature, cold plunges, etc
~ Most productivity experts pay lip service to these state-changers I.e “stay healthy,” “sleep well,” “drink water”
~ But all the productivity strategies in the world are just a weight around your neck if your body is broadcasting panic signals
~ But all the productivity strategies in the world are just a weight around your neck if your body is broadcasting panic signals
~ But all the productivity strategies in the world are just a weight around your neck if your body is broadcasting panic signals
→ I rewrote that three times just to let it sink in.
~ I’m simply not allowed to be depressed until I’ve tried 3 state- changers, however easy
~ The reason these state-changers don’t make it into productivity media is you can’t use the mind to change your state of mind
~ “You can’t solve a problem at the same level it was created.” And boy does the mind create problems
~ Only the body can change the state of the mind. It’s like a rootkit firmware back, circumventing software firewall via access 2 hardware
~ This is why after changing your “state of body”, you can barely even remember the negative state of mind u were mired in
~ Once the body/hardware gets rebooted, the mind/software glitch is gone
Namaste
Final Notes:
My full highlights from the book on Are.na
I've followed up with Tiago given this 2016 tweet “I’m making a list of state-changers sorted by time needed, effectiveness, cost, and context needed” asking him if he has this list to share, but I’m sure we could come up with our own version!? No reply yet :) Maybe a Figma Party in the future will unlock this for us.