Hello there!
Happy Halloween and welcome to another newsletter!
I hope you’re enjoying/enjoyed your Halloween Sunday. I am spending the day haphazardly carving a pumpkin and probably eating too much candy.
🌞 Highlights of my October:
- I saw my old band, Our Last Crusade, play their first show in two years. I was joined by my good friends and former bandmates, Jon & Danko. It was a nostalgic night of old war stories and loud music.
- I journey’d to North Battleford, Saskatchewan, with my girlfriend, Sarah, for Thanksgiving. There we met my nephew, Westyn, and had a lovely time exploring the sights of the Battlefords.
- I played hockey again for the first time since precorona. My legs were burning and my heart was thudding, but it was great to be back on the ice.
🌎 Here are three things I found on the internet this month:
I. TWITTER THREAD that outlines concepts of cognitive dissonance
40 Concepts You Should Know by @G_S_Bhogal (6 minute read)
As I’ve mentioned before, I’m interested in all things in the realm of psychology and human nature. Basically anything that helps to explain why we do the things we do. This thread is filled with ideas that help illuminate some of the seemingly irrational ways that people, myself included, act.
3 of my favourites:
- Scope Neglect: We evolved for the small scale of tribal life, so we can’t comprehend the big numbers that recently entered human life. We can appreciate the difference between 50 and 100, but not a million and a billion. It’s why we often treat geopolitics like family politics.
- Bulverism: Instead of assessing what a debate opponent has said on its own merits, we assume they’re wrong and then try to retroactively justify our assumption, usually by appealing to the person’s character or motives. Explains 99% of Twitter debates.
- Mediocracy: Democracy works not because it picks the best leaders, but because it picks the most average leaders. The purpose of democracy is not so much progress as preservation.
II. YOUTUBE CHANNEL that helps me in body & mind
Boho Beautiful Yoga
Boho Beautiful taught me how to practice and appreciate yoga. They are a Canadian couple teaching yoga classes for YouTube in exotic places around the world. It’s a great way to get started with yoga if you haven’t already. Most classes are 20-30 minutes and designed for beginners or low-intermediates, like myself. Yoga is one of my foundational habits. I can’t recommend it enough.
Here is a playlist of beginner classes.
Here is a playlist of my personal favourite style of yoga, yin yoga.
III. ARTICLE that is filled with practical wisdom from mistakes made
34 Mistakes on the Way to 34 Years Old by Ryan Holiday (12 minute read)
Ryan Holiday writes a numerical article every year for his birthday. All of them contain fantastic bits of wisdom and advice. This year’s article is focused on mistakes he’s made and lessons learned.
3 of my favourites:
- Most of my regrets—things I wish I’d done, things I wish I’d said, stands I wish I’d taken—have one thing in common: Fear. We worry about what will happen if… But Marcus Aurelius has the answer: “You’ll meet tomorrow with the same weapons you have now.” I should have quit certain jobs sooner, I should have come out and said what I thought more clearly, I should have believed that I’d figure out how to get through it, even if things went wrong.
- There’s a great Kurt Vonnegut story about marriage. He realized, fighting one day with his wife, that what they were really both saying was, “You’re not enough people.” You can only expect so much from a person. They can only deliver so much. When I think of relationships that have not worked out, or near breaking points of others, at the root of them was that: Expecting them to be too many people.
- Needing things to be a certain way has continually prevented me from enjoying them as they are.
A Quote to Consider
“A small act is worth a million thoughts.”
— Ai Weiwei
Photos of the Month
Videos of the Month
You’re welcome to email me questions or simply say Hello. Let me know of a good book, podcast, video, or anything else you think I’ll find interesting.
I hope you have a noteworthy November!
Until then,
Scotty
P.S. Smiling Larches
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