Exploring with Childlike Curiosity

Updates after quitting my last meditation retreat, overcoming our weaknesses, and good and bad blood innovations

Hi friend!

I spent the last week celebrating the lunar new year in Bangkok (Songkran) and Cambodia (Choul Chnam Thmey). Both countries celebrate the new year with water festivities all around town. Streets are shut down for water festivities and I could not walk anywhere without getting wet! The water represents purification and washing away sins and bad luck for the upcoming year. A beautiful and absolutely fun tradition.

In the last few days, I had a chance to visit Angkor Wat in Cambodia. Breathtaking views of gigantic ruins of temples nestled within towering forests. I absolutely loved it and highly recommend it for anyone looking to be wow-ed. The ruins are in Siem Reap, which is a bit further away from Cambodia's capital. In fact, it almost marks the halfway mark from Phnom Penh to Bangkok. Choose your own adventure.

In the video this week, I share a simple technique to become more mindful: revisiting our everyday activities with childlike curiosity. Whenever I feel the original passion of an activity gone, typically through repetition and mindless optimization, revisiting it with childlike curiosity reinvigorates my love and refills my creative tank. As I explore meditation around the world, meditation practices for eating, sitting, and walking use a form of this technique.

Next week, I'm off to Bali for more relaxation, meditation, yoga, and adventures. Sending you all my island greetings & love.

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Turning Weakness into Strength

Loren Long is a New York Times best-selling author and illustrator of numerous children's books... and he's colorblind. The Today Show shares his journey as a colorblind illustrator.

Not only is Long chasing his passion with all his might, I imagine that he also brings a new perspective to the world of art. The things that we often see as our "weakness" at first can be one of our most invaluable assets. It differentiates our work and provides us with a unique perspective that we can truly make an impact with.

Speaking of Our Handicaps...

James Clear shares a bit of Dr. Seuss' process of setting up his own constraints to work - his vocabulary.

Constraints can be set up as limitations to our time, materials, and resources. They help us to become more hyper-aware of all the variables of a given context and becomes fodder for creativity. Whenever I'm at a standstill or frustrated with limitations at work, I've found that leaning into them has always yielded valuable lessons that I could take with me forever.

Bad Blood

Just finished reading this book during my travels. Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup (4.48 on Goodreads) follows the tale of Theranos, a fraudulent $9B healthcare startup.

If there's anything I'm learning on my travels, it's to think critically and find my own truth. In this tale, blind faith led hundreds of the smartest people in Silicon Valley and billions of dollars into the ground.

Suspense, thrills, blood... this book has it all. I finished the book yelling out loud "this has GOT to be a movie" and sure enough, there is a movie planned for 2020.

Good Blood

For the first time, scientists have resuscitated brain functions to a dead brain. The brains were harvested from slaughtered pigs and sat at room temperature for four hours without blood. Using a system called BrainEx, they were able to pump an experimental solution and bring back some cellular activity.

This is huge. How will this affect how we label and treat "dead" patients? There is so much we have yet to discover, but the pace of this suggests that there is a possibility that we may see this come to fruition in our lifetime!

As always, thanks for reading!

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Have a beautiful day!

Metta (loving-kindness),
Steven

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