Non-Judgment
Fragments from imaginary dialogues
“What do you mean by judgment?”
“Judgment is a kind of evaluation.
Reality is neutral. We view reality through a filter of meaning. Whenever we evaluate something as positive or negative, we project meaning on it.
Evaluation is interpretation.
Viewed in pragmatic terms, some interpretations are empowering, others disempowering. I call disempowering interpretations, judgment.”
“What is non-judgment?”
“Non-judgment is a practice.
It’s a self-awareness practice – noticing when you judge yourself and others. I call the process of directing attention to notice judgment, the lens of judgment. For me, using this lens was a revelation. I hadn’t realized how often I did it.
It’s also a self-love practice – lovingly breaking the unresourceful thought pattern by gently letting it go.”
On Writing and Editing
Fragments from imaginary dialogues
“I recently started studying editing and proofreading. Currently, this is my main area of focus.”
“Besides writing you mean?”
“I got started with editing because I want to get into freelancing. But I discovered that writing and editing go beautifully together, they’re complementary skills.
Editing helps me become a better writer.“
“How?”
“Editing involves delving into the principles and mechanics of good writing.
In acquiring the skill of editing, you’re developing what I call the editing eye. This is essentially pattern-recognition. You’re internalizing perceptual lenses [<link; short read] that allow you to see any piece of writing with new eyes.”
“Can you give an example?”
“One such lens is wordiness – using more words than necessary or unnecessarily complex or abstract words.
Internalizing the lens means actually seeing the instances of wordiness in a text, in all its forms:
Filler Words / Stretchers: Words that add quantity not quality.
eg
William persuades by means of logic.
William persuades by logic.
Redundancies: Words that say the same thing more than once.
eg
We share in common a love for reading.
We share a love for reading.
Phony Intensifiers: Words that attempt to exaggerate what you’re saying. Such words strain to appear confident but actually signal the opposite.
eg
I am absolutely confident in my abilities.
I am confident in my abilities.
Thickeners: Words that few people use in everyday speech.
eg
Sarah found the means whereby she could cheat on tomorrow’s test.
Sarah found a way to cheat on tomorrow’s test.
etc.”
Lens of Thoughts
Watch every thought. Always ask, why am I having this thought? (Naval Ravikant)
Fragments from imaginary dialogues
“How can I practice Awareness?”
“The biggest obstacle to Awareness is your own thoughts.
To practice Awareness, direct attention to your thoughts.
Set the intention at the beginning of every practice. (Priming) I call this the Lens [<link; short read] of Thoughts, or thought-catching.
Whenever you notice a thought, say to yourself, ‘thought’, smile, and let it fly away.
This is the essence of the practice.
You can add nuance to the practice by noticing different types of thoughts.
Instead of ‘thought’, you can say to yourself, ‘disempowering thought’, ‘ruminative thought’, ‘creative thought’, etc.
The ultimate goal is to internalize the Lens of Thoughts.”
Lens-Stacking
Fragments from imaginary dialogues
“What is lens-stacking?”
“We’ve talked a while ago about lenses [<link; medium read]. Perceptual-models that influence one’s perception of reality.”
“Reality-Filters. I remember.”
“Lens-stacking is the process of combining lenses to amplify their effect.”
“Can you give an example?”
“Values can be lenses. I call this type of values instrumental values.
My primary instrumental values are four:
Love
Play
Beauty
Gratitude
Combined, they form a powerful lens-stack – a tetrad.
In combining lenses, you’re creating structure. A tetrad can be arranged in various configurations.
The ones I’m going for are the last two.
Representationally, the four values are perfectly interconnected – each of them is connected with all others –, and Love is central.
Functionally, the sequencing – the order in which you access them – matters because they subtly build upon one another.
My sequencing is LBGP:
Love
Beauty
Gratitude
Play”
On Daily Reflection and Templating
When the light has been removed and my wife has fallen silent, aware of this habit that’s now mine, I examine my entire day and go back over what I’ve done and said, hiding nothing from myself, passing nothing by. For why should I fear any consequence from my mistakes, when I’m able to say, ‘See that you don’t do it again, but now I forgive you.’ (Seneca)
Fragments from imaginary dialogues
“I end every single day with a reflection on the day.”
“What’s your process?”
“My process has two stages: Reflection and Design.
Reflection
What went well? (Celebration)
What needs work? (Understanding; Failure-Points; Decision-Points)
Design
What can you optimize? (Optimization)
What will you do differently next time? (Implementation)
To make the process more efficient, I’ve created a daily-reflection template [<link; medium length].
The template is an attention-directing tool. It directs my attention to specific points of interest. In my case, those points are:
Presence
Play
Oscillation
Learning
Connection
Movement
Then I look at them through various lenses [<link; medium].
One lens is Brian Johnson’s wonderful Big Three framework:
Energy
Work
Love
Another lens is Balance. I check how balanced the Three were against one another, and the balance between Input and Output [<link; medium] (Input/Output Ratio).
Another lens is Quality. I’m interested not only in doing them, but in doing them well, and in constantly increasing Efficiency.”
The Game of Lenses
Fragments from imaginary dialogues
“I’ve been playing with Brian Johnson’s Big Three lately:
Energy
Work
Love
“
“With mind-mapping, as you usually do?”
“Yes. But this time the focus was not on the Three, but on Lenses [<link; medium length].
What lenses can I view the Big Three through?
Different lenses can offer different insights, and exploring lenses is fun in itself.
I ended up exploring lenses like:
Identity
Opportunity
Habits
Obstacles
Balance
The Sacred
…
For instance, one application of the lens of Balance is evaluating the Three at the end of the day against one another.
Did you give all Three equal attention?
This was a revelation to me, because I realized my triad was imbalanced, it was considerably skewed towards Work. The Big Three viewed through the lens of Balance has become part of my daily end-of-the-day reflection.
I also created the concept of meta-lenses, which are essentially lenses for discovering lenses.
Macro
Micro
Forwards
Backwards
Spatial
Temporal
Relational
Static
Dynamic
The Practical
…”
“What I like about the game is that you can play it with anything.”
“Precisely. Viewed as a template, the game can be summed up as:
What lenses can you view x through?
And you don’t have to stop there. You can then start playing with ways of filtering them.
What are the most powerful lenses?
What are the most energizing lenses?
What lenses are most fun?
…
Not to mention that coming up with interesting ways of combining lenses is a game in itself.”
On Experience and Meaning
Fragments from imaginary dialogues
“What are the boundaries of experience?”
“We can make a distinction between macro-experience and micro-experience.
An event, such as going to the cinema, is a macro-experience. The boundaries of the experience are the boundaries of the event.
Micro-experience is the moment-to-moment experience, whatever’s happening now.
Any macro-experience is a string of micro-experiences.
When you say ‘experience’ I’m guessing you’re referring to micro-experience.”
“Yes.”
“One boundary of experience is what we can perceive, using all our senses:
Visual
Auditory
Kinaesthetic
Olfactory
Gustatory
We might call this the perceptual-range.
Another boundary of experience is what we do perceive, what we’re actually aware of in any given moment. This is influenced by two things: attention and meaning.
We are aware of what we attend to.
We attend to what we consider meaningful.”
“How can I improve the quality of experience?”
“Slow down. You thus create space for savoring the experience.
Use all senses. The more you use, the richer the experience.
Improve the quality of your attention. By that I mean the capacity to maintain attention on one thing. This can be trained through meditation.
Intentionally look at life through a filter of meaning. The key here is intentionality. We do look at life through a filter of meaning by default. It’s important to take control of this process. One way to do this is by deliberately using linguistic lenses [<link; medium length] – or, as I like to call them, ‘reality-filters‘. By thinking of them, you prime yourself for their use.”
“I think it’s useful to distinguish between lenses and filters.
Filters are a subtractive process. A narrowing down of possibilities in the field of experience.
Lenses are an additive process. Like an overlay to the experience itself.”
“I like the distinction.”
“What is the most powerful lens you know?”
“The Lens of the Sacred.”
Lenses
Fragments from imaginary dialogues
“I’m currently reading a beautiful book about game design called The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses [<link] by Jesse Schell.”
“How come you’re reading about game design?”
“I think of my life as a Game [<link; medium length]. I approach it from the perspective of both a Player and a Designer. I want to get better at both.
I love Jesse’s approach to game design. He has distilled the essence of the art to a number of principles (100+). He introduces them one by one, gradually painting a map that ties them all together by the end of the book.
He calls the principles lenses (which are essentially models).
The lenses are tools. Once activated (which is essentially priming), they allow the designer to see the game with different eyes.
The lenses have a certain structure: the lens’s title, followed by a short description, followed by a number of questions. He has even created physical cards for each. They look like this:
I think this is brilliant. It inspired me to create something similar for my Beautiful Game.
I’ve also included lenses in the classification of models that I’m working on. Lenses are perceptual models, models that influence one’s perception of reality. I also like to call them reality filters.”
Dani Trusca 
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