Daily subtraction
To attain knowledge, add things every day. To attain wisdom, subtract things every day. (Lao Tzu)
Fragments from imaginary dialogues
“What if you turned subtraction into an actual daily practice?”
“What do you have in mind?”
“Additive thinking is our default. It’s effortless. Subtractive thinking however does not happen unless intentionally activated. It takes effort because it triggers a feeling of loss.
To do it consistently, you need to have Simplicity as a primary value. This is the first step.
The next step is to actually ask yourself subtractive questions every day:
What can you eliminate?
What if you eliminated x?
“
On Beauty and Simplicity 2
Brevity is beautiful. (Kalid Azad)
Fragments from imaginary dialogues
“Tell me a model that expresses something you strive for.”
“Brevity.
Expressing as much as possible with as little as possible.”
On Centering
The ancestor of every action is a thought. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)
Fragments from imaginary dialogues
“How can I optimize my centering practice?”
“You initiate and guide your practice with thoughts expressed as meaningful words – I call them word-thoughts.
In attempting to optimize the process, you’re essentially asking:
When centering, what do I want to think?
You’re creating an optimal sequence of word-thoughts.”
“I have a tendency to overcomplicate it and create too long a sequence.”
“Make simplicity your mantra. Make the process three steps at most.
I call the first item of the sequence, the access-point. Make the access-point something deeply meaningful to you. Your highest value, your Center.
What is your Center?”
“Love.”
“That is your access-point.
Whenever you initiate the centering practice, think Love.
Let’s make it a three-step process.
What do you want the next two steps to be?”
“Breathing, and a body check.”
“So we have a sequence:
Love
Breathing
Body Check
This is the macro-sequence. Every item of the sequence can itself be a micro-sequence.
For instance, you can just breathe. But you can make it more powerful by smiling as you breathe and thinking ‘Peace’ – the beautiful practice you’ve learned from Thich Nhat Hanh.
Se we have a micro-sequence:
(Conscious) Breathing
– Smile
– Peace
What are the key aspects of the body check?”
“Noticing and adjusting my posture, noticing tension, accepting, and letting go.”
“So we have another micro-sequence:
Body Check
– Posture
– Tension
— Accept
— Let go
Visually, the process looks something like this:
Breathing, body check, posture and tension are essentially self-awareness practice.”
Beautiful Models: High-Density Experiences
Train to live on the other side of pain. (Josh Waitzkin)
Fragments from imaginary dialogues
“I had a beautiful experience watching a mosquito drink my blood. I’d never seen it happen.”
“Wasn’t it painful?”
“An essential aspect of my training is exposing myself to discomfort and pain. That’s what it started as, but ended up as a contemplation on the beautiful miracle that is Life.
This is what I call a high-density [<link; short length] experience. It lasted but a few moments, but it felt like so much happened in that brief time-span. I often get the same feeling during my 5-minute meditation sessions.”
On Pleasure 2
Fragments from imaginary dialogues
“What pleasures are worth cultivating?”
“Pleasures too can be viewed through the 80/20 (macro-)filter. 80% of them are not worth cultivating. Most bring marginal benefits and/or have a high opportunity cost.”
“How would you narrow down the 20%?”
“Through more filtering. I’m thinking of three filters in particular: Simplicity, Meaning, and Usefulness. Expressed as directives:
Cultivate simple pleasures.
Cultivate pleasure for and (re)learn to appreciate what you already have. They’re more numerous than you realize.
Cultivate meaningful pleasures.
Cultivate pleasures that are aligned with your values and your purpose.
Cultivate useful pleasures.
Cultivate pleasures that add persistent value to your life, that grow and strengthen you.”
On Beauty and Templating
Regain the freedom to create like a child. (Josh Waitzkin)
Fragments from imaginary dialogues
“How can I beautify any day?”
“The day is but a string of moments. Beautify as many as possible.”
“How can I beautify any moment?”
“Have a system for it.
For instance you can create a practical template [<link; medium read].
Start with the fixed part of the template – the framework. Something like:
Being
Meaning
Feeling
Doing
And then start adding your (idiosyncratic) details:
Being
Presence
Connection
Meaning
Identity
– Life-Artist / Creator
Connect with your Inner-Artist/Child.”
“But I’m not an artist.”
“Everybody’s an Artist. They’ve just forgotten it.
Meaning
Meta-Values [<link; short read]
– Love
– Play
– Gratitude
– Simplicity
– BalancePurpose / Ikigai (expressed with one word)
– Connect
Feeling
Joy
Fun
Doing
Creating
Moving
Learning
That’s your moment-to-moment map. The tendency (or at least my tendency) is to add a lot of details to it, but the goal is to have as few as possible.
Eliminate all but the most powerful ones.
The Meaning part represents the Macro level.
SEE the Macro in the Micro [<link; medium read] of the moment.
Moment to moment to moment, seek to align the Doing with the Meaning through the Being and the Feeling.”
Beautiful Systems: Simplicity
Fragments from imaginary dialogues
“Simplicity as a system?”
“It’s a deconstruction and systematization of the simplification process. A practical blueprint.
The system visually looks like this:
All the components of the system are mental models.”
“Can you give a few details on how it works?”
“Let’s say you have a set of data-points you want to simplify. How can you do it optimally?
One way is through filtering. That’s essentially asking two questions:
What 20% of the inputs are responsible for 80% of the outputs?
What’s the most important / impactful thing? (from within the 20%)”
“What if there’s more than one most important / impactful thing?”
“Think of it as your focus-point. Isolating them individually allows you to explore each of them in depth.
Another way to simplify them is through elimination of data-points.
What can you eliminate?“
“Would you eliminate the 80%?”
“Depends on what you’re after. In some cases, yes, that’s the optimal approach. But in other cases, you just want to refine the data set. You can metaphorically think of it as editing, or pruning. You’re cutting away some branches to allow the rest to grow.
Another elimination approach is paraphrasing, eliminating data-points by rephrasing the language.
What can you express with fewer words?
The final way to simplify them is through integration. Joining data-points together to form a new emergent whole.”
Beautify
Fragments from imaginary dialogues
“What do you mean by Beautify?”
“It’s a mantra-word.
It means:
Notice Beauty. It’s everywhere around you, if your Heart is open.
Appreciate Beauty. See every instance of Beauty for the Gift that it is.
Create Beauty. Always, in all ways.
Now, and forever.”
On Pleasure
If you’re not saying “HELL YEAH!” about something, say “no”. […]
When you say no to most things, you leave room in your life to really throw yourself completely into that rare thing that makes you say “HELL YEAH!”
(Derek Sivers)
Focus on that which lights your soul on fire. (Brian Johnson)
Fragments from imaginary dialogues
“I don’t like it.”
“Pleasures can be cultivated. You can grow to like it.”
“I don’t want to grow to like it.
An important aspect of my Art is cultivating the right pleasures.“
“Which are those?”
“Those aligned with my Vision for my Masterpiece Life. I choose to focus exclusively on those.”
“Aren’t you missing on the simple pleasures of life?”
“On the contrary. Simplicity is one of my central values.
Another important aspect of my Art is cultivating simple pleasures.
For instance I only drink water. If you do it mindfully and gratefully, the simple act of drinking water is a joy.
The idea is, I’m very selective about my pleasures.
Some pleasures add to your life.
Some pleasures neither add nor detract.
Some pleasures detract from your life.
From my perspective,
if one wants to live a great life, it’s important to eliminate the third;
If however one wants to live an extraordinary life, it’s important to eliminate the second kind as well.
The second kind, while seemingly unimpactful, come with a subtle opportunity cost: they take away time and energy from the full expression of the first.”
Games of Perception: Beauty 2
For me, personal growth is a beautiful creative process. I’ll give an example to illustrate: my strategy for setting my mental channel to beautiful consistently, and my thought process behind it.
By “setting my mental channel to beautiful” I mean setting my mind to notice the beautiful things around me. For some context, check out this [link; short length] post.
It all starts with a question:
How can I set my mental channel to beautiful consistently?
What this does is set my mind to creative problem-solving mode. My mind starts playing with possibilities. At this point, depending on the nature of the problem, I can leave the process open-ended, or I can narrow down the possibilities by asking more questions. There’s benefits to both. The next important question here is:
What obstacles prevent me from achieving my end?
In this case, the main obstacle is remembering to set my mental channel to beautiful. The more often I remember it, the more often I can do it. This already suggests a strategy: setting reminders (or “anchors”, to use a NLP term), internal or external. Or, even better, both internal and external.
What anchors might I use?
This is the truly creative part, because you can use pretty much anything as anchors. The possibilities are endless.
For me, in looking for solutions to a problem, beauty acts as a guide. This means the solution has to be aesthetic, not just functional.
My solution in this case is to use beauty itself as an anchor. That is, every instance of beauty sets my mental channel to beautiful. Simple and elegant. Both highly functional, and aesthetic.
However I’m not done yet. Creating anchors for every instance of beauty is obviously inefficient. Better to create just one anchor, for the idea of Beauty. So every instance of beauty mentally connects me to the idea of Beauty, which sets my mental channel to beautiful.
I imagine the more meaningful the idea of Beauty is to you, the more powerful the effect. For me it’s one of my central values.
I’ve simplified the process a great deal just to make a point (it took a while, and quite a few iterations and bursts of inspiration before I came up with it). For instance, simplicity is another very important filter for me when looking for solutions.
The process described above, besides being a little window into my mental world, is also a metaphor, for how I see and engage with personal growth.
Dani Trusca 
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