The Rhythm of Absorbing Information

Learning to Steep, Reflect, and Share

Life has its rhythm, much like the ebb and flow of tides. The key to a balanced life often lies in finding the right rhythm, the equilibrium between soaking up knowledge and sharing wisdom. In a world where information constantly pours in like a deluge, we must ask ourselves: are we drowning in the flood or parched for a drop of insight?

The modern age is an age of bombardment, with ceaseless streams of information from social media, news, calls, texts, emails, and more. While some of this bombardment can be enriching, like savoring a thought-provoking lecture on a beloved topic, it often overwhelms our mental capacity. It’s not an input problem; it’s an issue of retention and output.

Psychologist Jordan Peterson, the guru of articulation, suggests that we should only speak about subjects on which we are three times as knowledgeable as we share. In other words, our reservoir of knowledge on a topic should vastly exceed the words we pour out. This ensures not just eloquence but also a gravitas that captivates our audience.

This brings us to a crucial focus: controlling our intake to “steep” in the knowledge we absorb. Steeping, like a good cup of tea, allows us to form a clean and well-organized mental “fund” of information that we can draw upon. So how do we steep in the knowledge we encounter? We practice “uni-tasking” and we reflect.

Uni-tasking is the mindfulness antidote to the myth of multitasking. Take a simple experiment: count from 1 to 10 in your head as fast as you can without error. Easy, right? Now try counting from A to L as fast as you can without faltering. Simple because you uni-tasked. But when you combine both sequences, it becomes mentally taxing. Multi-tasking is simply a divide of attention, leaving you dazed in a haze of distractions.

While uni-tasking is about being mindful of the moment, reflection is the missing piece of the puzzle for many. Our minds need time to marinate on the topics they encounter. Learning is not a race; it’s a journey where you allow ideas to sink in, sometimes by reading the same paragraph twice or even thrice. The time you allocate to reflection should mirror your reading time. The more you want to articulate something later, the more time you should spend marinating it in your mind.

Then, you put it in your words, revisiting it to enhance your understanding. This is a form of mental push-ups and meditation that grows with time.

Now, as you share your thoughts with others, make Mark Twain proud by knowing the facts before distorting them as you please. Strong opinions held loosely is the key. Embrace the wisdom of exploring the depths of your beliefs, acknowledging that others may hold different angles of the same story. Don’t be the person with vehement opinions formed from a headline and a single line of search results. Instead, be the one who seeks to understand and share knowledge generously.

In the grand symphony of life, the rhythm of your learning is inseparable from your success. Remember, it’s not just about input; it’s about the way you steep, reflect, and share your knowledge.

Why It's So Hard to Be Satisfied in Your Life

A century ago a weary traveler once came to the entrance of small village in rural Japan where he was greeted by an old lady weaving baskets out of reed. Embarking on a tireless journey, the traveler had traveled to many different villages in the countryside over the past few months. The traveler was searching for opportunity, and a way to break through the generational chains of limitation the people in his life had placed open him. The traveler had a gut feeling that he would ‘know it when he saw it.’

As the traveler met the old woman’s gaze, he asked her, “Do you live here madam?” To which, she replied, “All my life.” The traveler asked, “Do you mind if I ask you something?” Continuing, “what kind of village is this, and how are the people?” To which the old woman countered, “Well, what were the people like in the village you came from?”

The weary traveler paused for a moment, then stated, “The people in the village I came from, and as a fact of the matter all the villages I’ve visited going back to where I grew up, are all consistently disappointing to say the least.” The old woman raised her eyebrow to a beat of curiosity. Continuing, the weary traveler stated, “The people I’ve experience in my life are greedy, manipulative, and only out for themselves.” “I’m continually disappointed, and only want to find a place where there is a chance for me to climb to success and finally find inner joy.” “I know it when I see it, “ he finished.

The old lady’s face changed, as her leathery skin expressed a number of wrinkles validating a deep concern. “I’ve got some bad news for you sir,” she continued, “This village is just the same as all the others, the people here don’t really care about you, you have to scrape and scrounge for everything. It’s hard living.” With a visual tone of disappointment, as if his heart was crying out in defeat, the weary traveler slowly put one food in front of the other, walking in to the village. After all, where else could he go.

The old woman felt pity for the weary traveler. She usually enjoyed sitting at the entrance and keeping busy by greeting people as they came in and out of the village, but today she carried the full weight of the conversation.

About a week later, the old woman was busy weaving baskets at her usual place, when she was greeted by another friendly traveler who seemed to have been traveling for some time telling by the look of wear on his clothing and shoes. As this traveler came closer the old lady noticed a lightness and sense of calm with his presence despite his fatigued exterior. The traveler greeted by asking, “Hello madam, are you from here?” To which the old lady replied, “Yes, all my life.” “Well, you don’t mind if I ask,” the traveler continued, “What sort of town is this?” Without skipping the beat, the old lady said her usual rehearsal, “Well what were the people like in the town you came from?” With a similar cadence, the traveler beamed with joy when he started talking about his recent experiences. “The people in the town I came from were amazing. They were so warm and friendly, and knew how to enjoy life. “ “Yes, I think anyone could have lived there for ever, given all the opportunity and community there.”

The old woman felt pride and joy when she started to talk about her own village. “The people here are just the same, we love our little village, and everyone here seems to contribute towards the greater good. I’ve lived here my whole life and wouldn’t live anywhere else. “Thanks,” the traveler said, ending on a high pitch, smile beaming as he walked through the gates.

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Now, we all experience both traveler’s mindset from this story at different points of our lives. But what one key takeaway this story illustrates, is that we are always carrying the seeds of content or discontent within us, wherever we go. The duality of these universal personality factors is something eternally constant in all of us. However, we must not carry this truth about ourselves as a burden. We have to accept that there are universal laws of nature that prevent us from being fully content in life. There is a spirit of discontent in all of us, and we have to learn to contend with that fact daily. The best way to contend with having a part of you that will never be fully satisfied, is accept the fact that it is a part of you that will never go away. If you accept that there will always be spirit of inadequacy in you, you can start to accept all of you. Then you will be free of the burden.

There is a natural pace of provision in life granted to all of us, and we have to learn to be patient and tune into its rhythm. Epictetus (50–135 AD), the great Stoic Philosopher, and teacher of Marcus Aurelius, who wrote the famous Meditations, made the comparison of the pace of provisions in life is his writings in the Enchiridion stating (Interpretation by Lebell, 1994):

“Think of your life as if it were a banquet where you would behave graciously. When dishes are passed to you, extend your hand and help yourself to a moderate portion. IF a dish should pass you by, enjoy what is already on your plate. Or if the portion hasn’t been passed to you yet, patiently wait your turn. Carry over this same attitude of polite restraint and gratitude to your children, spouse, career, and finances. There is no need to yearn, envy, and grab. You will get your frightful portion when it is your time.”

Epictetus believed that the natural rhythm or pace of provision in life was an unchanging universal law. We also see this illustrated in the Bible when Jesus mentioned (BibleHub, 2011):

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worry add a single hour to your life?”

There is a natural pace of provision in life controlled by God’s hand. We can start to develop patience and acceptance for the provisions God gives for us by tuning into HIS rhythm, or in other words identifying the things (behaviors, attitudes, beliefs, things, and people) we are clinging to or trying to force that keep us from living in the moment to moment. For example, you might say, I if I could just get a promotion, then I’ll really be satisfied. But that line of logic is flawed. In fact, if you were to get the promotion, you would still be unhappy. Why? Well, because you carried yourself there. If we don’t learn to look inside ourselves for the things were holding onto or trying to force, and develop ways to release the hold of those things, we remained burdened and are sabotaging ourselves from finding the joy in now, were endless blessings and opportunity reside.

Ok so now you may be thinking. How do I create inner joy and fulfillment? To do this, we have to learn balance between applying constant grace to ourselves, while simultaneously practicing discipline. We can never break the bonds of trying to, as Berné Brown puts it, “please, perform, perfect, and prove” (Beattie, 2019). I mention this problem in The Four Pillars of Radical Forgiveness, by highlighting that we tend to fix our attention and shine our light on the outside world, and tell ourselves the solution to our problems lie somewhere externally. However, our healing truly comes from within.

Here are three things you can start doing to help you cultivate contentment and fulfillment:

1. Each day identify 3 events (time and place) where you will be 100% present and try to enjoy the moment. This may be something like, “Conversation at the dinner table, enjoying my drive to work, cleaning my house.”

2. Spend more time alone with just the sound of your voice. Do you like the way you talk to yourself? Do you ever engage in distractions to keep you from being with your own thoughts? Our brain is powerful beyond measure, but if we don’t use it and let it use us, it will dictate our inner experience for us. Learn to be comfortable with yourself more by spending more time not being distracted and listen your own voice. We all need time to process barrage of stimulation every day life has to offer.

3. Practice periods of focused meditation. Full disclosure, this simple two-step technique requires some discomfort and boredom. But the benefits are incalculable. 1) Simply sit focused on observing your breath. You’ll notice when you do you’ll immediately want to control it. This gets frustrating but eventually you will develop the ability to simply observe. It’s a practice of letting go. 2) Next, when you mind wanders, which it will, gently bring it back to your breath. This is the part that is slightly uncomfortable and a little boring after a while, but this applies to all those situations in your life, where you are negatively affected by your thoughts, and catching yourself, and bringing your thoughts back to the present, helps prevent over-attaching to those thoughts, which can cause rumination. Start by doing this 3–5 minutes a day, before your able to add more time.

One of my old Pastors Heath Hardesty, once stated, “What you steep in changes you.” Which I’ve come to wholeheartedly agree. Therefore for any technique to truly work, you really have to steep in it for a while. A teabag dropped in water doesn’t turn into tea right way. It takes time and immersion for a transformation to take place. So in applying any of these techniques you’ll have to keep at them a while until you develop the necessary mental muscle for them to be applied second nature.

Thanks for reading! If you found this article helpful, please check out my other articles at yourkindofhappy.org/blog

References

Beattie, Karen, (2019). Four Destructive Traits of Perfectionism. https://www.thegrowthfaculty.com/blog/4destructivetraitsofperfectionismfromDrBrenBrown#:~:text=Perfectionism%20is%20not%20self%2Dimprovement,perform%2C%20perfect%2C%20prove.%E2%80%9D

BibleHub.com (2011). Matthew 6. https://biblehub.com/niv/matthew/6.htm

Stevenson, D. (n.d.). The Meditations. The Internet Classic Archive: http://classics.mit.edu/Antoninus/meditations.html

Lebell, S. (1994). The Art of Living: The Classical Manual on Virtue, Happiness, and Effectiveness. MJF Books, NY.

The Four Pillars of Radical Forgiveness

When you don’t forgive, you are chained to the past, and you are the one who suffers. 

C.S. Lewis once said, “To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you.” Being able to forgive is one of the most heavily saturated topics of self-help there is. Books like “The Shack,” “The Kite Runner,” and “The Story Teller,” paint an excellent picture of the struggle of the individual with the concept of forgiveness, and even it’s limitations like in “The Sunflower.” However there is a much older book that offers clarity in this concept, where genuine healing from the inside out can be achieved. Probably one of the most radical examples of forgiveness comes from the Bible in the book of Luke, chapter 23:34, where Jesus, after being tortured, mocked, and hung on the cross as an example of what happens to those who defy the earthly authorities, decided to speak these words, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”  Even if you do not consider yourself a Christian, there is true power in this example when you consider what it must have taken for those words to come out given the circumstances. 

One of the strongest reinforcers to my faith was finally grasping what it actually meant when other Christians would say, “Jesus loved us so much he died for our sins.” As a child, if I’m being honest, I struggled with what that meant.  How could someone die for my sins through an act of forgiveness, and more so, how could this happen if the event was in the past, ancient even. It wasn’t until I explored the inner nature of myself, that I learned what this meant. 

As a young man nearing the end of my military service, I was brutally attacked by some town locals upon the day of my return from an 11-month deployment in Iraq.  Eager to finally be in the good ol’ USA again, I was out enjoying some well-deserved festivities with my shipmates, when I had to depart for my ship to get some rest in preparation for a duty assignment early the following morning.  As I was combing the streets looking for an available taxi (this was pre-Uber), I encountered a group of young men, immediately sensing they were looking for trouble. Before I realized what was happening I was in an aggressive altercation in which I tried to —with no avail— defend myself; lasting only a few moments before being knocked unconscious. I woke up in the hospital with a brain injury, fractured orbital socket, damaged left eye, crushed sinus cavities, broken nose, dislocated and shattered shoulder; resulting in five surgeries at the VA and years of mental and physical rehabilitation.

After this event, I struggled with the concept of forgiveness. Even though I tried to forget the incident, emotions of anger and frustration would bubble to the surface when encountering my new physical and mental limitations. After years of being angry and frustrated about the events in my past, things changed when I decided to dedicate my life to God. What started as a genuine curiosity of what convicted people so much about Jesus, turned into a real relationship. I discovered I could learn about what God had to say about the topic of forgiveness, and who better to learn from.  By absorbing God’s wisdom through the teachings of his one and only son, I decided to take action.  I dedicated my life to learning what I could about this topic and use my knowledge and experiences for the good of others. From these experiences I’ve learned forgiveness can best be accomplished by understanding four principals. Like the corner pillars of any strong temple, these truths can offer support and stability.

1. Forgiveness is not forgetting - We can easily adopt the belief that one way of letting go of our anger or problematic thoughts associated with events in our past is to let them go, attempting to forget all about them, and put the past in the past. However, this not only can be an arduous process, it really is not that helpful. When we bury things in our past, they don’t leave, they simply sit idyll in our sub-conscious, and the repressed emotions associated with the memories of our past seep out into our daily lives in unhealthy ways. 

2. Forgiveness is not reconciliation of the past - Another concept that can keep us entangled in our struggle with forgiveness is the belief that we can fix the events in the past in order to increase our ability to let go of them. Forgiveness is not dependent on reconciliation, though reconciliation in the present can be achieved. In other words, if the person who hurt you, is no longer living, it would be impossible to repair or fix the past, however if the person is willing to communicate and work on repairing the relationship, then reconciliation is possible, but the forgiveness process is not dependent upon it. 

3. Forgiveness is understanding - On of the biggest tools at our disposal is our ability to think objectively at moments when our emotions attempt to dictate our actions. For the same reason that a child eventually learns it’s not longer affective to throw a tantrum to get a desired toy, we learn as adults that by controlling our emotions we can become more effective in almost all aspects of communication (though we are all works of progress in this area).  It’s our ability to look at events in our past from another perspective, taking in the other’s perspectives into account.  This does not necessarily mean taking the other’s perspectives into account will fix the situation, however it is a key element to the forgiveness process. We need to be able to see there is always another perspective than ours; which in-turn will offer a more comprehensive view. We do this by speaking directly with the person (if possible), consulting with friends and family, through prayer, or by allowing time to perform it’s ultimate healing work by offering us space in which to reflect. 

4. Forgiveness is inner healing - Jim Rohn, a motivational speaker, has an excellent speech related to inner forgiveness. He stated...

“One day I dropped my keys on the way out the door as the power simultaneously went out. While searching in the dark a single lit light-post down the street caught my eye. So, I decided to look out there. Upon looking for my keys under the light, a neighbor approached and inquired about what I was looking for. After telling him about dropping my keys, he was obliged to help me search. He asked, ‘Where did you have them last?’ I replied, ‘I dropped them in the house before the power went out.' Now you can imaging the bewilderment on his face when he asked, ‘Well, Jim why the heck are you looking for them out here?!’ To which I replied, ‘Well, this is where the light is...’”  

    As Jim points out, that is so often what we do with our problems, we tend to fix our attention and shine our light on the outside world, and tell ourselves the solution to our problems lie somewhere externally. However, our healing truly comes from within. Now this is not to say we cannot receive physical healing externally, we absolutely can, Jesus proved this during his three year ministry, performing several miracles of healing. However, with forgiveness, the healing is internal, in our heart. When we truly forgive, we may still remember, we may not have the opportunity for reconciliation, but the shackles that bind us to the pain and suffering related to our past are no longer there, we have truly let go. 

    When we understand these concepts and continue to struggle with event(s) in our past, it may be helpful to follow Jesus’ example. He had every human reason not to forgive those who strung him up on the cross, however he chose to anyway. When we decide to forgive others, it’s an act. Sometimes that act can have a ripple effect, which can later impact us in ways which we can’t imagine. Look at what happened after Jesus’ radical act of forgiveness, it completely reshaped with world and has done so for over two-thousand years. Releasing someone from the act they commit while here on earth, even if they are unwilling to change or realize how their actions impact people around hem (“for they know not what they do”) is an element of love, and ultimately love is healing. When we express love to others, despite their injustices, then pain and suffering have no power in our hearts.