Hi amazing human,
Today I wanted to interrupt regular programming to share something special:
- It’s been 3 months since I started this newsletter and I’ve relished every moment of it! Thanks for letting me be part of your inbox ❤️
- To celebrate, I wanted to build something for the community. Read on👇
In my quest to discover quality wellness and personal development content on the world wide web, I’ve often come up short. These days Medium/YouTube/etc. feels like a wasteland of clickbaity quips that promise “5 life-changing tips to achieve nirvana”.
I crave writing that holds depth and embodies a vulnerability that’s not overextended.
Rather, it’s a quiet sort.
The best writing feels like you’re momentarily peeking into someones ever-spinning web of mental discourse - the sinew of their sentences pulling you into the inner-workings of their mind and spitting you back out more conscious and susceptible to growth than before.
Where do we find these resources? And how can we come back to these resources easily after we’ve consumed them?
Since I couldn’t find an online directory readily available, I decided to make my own. After numerous nights and weekends, I’ve aggregated over 300+ resources that have shaped my perspective and accelerated my wellbeing in some meaningful way. I present to you:
The Wellness Wisdom Stack 📚✨
So far I have 300 resources across videos, tools, podcasts, online programs, articles, newsletters, books, and resources to find mental health support etc., but I want to get this to 500+ before I share it more broadly. I think this community of 500+ thoughtful and amazing subscribers can help me do it 🙏
I would love to know.. what’s a resource that has had an impact on your wellness and personal development?
Reply to this e-mail with 1 or 100 resources that have helped you along your wellbeing journey. If you’d like to share, I’d also love to hear about how it made an impact on you. I’ll list them in the directory so more people will have access to quality life-altering content ☺️
I’ll also respond right away with a password + website link for you to access the site before it goes officially live in a few weeks.
Of course, I want to walk the walk. Below I share some of my favorite wellbeing resources (all listed in the Wellness Wisdom Stack) and how they have personally impacted me. In no way have I fully mastered these learnings. Rather, they serve as philosophies that I’ve repeatedly come back to over the years to re-ground myself in. Let’s dive in 🌊
Videos 🎬
- This is Water by David Foster Wallace - I re-watch this video time to time and it never fails to touch me. Wallace uses the analogy of “fish in water” to describe one of our biggest challenges in life: having empathy for the lives of those around us, while we struggle through our own. It’s holding the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as ours. And how we must apply awareness to ebb the unconscious stream of judgements that plummet our minds on a daily basis.
- “The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day.” - DFW
- Why Your Life is not a Journey - Alan Watts & David Lindberg - taught me that the point of life is to enjoy the journey and not the destination. Alan Watts hones in on this by drawing a comparison to music and dancing. The point of going to concerts isn’t to listen to the final chord. In dancing, you don’t aim at a particular spot in the room to end. Instead, the point is to enjoy the slow unraveling of every note or step. Nonetheless, society conditions us to always arrive - school grades turn into career ladders. We are constantly arriving, looking immediately for the next arrival. It’s only until we retire that we look back and realize.. “It was a musical thing, and you were supposed to sing or to dance while the music was being played.”
- 해그린달 haegreendal YouTube Channel- I somehow stumbled across this Youtube channel a couple months ago and found myself fixated on it ever since. What is truly refreshing is the intentional and meaningful portrayal of seemingly mundane everyday activities - making coffee, taking a walk, washing dishes, and organizing the pantry. It reminds me that traveling to worldwide landmarks is nice, yet beautiful experiences unravel everyday within the peaceful cocoon of our ordinary lives.
Advice to Younger Self 🧒
- Naval Ravikant’s been someone on my radar ever since his interview with The Knowledge Project blew my mind. Since then he has informed my views on wealth, career, and personal development. This is a great summary of his collective wisdom.
- Marc Andressen put together a guide on personal productivity and career planning. When I think about how self-care applies to career, I believe deep-seated wellness stems from building a career that is the truest expression of yourself. To do that you need to do the hard work in knowing yourself absent of external influences.
- Anne-Laure Le Cunff’s 30 life lessons she learned before turning 30. I love her philosophies around creating more than you consume, being interested to be interesting, and how there is meaning in suffering.
Books 📖
- The Happiness Trap by Russ Harris - for those who can’t afford therapy, this is a great distillation of ACT (accept and commitment therapy), a modality that has changed my life. ACT differs from CBT in that it doesn’t seek to *change* thoughts. Instead, we learn to create space between ourselves and the thoughts we have. We become the observer and not the thought itself. This is the one skill that has improved my baseline of happiness 10-fold.
- The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle - I first read this book in high school and immediately stopped a chapter in. It felt like I was reading a foreign language. I re-read it earlier this year and wow, it completely blew my mind. If you had a choice between taking either a "red pill" that reveals unpleasant but ultimately freeing truth, or taking a "blue pill" to remain in blissful ignorance, this book is your “red pill”.
- Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends on It by Kamal Ravikant - don’t mistake brevity for lack of impact. This short book changed me. In my day-to-day decisions or in dealing with others, this book taught me to always ask this question: If I loved myself truly and deeply, would I let myself experience this? If I loved myself, truly and deeply, what would I do? When you reframe decisions from the singular viewpoint - the answer becomes clear. Also, fun fact - Kamal is Naval’s brother.
Articles 🗞
- 6 hard truths that will make you a better person - This article captures the hard truth that the world only wants what it can get out of you and that the best way to make money is do something that’s valuable to others. Ideally, your work can help others and serve your own passions, which is why finding your Ikigai is essential.
- The Trouble with Optionality- taught me about the optionality fallacy and how dangerous it is to continuously optimize for options without ever specializing. As Mirhir Desai puts it, “the shortest distance between two points is reliably a straight line. If your dreams are apparent to you, pursue them. Creating optionality and buying lottery tickets are not way stations on the road to pursuing your dreamy outcomes. They are dangerous diversions that will change you.”
- How will you measure your life?- this article (and recommend the book as well) taught me that relationships with your family and friends are the most important sources of happiness. However, they require work and time, with benefits that aren’t immediately noticeable - but ultimately the most fulfilling. Here’s a chart I drew to summarize:
I hope you enjoyed these resources and want to contribute to the Wellness Wisdom Stack. I can’t wait to hear about the content that has stirred your soul and wellbeing ✨Just reply to this e-mail when you’re ready.
Be well,
Patricia