In stories, the narrator tells you which ordinary things are portals to magic and adventure. In real life, you have to find them yourself.
This episode reveals 5 secret portals to the next version of yourself: seemingly ordinary choices, traits, and habits that are thresholds to the future version of you who lives with more courage, clarity, and freedom. It’s for you if an old version of you has died but the new one hasn’t been born yet. You might have recently experienced a big life change: a move, or a relationship ending, or a career change. Or maybe you know one is coming. It’s for you if you have an unshakeable feeling that there is a more alive version of you out there, if only you could figure out how to get to them.
We’ll examine the work of philosophy’s greatest minds, like Nietzsche, Kant, Kafka, and the Ancient Greeks, to uncover the hidden thresholds between who you are and who you're becoming, and point out clues for how to spot them when they appear in your own life.
EPISODE OUTLINE
00:00 Intro
04:54 I missed you
06:05 Help me keep Soul Gum ad-free
07:35 Talk to me!!!
08:18 1. Intuition is a portal
08:49 Nietzsche’s beef with Socrates
10:44 The neuroscience of intuition (Gary Klein)
12:31 I exist because of a woman’s intuition
13:03 The tension between ambition & intuition
14:13 Mary Oliver on reacquianting with your intuition
15:05 Small ways to reconnect with your intuition
15:42 2. Solitude is a portal (Pascal)
16:39 The fear of being alone with your thoughts
17:33 2014 study on the discomfort of being un-stimulated
18:05 Solitude as a tool in my creative process
18:58 Brain drain study: it is that d**n phone
19:30 Going phone n*k*d
20:12 3. Aligned friendship is a portal
21:36 Nietzsche: Friends should be your “best enemies”
23:06 Friendship as a mirror
23:40 The research of social contagion
24:18 Look for friends that show you what’s possible
24:52 4. Nature is a portal
25:40 Our increasingly sanitized relationship with nature
26:15 Kant, the sublime, and the gorpcore of it all
28:41 The ego-interrupting power of awe
29:45 5. Action is a portal (Kafka’s Before the Law)
31:29 Mary Oliver on the most regretful people
32:00 You deserve to know what’s on the other side of fear
32:33 Leap by Joy Sullivan
33:34 For the Ones Who Left by Me (Victoria Hutchins)
34:29 Lightning round recap
35:40 Subscribe, rate, share, talk to me!!!
LINKS
My debut poetry collection MAKE BELIEVE is out everywhere now
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