Exploring Lifestyle Design Principles

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Welcome to Curious G — a weekly email about personal growth and lifestyle design.

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Lifestyle Design

Diversity is an important lifestyle design principle of mine.

Now, this may seem at odds with another principle I value: simplicity.

In the way diversity can add complexity, perhaps they are at odds. But let’s look at why diversity is worth prioritizing.

Diversity offers multiple benefits to lifestyle design by providing new perspectives, connecting disparate ideas, increasing optionality, and enriching daily life.

Take travel, for example; the variety of experiences that travel offers is one of the reasons I love it so much.

Despite being politicized in the US, diversity’s importance transcends current debates.

Diversity of thought breeds better ideas. Diversity of species creates thriving environments. Diversity of adversity builds resilience. Without variety, there can be no progress.

Resisting diversity often reflects a broader aversion to change, a result of our innate desire for certainty.

Therefore, embracing diversity requires accepting a degree of uncertainty, an uncomfortable but rewarding effort.

Influential historical figures like Leonardo da Vinci and Ben Franklin demonstrated the power of diverse interests and the resulting synergies.

Upon reflection, it seems that diversity and simplicity aren't opposed. Rather, diversity provides a rich palette from which we can thoughtfully select and simplify.

Embracing a wide range of experiences and ideas, enables us to distill them down into a meaningful life experience according to our priorities.

What I’m Thinking

I read a piece this week on parents throwing failure parties for their kids. I loved this concept.

One of the beliefs I’ve had to unlearn as an adult is: failure is bad.

Whether or not failure is truly bad or good, is less interesting to me.

Because what I’m trying to accomplish by unlearning this belief, is eliminating the fear of failure as a barrier to growth.

I’m noticing that failure, or generally being wrong, has had an outsized impact on my self worth recently.

When I’m wrong, I take it personally. Being wrong to me has always meant I’m not good enough.

But if I continue to believe that, then I’ll never be good enough.

I always assumed that as time goes on, I’d fail and learn, and eventually, I’ll fail less. But that doesn’t seem to be true (at least it doesn’t feel true).

The problem with this assumption is I’m still optimizing to avoid failure, when I need to be leaning into failure. I can’t become comfortable with something I’m trying to avoid in the first place.

I need to change the way I internalize failure.

Failure incentivizes learning. Learning leads to growth.

I always want to be learning and growing, which means I always want to be failing and getting things wrong.

What I’m Reading

Father Forgets by W. Livingston

This poem hits extra hard for me — partly because of my relationship with my own father, and partly because of the way I often talk to myself. I love the closing message about seeking to understand rather than condemn. It’s a quick, but powerful read.

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