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I never really understood the whole âempty your cupâ and âunlearn what you have learnedâ thing until maybe a couple of years ago. Like, intellectually it sorta made sense, but... is it really that big a deal? It actually is, IMO, and Iâm wondering now how I learned to see it
I think it mightâve been a consequence of being exposed to a much larger number of people and having lots of conversations - over time I noticed that some people were bringing all their baggage to every conversation, while others were listening intently https://t.co/KNfvIZVFU6
ânever be looking so hard for something that you fail to see what is thereâ - thereâs a quote like this and Iâve seen people retweet saying âah itâs about journalismâ and others saying âah itâs about scientific discoveryâ and âah itâs about parentingâ ~~Itâs about life~~
If you start looking for it there are tonnes of gems throughout the history of art and culture and storytelling that try to convey this. In TDKR, Batman couldnât make the leap until he let go of the rope. A metaphor for letting go, more broadly, in general https://t.co/jZhqbR7SpI
We can probably graph this in some way. When weâre holding on to preexisting ideas abt what weâre looking for, who weâre talking to, etc - thereâs a sort of Procrustean effect. We mostly only see what weâre looking for. It makes us slow, stupid. We fail to notice nuance, surprise
We might *feel* fast and smart, but weâre only fast and smart within the narrow bounds of the game that we think weâre playing. When we are fixated on the game we think weâre playing, we close ourselves off from playing a bigger, better, more interesting game https://t.co/M0Ur5FKu05
Circling back to âactive listeningâ - thatâs another thing that sounded dumb to me. I hear what youâre saying, why do I have to be all... wooey... about it? But Iâve grown to realize that words they say are like ~20% of whatâs being communicated https://t.co/fvewalLpsU
The nuance in this GIF is pretty challenging to convey in text. âIâm pretty sure youâre wrong, but I donât want to shut you down - Iâd like you to reconsider this, now that you know Iâm not too cosy with the way you frame it.â Body language + tone of voice can be 80-90% of comms https://t.co/81pPr9wJXZ
The best questions you can ask someone is in that space where youâre paying close attention to them - to their face, their expressions, their body language, and you notice that theyâre holding back in some way. They might not even realize themselves that theyâre doing that! https://t.co/uycjsv2nZD
This is true for regular conversation too, and I think itâs true of comedy, wit, and of business - IMO I almost always want to be willing + able to drop my current routine/pattern instantly in order to respond quickly and nimbly to whatâs in front of me https://t.co/0bpT0AwC1L
Flirting is a conversational OODA loop Teaching a single formula then can be counter-productive, because good flirting is about switching formulas on the fly, appropriately and adeptly so much so that in practice itâs âthe formula of no formulaâ
At the heart of this, I think, is a question: do we allow life to surprise us? Bc everything we think we know is a *tiny* fragment of the world. The world *will* surprise us, in both good & bad ways. Emptying your cup is about refusing to be in denial https://t.co/zQO7traLAn
Your personal experiences make up <0.0001% of whatâs happened in the world but 80% of how you think the world works. When experiencing a fraction of whatâs out there but using that to explain everything you expect to happen, you'll be disappointed & confused by othersâ decisions.
emptying your cup is about making room to be surprised https://t.co/eamUtBb7Mw
This is the script of no script, the formula of no formula, you just pay really close attention to the other person in a curious, non-judgmental way without the burden of expectations, and look for anything surprising or interesting - and ask about that in a supportive way
yes. read the room https://t.co/ysRsY1WVwX
"attention consists of suspending our thought, leaving it detached, empty and ready to be penetrated by the object" https://t.co/9Le6CGBgTY
"it takes effort to hold awareness in clumps" https://t.co/9E4eDsiApm
I'll give examples in a sec. But the overall thrust is: Awareness can coagulate. Like how milk clumps when it curdles. I find it takes effort to hold awareness in clumps. That clumping is also how I consciously examine details and solve problems. ButâŚ