How to : Decide

To lose control

I have always loved the word serendipity.

It's also something I love about cities and being “social”. You don’t know what's going to happen. You simply walk in a direction and something will happen. This joy and embrace of the unknown is playful. It gives me so much energy. 🔥

People do not decide their futures, they decide their habits and their habits decide their futures.

F.M. Alexander

I hope this serendipity can happen here too.

My new habit this year is to write more from the heart - be more vulnerable. The habit I want to stop is overthinking. To just resist the inner voices demanding perfection before I send it out into the world! Eeeep!! 😮😊

The joy of serendipity.

Each time meeting someone new, seeing something new, or with fresh eyes is an opportunity for this joy of more associations. What are they going to show me? What are they going to reveal? What idea or way of seeing or thinking might they show me? 🍻

But I sure do get in my way a lot! Haha. Does this happen to you?

I’m trying to remember to just keep going, paso a paso. Step by step. Because every time I do there is a greater chance for serendipity to strike. A small reward for a small effort.

I came across this simple quiz to see what kind of perfectionist I might be. I helped to learn that I’m a messy perfectionist. I easily start things. So easy to start. But oh my god, such a struggle to continue to finish or keep it going. This newsletter is a real test of my messy perfectionism. Fun to start it. Learned a lot about how to do it, super fun. And now after a few months, I bumped into my inner perfectionist voice. It took some time, but I realized/am realizing there is still so much more to keep “starting”. For example, this email right here. I originally posted it to Instagram in a shorter form. But then I thought, wait this could be an email instead. And here we are, if you’ve read this far.

I’m really excited by the many books and projects that I’ve collected along with the signal scanning. I think I will share them in separate emails during the month. It might work out that FIELD REPORT is a weekly newsletter. We’ll see.

So are you a perfectionist of some kind? I believe most of my friends are in some small way. At a minimum, we have those internal voices that encourage and discourage us. I’d love to know what you do with them.

The practice of being socially fit.

These opportunities to be comfortably social or have social fitness are under threat for many people in many places whether because of isolation, loneliness, marginalization, echo chambers of misinformation, habits, and more.

So much is being written about this these days. It seems particularly acute in the US, in places and cities dominated by cars. But here in Barcelona and in my travels around Spain where it is quite a bit more of a pedestrian-oriented way of life, I am still learning about how different it is to be social, how important it is to take the time to be social.

People seem to take more time to chat if you want to, even in my broken Spanglish, I’ve not felt rushed at the grocery or cafe or frankly, most places. In the US I would have felt guilty for holding up the line behind me. There seems to be an importance to being social so much so that it feels like THE most important practice of society. I need to give this more thought before writing more but suffice it to say, my social way of life here is much easier, relaxed, and encouraged even with a language barrier. Please let me know what’s been your experience.

How might we help each other see our way into the future?

My goal is for FIELD REPORT to be an opportunity to create common ground, forge bonds, and generate places ready with serendipity. I want us to be comfortable being uncomfortable, to be vulnerable for a moment, to trust, and to support - so we can have opportunities to be, possibilities to try on, directions to head, and adventures to explore together.

Listo? Venga, vamos!

Images:
- How to Decide Kit by @peopleiveloved
- The Perfectionist's Guide to Losing Control by Katherine Morgan Schafler
- NPR interview and quiz
- Self-Reflection Kit by @werenotreallystrangers