Time, Attention, & Energy Investments

Growing Up in a Cult, The Contrarian, Defining Values and Meaning

I grew up in a cult.

The first time my therapist suggested it I resisted the idea. Going to public schools was tolerated among Jehovah’s Witnesses and thanks to television there was some exposure to the larger culture I was growing up in.

Not all cults are alike and most members of a cult will not identify with being a cult member. It wasn’t after years of studying psychology, sociology, history, and time management that the mechanism through which a cult controls its followers became clear to me. Often overlooked is how a cult demands you allocate your most valuable resources: time, attention and energy. How effectively a cult convinces you to spend your core resources on their cause is essential to its success. There is also the weaponization of community to encourage conformity, and the careful control of ideas that are allowed to be entertained and discussed among members.

Watching the world around me react to health threats and crypto developments with cult-like zealotry became common in 2020 and it reminds me sadly of an unfree, highly-controlled past to which I no longer subscribe.

These days I entertain ideas from a variety of sources, filtering out messages filled with fear and control, optimizing instead for freedom with personal sacrifices made if it brings contentment and more importantly meaning. I am willing to let go of a belief if I can see how it no longer serves my lifestyle. The challenge however is often letting go of unconscious beliefs, i.e. beliefs I am not aware of. More on that another time.

Every post I share one lifestyle design idea, something I am reading, something that inspired me, and one question for my readers.

Ready for this week’s edition? Talk to me!

One Lifestyle Design Idea From Me

Expand your definition of investing.

If you are solely focused on how your portfolio of assets are doing in terms of financial return you are setting your life up for disappointment.

Consider how you are investing your core assets: time, attention, and energy.

Then consider what you are optimizing your life for. Unfortunately it’s easier to chase a higher ROI or a societal menu of options defining success than getting clear on the values that matter the most to you. If you value feeling abundant for example allocate some time, attention, and energy to generate the feeling of abundance in you every day and then make small moves externally that create an abundance feedback loop.

If you are unclear on what your highest values are start with a daily allotment of time to engage in self inquiry to gain that clarity. The small time and attention investment will yield massive results and help redirect your course to a lifestyle of your design.

What I Am Reading

The Contrarian: Peter Thiel and Silicon Valley’s Pursuit of Power.

Since the days of the dot-com bubble in the late 1990s, no industry has made a greater impact on the world than Silicon Valley. And few individuals have done more to shape Silicon Valley than Peter Thiel. The billionaire venture capitalist and entrepreneur has been a behind-the-scenes operator influencing countless aspects of our contemporary way of life, from the technologies we use every day to the delicate power balance between Silicon Valley, Wall Street, and Washington. But despite his power and the ubiquity of his projects, no public figure is quite so mysterious.

One Thing That Inspired Me

Today we live in an age of crumbling and vanishing traditions.

Thus, instead of new values being created by finding unique meanings, the reverse happens. Universal values are on the wane. That is why ever more people are caught in a feeling of aimlessness and emptiness or, as I am used to calling it, an existential vacuum.

However, even if all universal values disappeared, life would remain meaningful, since the unique meanings remain untouched by the loss of traditions. To be sure, if man is to find meanings even in an era without values, he has to be equipped with the full capacity of conscience.

It therefore stands to reason that in an age such as ours, that is to say, in an age of the existential vacuum, the foremost task of education, instead of being satisfied with transmitting traditions and knowledge, is to refine that capacity which allows man to find unique meanings.

Today education cannot afford to proceed along the lines of tradition, but must elicit the ability to make independent and authentic decisions. In an age in which the Ten Commandments seem to lose their unconditional validity, man must learn more than ever to listen to the ten thousand commandments arising from the ten thousand unique situations of which his life consists. And as to these commandments, he is referred to, and must rely on, his conscience.

A lively and vivid conscience is also the only thing that enables man to resist the effects of the existential vacuum, namely, conformism and totalitarianism.

-via Viktor Frankl

One Question For My Readers

How can I recapture time, attention and energy and direct it to more fulfilling perhaps unquantifiable outcomes?

If you found value here it would mean a lot to me if you can share it with someone.

Comments or questions from you the reader are always welcomed.

Until next time. Happy week ahead!

More about what Ed is up to here.