Into the future, the keys you hold and the power of harnessing individuality

The world doesn’t need more people who are the same, it needs more people who are themselves. Be bold enough to be different.

Hey thinkers 👋

“She sells seashells by the sea shore” – say this tongue twister quickly 10 times over.

Happy Sunday!

The last week has flown and the year of 2021 is over half way through the tenth month. Crazy.

Over the last month, I have been giving a lot of thought to the concept of individuality and what this means in a world where we are all connected.

We constantly have points of reference or things to compare ourselves to thrust into our attention stream. This means that unless we are consciously aware of the influence digital spaces may have on our thinking we may be coerced into a world of fiction.

With that, here’s an insight into some of the thinking that I have been delving into.

Have a splendid week ahead 🤟

Joshua

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A QUICK PERSPECTIVE

Harnessing your individuality. Do we know what it means to unlock the value of our individualism and the good that this can do in the world? This is something that has been on mind over the last few weeks as I have intentionally been deep diving into the crypto space. Meeting new people and connecting some different thinking.

A few weeks back Rich Roll released a conversation Mel Robbins on his Podcast. I highly recommend listening to the entire conversation, but here are two take out’s that I think tie directly into individuality.

The 5 second rule. You have a five second window where you can harness your unique power, before your subconscious takes over. This intentional interruption spurs us into action before we convince ourselves not to do something or create an excuse for not doing something.

Our minds are remarkable they are responsible for regulating, restoring, and protecting our thinking.

The 5 Second Rule - Mel Robbins

Talking ourselves out of doing something happens regularly. Change is uncomfortable – you’re never going to feel like pushing yourself out of your comfort zone. So creating a mechanism to push ourselves into action can help immensely. How we respond through our feelings and behaviour is always a choice.

As I write this piece, I am reminded of a saying from my good friend Carel Nolte. The saying goes as follows, “Take what you do seriously not yourself”.

The second area from the podcast related to the concept of high-fiving yourself in the mirror. It’s a concept that is foreign to me and I am sure many reading this may think why would I want to high-five myself in the mirror?

Here’s why.

“If you’re looking for that one person who will change your life look in the mirror” Mel Robins

As I listened to more of the conversation, I began to realise that this is actually an incredibly simple hack to show yourself that you have the ability to do whatever you want.

So, what is holding you back?

I am a big advocate of giving yourself the time and space to think through something, it has served me well in many decisions I have made in my journey through life so far. However I also know that I do at times have a tendency to over think minor decisions which is why I think these practices resonated with me.

The moment you have an instinct to act on a goal you must physically move or your brain will stop you. You have 5-seconds to spring into action, breaking the default train of thought and asserting control over your next action.

“Pushing yourself to take simple actions creates a chain reaction in your confidence and your productivity” Mel Robbins

Leading off the above thinking, you may enjoy this TED Talk Mel gave in 2011. How can we help ourselves to have the courage and confidence to lean into what we know we are capable of but may be daunted to make the decision to change.

The Crypto Space is one of these life altering spaces for me personally. When you read the word crypto many people think of it only in relation to Bitcoin. I guess this is natural though as we are still some way away from onboarding one billion people and there is loads of education still to do. I am constantly reminded how young this space is and how much work we still have to do.

In early 2017, I went into the rabbit hole but then I pulled myself out again when crypto winter arrived during 2018. Reflecting on this decision and misjudgement has taught me a lot about how we think about and deal with change. I made the decision to reduce the amount of attention I was giving the space, incorrectly because I was using lens that was purely focused on the economic changes rather than the bigger change that was underway.

Change is fluid, it’s not fixed and it is guided by more than just the surface level reactions we experience. One of the reasons I am energised by the crypto world is because it creates a space for collective individualism. It offers us the ability to create new ways of operating and collaborating.

Crypto provides a space for the intersection of ownership and creativity – unearthing the potential of allowing individuals to be themselves rather than having to conform to predefined constructs.

I will explore this in detail in a different piece as I need to give it the attention that it deserves, because the shift that is occurring is one that will define core elements of our future and we all have a part to play in building it. As an introduction to what this may mean for the way we collaborate with others, I would recommend reading these two pieces from Gaby Goldberg.

Curators all the way down - This piece of thinking was shared by Gaby as a follow up to this piece that she published in August of 2020 listed below.

Curators are the new creators

Summing all of this up, I am drawn to a quote from Balaji Srinivasan.

“Decentralization doesn't mean an absence of leaders, but an abundance of them.”

The world doesn’t need more people who are the same, it needs more people who are themselves. Be bold enough to be different and work hard to find the others in the world who hold values you find empowering. Together we can build something special and curate a world we are proud of to enable generations to come.

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SOMETHING THAT I DISCOVERED THIS WEEK THAT I DIDN’T KNOW LAST WEEK

The etymology of the word “individual” is from Latin indīviduum (“an indivisible thing”).

I find this fascinating because when thinking about collective individualism, the individual is indivisible but we hold the ability to combine the power of indivisible beings.

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THE LATEST EPISODE FROM THE REVERSE MENTOR LAB PODCAST

In this episode we had a conversation with Eleanor Saunders where we explored her thinking around new education models and designing interaction points for collective thinking.

Eleanor has been in the education space for over 15 years cutting across both formal and information education. She has designed programmes including the world’s largest climate hackathon, Europe's main systems innovation summer school, and innovation training for global south international funding. She specialises in interactive, participant driven learning drawing on techniques from teaching, coaching, mentoring, and peer learning within the fields of innovation and sustainability.

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SOMETHING FOR YOU TO THINK ABOUT

“People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are” Steve Jobs

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A PODCAST CONVERSATION WORTH YOUR TIME

Making Meaning In Challenging Times – Your Undivided Attention.

What helps you make meaning in challenging times? As you confront COVID, the climate crisis, and all of the challenges we discuss on this show, what helps you avoid nihilism or fundamentalism, and instead access healing, inspiration, and connection?

Today on Your Undivided Attention, we're joined by anthropologist and writer Jamie Wheal. Wheal is the author of Recapture the Rapture: Rethinking God, Sex and Death In a World That's Lost Its Mind.

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A LEARNING DAO

You’re welcome to join, full details here: cryptosociety.notion.site

Learning DAOs enable members to participate in curating the learning experience most suited to their needs. It can compensate teachers and organizers with new models - like turning courses into revenue-producing research with decentralised ownership.

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I would love to hear your feedback, so please don’t be shy. Thanks for making it this far and for giving me some of your valuable attention in amongst all the noise 🙏