#100 Encouragement
Common Discourse is a project designed to help others (and ourselves) think through creativity, focus, and intentional work—from Alex Tan & Alice Otieno.
Every Tuesday we share an idea from us, a quote from somebody else, and links worth sharing. On Fridays we invite a guest to share images from their camera roll and a sound that resonates with them.
My youngest brother is 18 years old, 10 years younger than myself. His current reality feels like a distant memory to me, but I appreciate his willingness to ask me questions as if I just finished undergrad and can vividly recollect thoughts on courses and professors during my freshman year of college.
“Did you take any writing classes?”
“Why did you switch your major?”
“What did you do on the weekends?
“How did you know you were good enough to do what you do for work?”
After spending some time together in California last week, I’ve decided that the slow, rush hour crawl to LAX is the ripest territory for meaningful existential conversation. Perhaps there’s a bravery complex when we’re staring ahead versus at one another, giving ourselves permission to go places we’ve stopped ourselves from going before. It wasn’t until that slow roll toward the sunset that I realized he was using the answers to these smaller, more frequent questions in effort to piece together an answer to a much larger question that was never fully verbalized: “Am I doing this right?”
The conversation became much better when he stopped asking dead-end questions and I stopped answering them, and instead we opted into being honest about our current anxieties and future desires. Suddenly I realized I was participating in a viral “What would you tell your 18 year old self?” tweet in real time.
He was probably looking for advice, but I chose instead to encourage him that 1.) things will be ok and 2.) you can be anything you want to be. A reminder that I needed 10 years ago and still need looking 10 years ahead. I really do believe that if you trust that those two things are true, everything else clicks into place.
The approach that we’ve developed with Common Discourse feels unique in that it looks like self-help, but it doesn’t feel like self-help, which is by design. I’ve had a philosophy since the beginning that encouragement through observation allows for people to have agency over how they’ll get to where they want to go, while advice insinuates that there is a right and wrong way of getting there. The latter prioritizes flattening down life’s experiences in effort to prioritize speed and performance, while the former values perspective, autonomy, and all the other things that make for an abundant life.
Today marks the 100th time we’ve published our observations & encouragement through words, images, quotes from others, and links on the internet.
Some of you just subscribed last week and others subscribed over 3 years ago.
Regardless, thank you.
— Alex
An idea from us
I. WIDTH
Say yes to things you aren’t good at. Retry a food you didn’t like a few years ago. Ask one more question. Drive down a road you’ve never been down before. Do something difficult when you don’t have to. Ask a stranger how their day is.
Life is short but it can be made wide.
II. FRICTION
There’s a common misconception that leads us to believe that some days we sit down to write, design, or create, and it’s just not our day. After 20 minutes of resistance, bad ideas, and writer’s block, we throw in the towel.
Maybe if I come back tomorrow, I’ll have a good day and the ideas will come freely. Maybe creativity is a dice roll.
A more hopeful perspective, and more accurate truth, is that friction is required to enter flow.
According to Andrew Huberman,
“The brain circuits that turn on first are of the stress system. The agitation and stress that you feel at the beginning of something—when you're trying to lean into it and you can't focus—is just a recognized gate. You have to pass through that gate to get to the focus component."
Welcome the initial friction.
III. PURPOSE
The sooner we connect our life’s purpose to the things that energize us, the less time we spend chasing purpose and the more time we spend creating it.
A quote from somebody else
“If you see beauty in something, don't wait for others to agree.”
Links worth sharing
🧪 Our team at MWRC recently launched an annual findings report for 2023, rounding up our thoughts on some of the current trends, observations and anticipations for the year ahead.
🐇 How to fall down a rabbit hole, via Syllabus Project
🎷 Listentopromises is a site dedicated to the collaborative album by Pharoah Sanders, Floating Points & The London Symphony Orchestra.
🫂 The friendship problem, and why friendships have started to feel similar to admin by Rosie Spinks.
🌐 Code of Design is a manifesto outlining some of the prerequisites necessary in the role of a designer.
🖼️ I finally learned how to use Midjourney and made some images I like!
Thanks for consuming!
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Curious to know what type of articles you reading to wrap your head around midjourney, I’m curious to play around with it for storyboarding/moodboarding but I’m finding it difficult to articulate the right prompts to output images that look as good as yours. Any advise?