The primacy of practice
how to be less stupid
🤝 Being best friends with yourself is more relatable and attainable than the often-ethereal self-compassion or self-love.
🏃♂️ I’ve been exploring the primacy of practice this week; not just how important it is, but what it tells us about human nature. Writing these pieces has felt like laying down intellectual piping. Less narrative, more foundation-building.
👨🏼💻 On the topic of practice, today is the 71st day I’ve published something new online. You can peruse all pieces here.
🎶 We readily accept that mastery in music, sport & art comes from years of practice, but still balk at applying the same method to our inner life.
🧙 One of the most powerful responses to a shallow culture is to recognise a radical depth in yourself; the beyond within.
🙃 Good practice is stupidity prevention—an intimacy with how we screw it up, as opposed to the elevation of what’s right and true.
💡 Perception is not an inert physiological process: it is active, living and constructive. Practice alters it and so changes us.
🌱 When you want to grow a plant, you don’t crack the seed open and yank out its leaves. True practice requires an attitude of cultivation, not control.
📚 One very on-topic book I’m reading: Practice in Still Life by Adam Robbert. Adam’s Substack,
, is well worth a read if you’re interested in rediscovering philosophy as a way of using practice to transform perception.📄 One article I enjoyed: The Architecture of Safety by
. “Real safety isn’t the absence of fear or pain or confusion. True safety is often the very condition that allows these experiences to finally surface.”
