🌀🐇 #18: Stop Worrying, Rekindling Optimism, Toxic Habits Killing Creativ ity

​ ​ ​ ⚡️ Enlightening Bolts Can't miss gems of the weird and wonderful 🌎 A Reason To Stop Worrying: Watch this video whenever you're stressed or anxious. [Check it out here.](=)​ 🦊 Animals Interrupting: A heartwarming thread of various creatures making friends with photographers. [See the photos here.]()​ 🎩 In And Of Itself: The best performance of magic I've ever seen. Spend 90 minutes watching this. [You won't regret it.](=)​ 😮 Fractal Animations: A trippy collection of animated, never-ending GIFs. [See them here.](=)​ 🧘🏻‍♂️ Ritual Recipes: A brief guide for building your own rituals to cope with change. [Read it here.](​ 🎇 Image of The Week ​ A man contemplates inside an ice cave. This phenomenon occurs where a cave remains below freezing year-round keeping the walls slick with ice. Different but of parallel beauty, glacier caves are formed out of ice entirely with no earth contributing to its structure. ☀️ ️Rekindling Optimism We live during a time where there is no short supply of things to be worried about. Social media and broadcast news seem to be constantly flooding our minds with bickering and mudslinging. It's a business model that profits from making you angry and anxious. This information environment suffocates our sense of optimism in the harsh winds of digital chaos. We cannot hear hope when it's drowned out by the noise of legions of lost souls shouting into the void of status boxes and comment sections. There's an African proverb I quite like: "A falling tree makes more noise than a growing forest." I remember it frequently. It invites me to listen more deeply. To sense into greater subtlety. The spectacle and hysteria of the 24-hour news cycle are the trees falling. And if this was all you ever saw, you'd have a pretty wicked image of humanity. Pessimism is the only logical conclusion. But humanity is more than the cartoonish characters on your 2-dimensional screen telling you what the world is. The world is so much bigger than hot takes and scandals. The snow fell today. A baby learned to walk. A grandmother smiled. A single bead of dew on a withering leaf shimmered in the light of the first morning's sun. These simple "mundane" moments are the delicate and fleeting sounds of the whole forest growing. There is more goodness in this world than you can fathom. There's also a lot of bad. You know that already. You might also know that shouting at how bad the bad is doesn't make it better. That's like setting the fallen tree on fire and accidentally setting the forest ablaze. In trying to eliminate the bad we destroy the good. Instead, embody goodness and elevate beauty. Be the beacon that reminds people that although this world is filled with tragedy and suffering, it is still a world worth cherishing and nurturing. Give what matters your concentration and focus. This is how you rekindle optimism. Listen to the trees. They are growing. And so are you. 🤔 Problems, Culture and Conversation James Hillman is on my list of thinkers who should be more well known. Enjoy 3 striking quotes on problems, culture and conversation: "Why do we focus so intensely on our problems? What draws us to them? Why are they so attractive? They have the magnet power of love: somehow we desire our problems; we are in love with them much as we want to get rid of them . . . Problems sustain us -- maybe that's why they don't go away. What would a life be without them? Completely tranquilized and loveless . . . There is a secret love hiding in each problem" "Of course, a culture as manically and massively materialistic as ours creates materialistic behavior in its people, especially in those people who've been subjected to nothing but the destruction of imagination that this culture calls education, the destruction of autonomy it calls work, and the destruction of activity it calls entertainment." "Not just any talk is conversation; not any talk raises consciousness. Good conversation has an edge: it opens your eyes to something, quickens your ears. And good conversation reverberates: it keeps on talking in your mind later in the day; the next day, you find yourself still conversing with what was said. That reverberation afterward is the very raising of consciousness; your mind's been moved. You are at another level with your reflections." 🤓 Learn This Word Petrichor: The smell of earth after rain. This comes from plant oils that are absorbed into the soil during dry periods that are released into the air when displaced by water. ⏳ From The Archives A hand-picked classic HighExistence article ​[9 Toxic Habits Killing Your Creativity](​ Creative thinking should be natural. We are all born creative. Creativity flows through us on its own, like breathing, and we know when the flow is strong. It feels good, like we’re in plugged in and turned on. What we do becomes effortless, intrinsically motivating, more satisfying, and even warps our perception of time. The problem is, you can sabotage your own creativity. Certain habits and beliefs systems are damming to your creative current. If you get caught up in too many of them for too long, you may forget that you’re creative altogether. Luckily, to get the river flowing again, all you need to do is step out of your own way. If you give up even one of these, you’ll feel your creativity dramatically increase. And once your creative thinking starts flowing again, it becomes that much easier to give up the rest of the things on this list. ​[Keep Reading](​ 🎬 Endnote We hope you enjoyed this issue of Down The Rabbit Hole. Feel free to reply and tell us what you think. Share this with a friend and brighten up their day. Simply click forward and send it their way. We'll love you for it too. :) With Wonder, Mike Slavin & The HighExistence Team P.S. Did a friend forward you this email? Read previous issues and sign-up to receive future issues here: [(​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​[Unsubscribe]( | [Update your profile]( | 40 E. Main St. #1137, Newark, DE 19711 [Built with ConvertKit]()