Check your Pulse, #5
🇱🇷Happy 4th 🇱🇷
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Happy independence day weekend, friends.
The famous French philosopher Denis Diderot lived most of his life in poverty, but that all changed in 1765, when Catherine the Great heard of his financial trouble and offered to buy his encyclopedic library. Suddenly, he had money to spare, so he replaced his old rug, redecorated his home, etc...
These reactionary purchases have become known as the Diderot Effect, the idea that a new possession often creates a spiral of consumption which leads you to acquire more things. As a result, we end up buying things that we previously didn’t need to feel happy.
Reflecting on his experience, Diderot said, “Let my example teach you a lesson. Poverty has its freedoms; opulence has its obstacles.”
Which got me thinking about freedom. I’ve always valued freedom, but my definition has changed over time. My old definition was freedom to…. freedom to do whatever I wanted, buy whatever I wanted, be wherever I wanted.
Nowadays, the freedom I’m looking for is internal freedom. Freedom from reacting with anger when my son throws a tantrum. Freedom from wanting more. Freedom from limiting belief systems.
Living in a free country, being able to do or buy whatever we want is great, but these things do not necessarily free us from our own mental programming, attachments, and beliefs. Real freedom comes from inner peace.
✌🏼
Sari
“We have two lives, and the second one begins when we realize we have only one.”
- Confucius
caught my attention
The Simple Rules of Mr. Rogers — This is a great article on communicating with kids that applies broadly to many scenarios, with an amazing example of how one sentence was fine-tuned multiple times so that it would be well understood by children. Made me think about how much of my children's inability to understand something is a function of the words I use. 🛍
There is too much stuff to buy (millennial mattresses, toothpaste, makeup, luggage, and what not), and there is a systemic problem that won’t let us opt out of it. As options have expanded for people with disposable income, the opportunity to buy even basic things such as fresh food or quality diapers has contracted for much of America’s lower classes.
This heartwarming post is the best thing you’ll read this week. Good things happen to good people. 🏈
Great conversation starters via Brene Brown 👂🏽
Horns are growing on peoples’ skulls and phones are to blame 📵
Future Perfect is a podcast that explores provocative ideas with the potential to radically improve the world. In this eye-opening episode, Karianne Jackson, a U.S. prison system worker talks about a trip to Norway in 2015 that changed her life and what she learned about humanity and rehabilitation - there, she saw a prison with no bars and no uniformed guards. Prisoners lived in small cottages with private bedrooms and correctional officers wore normal clothes. 💭
StartupBooks is a curated directory of impactful books to help you along your startup journey.📚
Instagram therapists are the new Instagram poets. According to a recent NYT article, mental health professionals are appealing to people on Instagram to bring some light to social media and help people feel better about themselves. Some of the best accounts: The Psychology Mum, Nedra Glover Tawwab, Dr. Nicole LePera, and Lisa Olivera ⚡
Your Professional Decline Is Coming (Much) Sooner Than You Think. This is a great piece. “The biggest mistake professionally successful people make is attempting to sustain peak accomplishment indefinitely… Unhappy is he who depends on success to be happy... His destiny is to die of bitterness or to search for more success in other careers and to go on living from success to success until he falls dead.”
A great chart on when to create. Inspiration is perishable. Strike while the flame of creativity is hot. Don’t wait. The candle of inspiration will propel you through the challenges of creating something. Create before the flame dies out. 👇🏽
have you heard of?
Getaway is a wellness hospitality company that offers cabin rentals in natural landscapes as an escape from the burdens of modern life. The stay includes a lock box for guests’ cellphones, suggestions for nearby hikes and nature walks, but no TV and no internet. The tiny cabins are beautifully designed with wood, big glass windows, and some metal, but forgo plastics and composites.
overheard on twitter
If you’re wondering who’s behind this newsletter:
I’m Sari Azout, the human behind this newsletter. I am a design-thinker, storyteller, and early stage startup investor at Level Ventures. My mission is to bring more humanity and creativity to technology and business.
Check your Pulse is my weekly(ish) newsletter where I share a curated collection of smart reads from around the internet designed to make you feel human, stay inspired, live better, and think better.
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Sari