In this episode, we discuss the countercultural habits you should adopt to live a rich and meaningful life. Popular culture is, by its very nature, fleeting and temporary. As a result, it often promotes habits that have no enduring value and add little meaning to our lives. Fads and fashions are incapable of fostering the elevated modes of living we truly desire. Instead, we need to thoughtfully analyze the cultural habits we have—intentionally or unintentionally—adopted and practice on a daily basis, and remove those which do not add value. Ultimately, in order to live a elevated, meaningful, and cultured life, it is necessary to give up some popular cultural habits and replace them with those which add joy and meaning. 

Key quotes: 

"By looking back at the values and habits that shaped those who came before us, we can cultivate practices in our own lives that allow us to rise above the cultural morass in constant flux around  us and curate cultured lives that transcend pop culture itself. "

"The path to genuine transformation demands a departure from familiar routines and habits to make room for daily practices that give life, elevate, inspire, and enrich."

"The trouble with seeking happiness is simple: happiness is inherently transient. Like all emotions, it is a temporary state of feelings. And when we seek as permanent something that is by nature temporary, we are bound to be profoundly disappointed."

"We redefined life’s highest end as happiness, and we’ve lost ourselves in the process. "

Victor Frankl: “For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one's personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one's surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it.”

"Joy is a posture of the soul that emphasizes giving, rather than getting; creation, rather than consumption; and making life meaningful, rather than expecting life to make you happy. And the counterintuitive reality? That by focusing on cultivating joy rather than feeling happy, you will experience profound happiness as a result."

"Maintaining a private life is a profound act of respect—respect for yourself and for those in your life. It is an implicit acknowledgement that your private life is too precious to flaunt publicly."

"[Maintaining a private life] is a gift that you can give to yourself: the gift of space and freedom. Privacy is freedom from judgement. It is space to work at your own pace. It is freedom to act wisely and rightly without fearing external criticism. It is the space to pursue your own calling and passions without turning them into an exhibition."

"Consumption is easy. Creation is hard. It takes time. It saps energy. It demands attention and our effort. It’s an act of vulnerability. It’s emotionally, mentally, and physically taxing."

"There are few greater delights than to spend a day creating from thoughts, ideas, and raw materials something that did not exist when the sun rose in the morning—whether that’s a book, a loaf of bread, or a ceramic mug. There’s joy in both the created thing and the act of creation itself."

Website: http://modernrenaissance.ca/

Blog: http://modernrenaissance.ca/blog/

This description may contain affiliate links, which means I might earn a small commission when you make a purchase through the listed book links—at no additional cost to you.

In this episode, we consider the cost of busyness and the importance of slowing down. Your host, Chelsia Van Hierden, talks about the tendency of perfectionists, high achievers, entrepreneurs, students, and mothers, to constantly add more to their lives, all why trying to optimize every second to compensate for wildly busy schedules. The reason we do this is because we live in a society that glorifies busyness and views worth as contingent upon work. But this constant busyness isn't doing us any favours, and is actually detrimental to many areas of our lives. The solution, Chelsia suggests, is to be courageous enough to slow down. By taking simple steps, we can open up time in our schedules and in our lives to live slower—and, as a result—to live richer. 

Quotes: 

"Explicitly or implicitly, we use our busyness as a measurement of personal value. To be busy implies that we are successful, respectable. It has become a modern status symbol. Our societal assumption is that your worth is contingent upon your work."

"Based on the data, we’re working more, sleeping less, enduring more stress, taking less time off. We spend more time alone, and less time connecting others. We’re more exhausted, more anxious, and less fulfilled. "

"When you slow down, you increase the space in your mind for non-busy work—for exploration, creativity, and reflection. You’ll experience less stress and anxiety, and more peace and clarity."

"And by slowing down, you’ll discover that the self development you may have been fiercely striving towards actually needed some space to germinate. We grow in the spaces and in the silences. "

"[T]here’s such a thing as saying 'yes' too often, and if left unchecked, it can lead to that chaotic busyness that cuts into the most important parts in your life. Because saying 'yes' to one thing is saying 'no' to others. "

"Finally, define the things you are saying 'yes' to in advance, and make them non-negotiable. Decide ahead of time that everything that would impede on your 'yesses' will receive a 'no'."

"[S]eek balance amidst imbalance. Life is not the teeter-totter we imagine, where achieving perfect balance will result in a perpetual blissful existence. Perfect balance doesn’t exist. Life is by nature unbalanced."

"Some phases will feel like winter—a time to slow down, hunker down, and endure the cold. Others may feel like spring—a time of new growth, new opportunities, and new horizons. Some seasons are for hibernation, some for harvest. The key is to embrace the balance of the imbalance."

"[W]e should seek balance in our own lives, not all at once, but in seasons, and strive to thrive through both busyness and rest, through times of productivity and times of slowing down, recognizing that neither is valuable or sustainable without the other. "

"Part of the courage in slowing down is being brave enough to confront this discomfort with thought and action: In our thoughts by continually reframing our perspective when culture creep tries to demand we define our value by its standards. And in our actions, by gradually integrating moments of slowness into our lives."

Website: http://modernrenaissance.ca/

Blog: http://modernrenaissance.ca/blog/

This description may contain affiliate links, which means I might earn a small commission when you make a purchase through the listed book links—at no additional cost to you.

In this episode, we explore five simple, but powerful, ways that you can begin to enjoy the "finer things" in life today—and they won't cost you anything. Join your host, Chelsia Van Hierden, as she discusses how the finest things in life are free and available to everyone. Too often, we approach our lives with the idea that we can enjoy things someday when ______. However, life is fleet-footed, as Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius suggests, and putting our enjoyment of life off for some future time often means that it never becomes a reality. Instead, it's better to cultivate a posture of celebrating and savouring life's finest treasures today.

*In the intro, I mistakenly say we are discussing "10 things." It should have been "5 things." My mistake!

Quotes:

"Slowing down can be a powerful catalyst in our lives, but it’s also valuable for its own sake. It’s tempting to slow down so that we can recharge and work even faster in the future. This is not what I’m suggesting. I’m suggesting that slowing down is its own end—that we slow down for the mere sake of slowing down, that we learn to savour the pause itself, to explore its corners and find riches in its silences."

"To celebrate the small moments is to recognize that the present is inherently valuable and to find joy in the simplicity of existence. It is an act of mindfulness, a conscious decision to immerse ourselves fully in the here and now. By doing so, we become attuned to the subtle joys of life—moments that, though seemingly insignificant, hold within them the potential to add beauty to our lives."

C.S. Lewis: “And how could we endure to live and let time pass if we were always crying for one day or one year to come back — if we did not know that every day in a life fills the whole life with expectation and memory and that these are that day?”

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel: ”People of our time are losing the power of celebration. Instead of celebrating we seek to be amused or entertained. Celebration is an active state, an act of expressing reverence or appreciation. To be entertained is a passive state--it is to receive pleasure afforded by an amusing act or a spectacle.... Celebration is a confrontation, giving attention to the transcendent meaning of one's actions.”

"Life becomes more beautiful when you learn to celebrate it—even, or especially, when reasons to celebrate feel hard to find. Celebration is powerful, because it forces you to acknowledge that there is something beautiful in life at all times. It is a profound act of gratitude, enabling you to transcend your circumstances and see that today is also worth celebrating."

"To savour a dish, a conversation, a relationship, a book, is to implicitly acknowledge the transience of everything we get to enjoy, and to render unto it our attention and our appreciation."

"We often assume that the finer things in life are costly and must be purchased, when in reality the opposite is more often the case. The finest things in life are free and accessible. What you can buy is just window dressing. "

Books:
Madeline Dore, I Didn't Do the Thing Today
C.S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet

Website: http://modernrenaissance.ca/

Blog: http://modernrenaissance.ca/blog/

This description may contain affiliate links, which means I might earn a small commission when you make a purchase through the listed book links—at no additional cost to you.