Strands of Genius: Grief, Podcasts, Pessimism
plus, our thoughts on: breathwork & a love letter to PowerPoint
WRITING FROM | Nashville, TN
WORKING ON | travel planning, new business proposals
LOOKING AHEAD
March 21-31 | London, UK [Faris] Athens/Nashville [Rosie]
April 1-29 | Beersheba Springs, TN
April 29-May 1 | Nashville, TN
May 1-28 | London, UK
May 28-June 6 | TBD: Portugal or France
June 6-24 | London, UK
June 24-27 | New York, NY
June 27-July 12 | Wingdale, NY
:: WHAT’S NEW & WEEKLY GRATITUDE ::
Sometimes you just have to put one foot in front of another. It’s been a tough week for us, but we’re here, reminding ourselves that it’s more about progress than perfection and that life is rarely linear.
This week, we’re especially thankful for:
Uncle Sam, who had the biggest heart and the best laugh and was always down to play card games with us, our entire Springfield family, Elizabeth, Athens, Elliott, long walks, the HYPERBOOM (wow it’s so great to have a decent speaker!), catching up with friends and family, Indian grocery stores, homemade Indian food, Abdulla, Laith, Bex, Zac, Ariana, Delta Close, Dave&Frances&Willow&Elliot, Love Is Blind & YOU.
S C H O O L O F S T O L E N G E N I U S >> H I G H L I G H T S
// Breathwork Session with Georgia Roberts | Community Meet Up
Monday, April 4th at 3:30 PM EDT // 7:30 PM BST
:: THE LINKS ::
HERE’S WHAT’S NOT TO SAY TO SOMEONE WHO IS GRIEVING
“In an effort to help, people try to shrink the loss, to minimise the very real experience of grief. At least they are no longer in pain. At least you got to say goodbye. At least they didn’t battle a long illness. At least, at least, at least, at least. The “at leasts” pile up and contradict each other. But there is no comfort comparing your situation to someone else’s worst day. And by which measure is someone else’s circumstance “worse” than your own anyway? Someone died. The context is irrelevant. It’s part of the false dichotomy of gratitude culture that wants you to only look at what you have and not at what you’ve lost. This is not a glass-half-full situation.” (The Guardian)
THE LATEST PODCAST FROM FARIS
Glen Schmelzle hosts a Faris on his latest podcast as part of a Spring Book Bloom! In just under an hour, you’ll hear them talk about attention, Mathew Sweezy, Tim Qu, Damian Hurst, Claude Levi Strauss, Robin Dunbar, Nielsen Catalina and David Ogilvy. (Funnel Reboot )
ALAIN DE BOTTON ON PESSIMISM
I’m an endless optimist — but in this speech, Alain De Botton talks about how optimism doesn’t always serve us well, and perhaps pessimism shouldn’t be thought of in such negative terms, ha. Kai, from Dense Discovery, writes “Dipping into the work of stoic philosopher Seneca, who saw optimism as a great source of anger, de Botton lightheartedly points out that the British don’t get angry when it rains because it matches expectations. Being stuck in traffic, however, evokes feelings of rage. Cars are sold to us with notions of freedom and convenience, not traffic jams. “It’s our expectations that define what will anger us.” … He ends with;
“Pessimism is a feature of life. It’s a feature of life we often try to run away from. By running away from it too quickly, we cut ourselves off from the opportunity to embrace this darkness and to embrace the lessons that it often brings. And we often also cut ourselves off from the deepest kind of relationships which we can have with other human beings, relationships based around a confession of suffering. And I think that essentially all good friendships are about confessions, one sort or another. Confessions of things that the rest of the world thinks of as unacceptable, but are in fact part of human life.”"(The School of Life)
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:: WHAT WE’RE THINKING ABOUT: POWERPOINT ::
Faris got me this book, “Everything I Know about Life I Learned from PowerPoint,” for Christmas and it truly is a love letter to one of my favorite pieces of technology. It doesn’t hurt that Russell Davies is so insightful and lovely in/with most everything he writes.
Join a community of people looking to work smarter, not harder.
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rockON,
faris & rosie & ashley | your friends over at geniussteals.co
@faris is always tweeting
@rosieyakob hangs out on instagram
@ashley also writes for deaf, tattooed & employed
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It's called Genius Steals because we believe ideas are new combinations and that nothing can come from nothing. But copying is lazy. We believe the best way to innovate is to look at the best of that which came before and combine those elements into new solutions.
Co-Founders Faris & Rosie are award-winning strategists and creative directors, writers, consultants and public speakers who have been living on the road/runway since March 2013, working with companies all over the world. Our Director of Operations is nomadic like us, our accounting team is based out of Washington, our company is registered in Tennessee, and our collaborators are all over the world. Being nomadic allows us to go wherever clients need us to be, and to be inspired by the world in between.
Hit reply and let’s talk about how we might be able to work together :)