What Do Your Movie Choices Say About You?
How to Automate Your Life
I'm working on a piece on what we can learn from athletes to be more productive. So much of modern productivity advice is flawed or too intense and I want to help fix that.
The biggest thing I am learning is that athletes' real superpower is relaxation. The best athletes are able to de-compress and hit a level of deep relaxation that we can only dream of. They ping pong between high intensity and deep relaxation whereas we live our lives in a state of chronic stress.
If you want your life to drastically improve define what deep relaxation means for you (dancing, long walk, reading, napping, gardening, etc). FYI social media, multi-tasking doesn't count...it unfortunately is not relaxing for our brains.
Then go to your calendar and schedule pockets of deep relaxation into your day to day.
Learning how to be a better relax-er will make you better, stronger, and more productive in all aspects of your life.
Be More Alive
I wrote a review for a movie called Eat Drink Man Woman that I wanted to share this week:
Maybe I'm narcissistic, but I find the best movies are often a mirror. On the surface, they tell you what they are about, but if you look deeper they tell you what you are about
The emotions, the feelings, the things you cry at, the things you laugh at... to me it feels more real than any conversation I can have. To watch a deep movie with someone is to know someone. It's to share an intimate act.
The American in me is used to the love yous and thank yous and pleases that litter a conversation like a wall decor. An ornament we use so the conversation doesn't feel bare. But there is an extreme politeness, a fakeness, that most of these words carry. So we as Americans resort to the grand gesture in relationships when we really want to express our feelings...the prototypical boom box moment
The Asian in me is abhorrent of the grand gesture. It's too much, too rich, too forward. The Asian in me looks at the little moments, glances, gestures, the way your dad places the food on your plate. For the Asian in me, this is a surer sign of love than any grand gesture could be.
These days our attention spans are dying, social media is blowing up the world and we are only left with mass appeal spectacle movies that Martin Scorsese calls roller-coaster movies. Big explosions! Sweeping grand romance!
And I feel alone. Because I love these types of movies. Movies that are slow, small, elegiac.
If it's true what I said about movies being a mirror...if our movies define us if movies change how we feel if to watch a movie is to know ourselves then...
Who are you becoming?
What are your relationships turning into?
How are you sacrificing the little moments in your relationships for the daydreams of a grand gesture?
What does the mirror say about you? - Pranav's Review
That's it for this letter, see you next week,
Pranav