For the second year in a row, I’ve chosen a word for the year.
“Choose” doesn’t sound quite right — in both cases, the words I selected arose from synchronicities. Both inspired me. Both words were something I could stake all of my energy on.
Last year, my word was discernment.
This year, I’m going all-in on joy.
If you’re not into resolutions, or even if you are, I thought it might be fun to share a bit of my process of choosing Joy, and some simple writing invitations that might help you choose your word for 2024:
What’s inspiring you right now?
What are you willing to go all-in on?What makes your heart sing?
What do you want to pay more attention to?
What’s your one word for 2024?
I’d love it if you leave your word in the comments or share it with me in an email!
Choosing Joy for 2024
A good friend and wisdom workshop alumni
sent me a wonderful gift over the holidays — a leather-bound journal with an inscription inside:“This is the true joy in life,
being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one.
Being a force of Nature
instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances
complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.
I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community,
and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it what I can.
I want to be thoroughly used up when I die,
for the harder I work, the more I live.
I rejoice in life for its own sake.
Life is no brief candle to me.
It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment,
and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible
before handing it on to the future generations.”
―George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman, 1903
And below it,
Sean, you are no small torch. I am
grateful for your light, and your friendship.
―Mark Szretter, 2023 December
This is the true joy in life….
… the Joy of being in service to something bigger,
holding some “splendid torch.”
What if I turned my discernment to joy?
What if approached loving-kindness as an act of joy?
What if I went all in on working joyfully instead of working hard?
🎉 New Music Out! “Put up a Bet”
"Put Up A Bet" (on Spotify and Apple Music) imagines life as a kind of high-stakes game, where we've got to go all in on what matters to us. When I wrote the song three years ago, I was inspired by Maria Konnikova’s awesome book: The Biggest Bluff: How I Learned to Pay Attention, Master Myself, and Win that I first wrote about here. I loved considering how the poker table could be seen as an extended metaphor for how we engage in the world.
“‘… these are seeds of resilience, of being able to overcome the bad beats that you can’t avoid and mentally position yourself to be prepared for next time….what I think of as a luck amplifier. Sure, you can’t actually change the cards … but you will feel a whole lot happier and better adjusted while you take life’s blows.”
- Maria Konnikova, on how her mentor, Erik Seidel, wouldn’t allow her to complain about the cards she was dealt
The language of poker comes through in the song because I wrote the lyrics from the “Glossary of Poker Terms” at the end of the book. I didn’t get to incorporate ‘luckbox’, ‘muck’, ‘turn’, or ‘whale.’ But I did let the song be shaped by ‘raise’, ‘bad breaks’, ‘under the gun’, ‘big blind’, ‘bet’, and ‘river.’
Love requires risk, and it's the only thing we truly know. Music is the whole universe. We just need to listen in, pay attention, and go all-in when the time is right.
Five Related Gems I’m Considering
“Betting in poker isn’t incidental. It’s integral to the learning process.
Our minds learn when we have a stake, a real stake in the outcome of our learning.”
- Maria Konnikova“Choice of attention — to pay attention to this and ignore that — is to the inner life what choice of action is to the outer. In both cases man is responsible for his choice and must accept the consequences.”
- W.H. Auden qtd. by Maria Konnikova“You never can tell whether bad luck may not after all turn out to be good luck . . . . One must never forget when misfortunes come that it is quite possible they are saving one from something much worse; or that when you make some great mistake, it may very easily serve you better than the best-advised decision.”
- Winston Churchill, “My Early Life,” 1930, qtd by Maria Konnikova“Gratefulness is the key to a happy life that we hold in our hands, because if we are not grateful, then no matter how much we have we will not be happy — because we will always want to have something else or something more.”
- Brother David Steindl-Rast, founder of Gratefulness.org“How many cares one loses when one decides not to be something, but to be someone.”
- Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel
🎉 Now Enrolling! Foundations 2024 is coming February!
We’re offering two cohorts starting in February to set the foundations for our 2024 work in Epicurean Entrepreneurship and Facilitating Flourishing.
It’s the fifteenth cohort of Writing the Good Life! This time, we’ll be leaning more into world philosophical approaches to living a life worth examining, still at the intersection between mindful freewriting and self authorship. Here’s the syllabus.
And for our third cohort of the Art of Living Beautifully, we’ll be exploring the wisdom of poetry and awe. By the end of this 12-week gathering, we’ll have strengthened our creative systems and cultivated habits to more readily experience wonder. Here’s that syllabus. I’m excited for this one too!
Readers who are considering joining us can reply to this email, or send a note to sean [at] wisdomworkshop.io, and I’ll give you a $200 discount code. First come, first served, our gatherings always capped at eight kind and curious friends.
✌ Thanks for Reading
Wishing you a warm 2024 full of [insert-your-word-here],
Sean
💚 Thank you for following along, saving the song, and sending your critiques.
I feel so blessed to be able to share this music at this stage of our lives!
I can't believe the counterpoint in the choruses of this song. The top line and the second melody are just gorgeous.