TEJI TUESDAYS 
Issue #046 · 10th September, 2023

Hi All!

Here is your weekly dose of TEJI, a weekly round up of what I’m pondering and exploring. Feel free to forward along to a friend if you think they might enjoy.

My favourite book this year (so far)

I finally finished reading Infinite Jest the other week. The book was hard, long and rewarding and almost every other book after it so far has felt like a breeze to read. A day after finishing Infinite Jest I picked up The Road by Cormac McCarthy and all I have to say is wow.

I breezed through the book in a few days because it was written so clearly. The story was about the survival of a father and a son in an apocalyptic wasteland. While the book was extremely sad there was un undertone of hope that I really appreciated through out my read

I don’t want to spoil the book for anyone who might be interested in reading it but I’d definitely recommend it for someone who might need to just jumpstart their reading habit or are looking for a new read.

Finding joy

Here’s a great quote a found from Carl Jung last week.

Breaking Unconscious Patterns with Mindfulness

I have a tattoo of a flying dollar bill on my ankle. Not because I’m money hungry but because I paid a non refundable $100 for a mystery tattoo.

At the time, drawing a random tattoo from a gum ball machine seemed like a fun idea until I’d been an hour into the tattoo session and realised I’d now have a fully coloured dollar bill tattooed on my ankle for the rest of my life. 

This soon developed into me becoming an avid wearer of ankle socks that covered the tattoo. I’d become so self conscious about my tattoo that small habits began to form to hide my insecurities. 

Aside from my new collection of ankle socks the main fear based action I’d do would be when I crossed my legs in a way that would hide the tattoo if I was at the beach or some place else where my bare ankle was exposed.

The only reason why I’m writing this story is because I just noticed one of those habits creep back in while laying in bed. I’d unconsciously crossed my feet together in the same way I used to hide my tattoo before quickly uncrossing them to break the pattern.

Now, the way I was able to become comfortable enough in my skin to even share this previous insecurity with you is because I consciously had to rewrite those micro actions that had been coming from a place of fear. 

How I broke out of this insecurity in particular among many more was through mindfulness. Every time I’d become aware that I’d been unconsciously crossing my feet, I’d actively switch them over to expose the tattoo.

Even if I was by myself I made sure to break the pattern. It was more about becoming comfortable with the uncomfortable opposed to running away from the deep rooted fear.

Mindfulness hadn’t helped me escape this fear but accept it. I could see It for what it was. Fear.

It’s almost impossible to not want to break these fear based patterns once your exposed to the irrational nature of fear at times.

Mindfulness is like shining a light in this dark cavern you used to be afraid of only to realise there’s actually no monsters in there. 

I’ve found that the first step to breaking unconscious patterns comes from awareness. So the next time you spot yourself being fearful of talking to someone, or hiding something about yourself. Expose it. Shine a light in that cave and see that it’s not that scary down there. 

Note: There’s a caveat to this. Fear is there for a reason and not every fear should be overcome. 

A great conversation between Cole Bennett and Rick Rubin

Cole Bennett the founder of Lyrical Lemonade is a huge inspiration of mine and I always appreciate what he has to say. Check out the latest conversation piece featuring him and Rick Rubin below. It’s relatively short and I thought there were several gems in their chat.

Stop trying to be cool

“If you too cool you gone freeze to death”

- Tyler The Creator

Feel free to give me feedback on Twitter. What did you like? What do you want more of? What do you want less of? Other suggestions? Please let me know. Just send a tweet to @TEJITOPIA and put #TEJITUESDAYS at the end so I can find it.
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Hope everyone enjoys their week!
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Love
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TEJI (@tejitopia)

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