Best of Essays | Mindfulness, Self-Growth & Self-Development
Seven of the most popular mindfulness/self growth essays
Peruse the following list of essays and dive deeper into any you find interesting at GabeKwakyi.com.
Who am I at 25-35? This is the Third Life Crisis Age
This was one of the most-read essays and was also the most read LinkedIn share.
As my girlfriend said one day, “if someone’s ex-boss wrote a post like this, they definitely would read it.”
It was also interesting to see that this one also landed in Google position #3 for a search of “third life crisis.”
Being so honest and public about my pain and struggles made me nervous, yet at the same time brought a sense of freedom through being honest and revealed. I had a similar feeling after writing this piece, and in the end a beautiful serendipity struck, when someone by the nickname of my mom (Charly) wrote me an email, out of the blue, and said that she had come across my post and felt compelled to reach out. We’ve stayed in touch since, and just recently went to a fun movement meditation event in Brooklyn.
Many of us will undergo an existential crisis at some point in our lives, whether it’s at our quarter-life, third-life, or mid-life. The Third-Life Crisis explores how this phase may feel incredibly discouraging, but actually represents a key milestone in the broader path of maturation. It is, after all, a call to connect with and accept our neglected, deeper selves and reflect on who we really are and who we really want to be.
5 Must-Read Mindfulness Books
Herein are listed 5 books which were particularly inspiring and influential for me as I began to explore mindfulness in 2021. I highly recommend them for anyone looking to expand their horizons, especially into mindfulness, Buddhism, spirituality or self-reflection in general.
The authors referenced include 3 contemporaries who are still sharing today:
Pema Chodron (a hilarious, down-to-earth Buddhist monk)
Jay Shetty (a charming, encouraging businessman-turned-monk-turned-motivational-speaker)
Eckhart Tolle (one of the most popular modern authors/speakers on mindfulness whose stoic words are arrows cutting through the endless stories our egos tell us)
Lao Tzu (an ancient Chinese author whose riddle-like wisdom has remained applicable across millenia)
Alan Watts (a quirky, comedic, and ingenious author who is the embodiment of not taking oneself too seriously and whose work makes an appearance in another of my best of essays, too)
Part 1: 50 fun & interesting activities to do outside of work that can boost your self-discovery
This list came about from a discussion with a friend of mine who had recently moved to a new city and wondered whether I had any ideas for how she might explore her new city and discover some enjoyable new hobbies. My girlfriend and I brainstormed this list of ideas, but with a twist. As the title suggests, all of these items are focused on helping you discover more about yourself, through action, connection, and reflection.
This list also includes some less common, more creative and unique ideas. Check it out and try a few out and let me know how your self-discoveries go!
The Eight Components of "Mind"
This was one of the more inspired and imaginative essays I wrote after discovering mindfulness last summer.
I sat down one day to imagine my own concept of how thoughts and emotions work and developed the above diagram as I thought. I explored things like
What mental processes our brains do but our minds do not manage
The role of memories/emotions/ego/intelligence in how we make decisions
The Buddhist/mindfulness idea that we are not our thoughts, but rather a silent “watcher” within
The phenomenon of inspiration and how it seems to strike into our minds from a place outside after reading Elizabeth Gilbert’s Big Magic
What Alan Watts means by "trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth"
Many of the teachings of Buddhism and mindfulness focus on the idea that the concept of a “self” is actually an illusion that keeps us bound to continually trying to satisfy the cravings of the self.
Think about how your belief in yourself as a productive and intelligent entity drives you to constantly worry that you may not actually be a productive, intelligent entity (an imposter) and therefore must constantly subject yourself to stressful litmus tests to continually re-prove that you are a productive and intelligent entity.
The point is not that you shouldn’t learn, grow, and achieve, but rather that you should do those actions with your best effort, without minding the outcomes, and not to fully attach your sense of self-esteem to the outcomes of those actions and effort. This change in your mindset is tough to do, yet infinitely powerful, because it can free you from suffering when setbacks and changes in life happen.
I wrote this Alan Watts explainer essay after experiencing a particularly pleasant and mindful summer in 2021, wherein many of these such devilishly simple, yet difficult to grasp tenants of Buddhism and mindfulness became more accessible to understanding (or “they were allowed to be revealed to me,” as there is no self to grasp these tenants in its metaphorical hand).
In particular, I began to see some of the wisdom conveyed by Zen Buddhist Koan riddles, like that in the title, or “what does the sound of one hand clapping?”
Since beginning to explore mindfulness, I have been particularly drawn to the works of Alan Watts, but I also wrote an essay explaining another favorite in Eckhart Tolle’s quotes in “Life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness.”
This one actually landed at position 1 in Google, with a knowledge graph to boot.
Scaling Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs is not linear
I have always enjoyed musing about the work of others, such as Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs.
Through my work as a marketer I came to see the implications between a linear and exponential data equations (content-serving algorithms are highly exponential), and I came to theorize that life is quite rarely linear. This essay explores how linearly the return on satisfaction per action for the lower levels of Maslow’s needs works (physical needs, safety), but how at the higher levels it’s a different equation (particularly self-actualization). Climbing higher from the middle paradoxically requires much less work (hint: mindfulness is at play).
I wrote a somewhat similar post on the work of Carl Jung’s landmark work of introversion and extroversion, investigating whether we’re all actually just one type of person – presentverts – who is recharge not depending on whether or not people are around, but rather when we can be fully present.
Anxiety, depression and mental unhealthiness stem from the ancient ego's incompatibility with modern society
This essay is my personal favorite.
One reader in particular said:
“Your article I read this morning was nothing short of BRILLIANT. I have been trying to evaluate what is changing in human life. You nailed it. I truly value connecting on LI and learning from your insights… You formulated and put to words something I have been trying to put in place. I know things have changed (not just in the past two years) and I have been trying to comprehend why, it seems, so many people's mental health have been deteriorating. I know it is the changing world, but I could not put my finger on it as you have.”
It was as lot of fun to write and I delved into themes like the exponentially increasing rate of technological change and how this affects our psychological organs, which I posit have become strained under the face of so much change. I compare the ego as the psychological equivalent of the stomach, and explore how, unlike the stomach, there is no full feeling of the ego. It’s always hungry for me, and modern society is fully of addictions that the ego loves to binge on, which can cause continual mental unease.
Read these best of essays at GabeKwakyi.com