Year of Discovery (Week 10: Cities of Reinvention, Our Gut and the Basal Ganglia)
This week, I’ve started to design my prototypes after I wrote down 3 different ‘Odysseys’, or potential paths I can take over the next 5 years. In some ways, it’s felt like unearthing a Pandora’s box. Different tensions come up, like whether my prioritization of the pathways is being led based on the geographies that I need/want to be in or led based on the problem I want to solve and for who. Throughout my YoD discovery, it’s been interesting listening to others’ journeys who have gone through this or who are going through this as they consider children/family, what ‘home’ or a sense of belonging means, whether they care about solving a problem that is aligned to their previous geography or industry, etc. Work prototyping can’t be done in a vacuum and others are often involved with and impacted in what we decide. Tradeoffs do need to be made, whether in the short or medium-term.
But before getting to the negotiation stage (with myself and my partner), there are key questions I need to answer through prototyping (whether through conversation or short-term work so I can understand the day-to-day of different pathways). That’s what I want to continue moving towards over the next few weeks and refining my questions.
Today, I’m sharing reflections on Nairobi as a city of reinvention and our gut and basal ganglia.
Nairobi: A City of Reinvention
There’s a certain energy I feel by being in a city like Nairobi that I’ve found only in a few other places that I’ve been to or lived in, and this week I was able to identify what that is: the spirit of reinvention. Nairobi and the people I’ve met here over the years and who I continue to meet are bubbling with energy, hustle and reinvention: from a place of survival, curiosity and ingenuity. There is no day like the other and I’m constantly inspired by the courageous people I meet. I’ve met people brave enough to shift out of one field and fully into another in their 20s, 30s, 40s, and so forth. I’ve met people here who have added new parts to their identity: runner, painter, mechanic, carpenter. It’s a willingness to embrace uncertainty in the pursuit of aligning what energizes oneself and an awareness of a greater purpose than oneself. Being surrounded by such people allows for courageous, hard decisions to be the rule rather than the exception. If we are the average of the 5 people we spend the most time with, then the city we live in certainly impacts the kind of people who enter into our orbit.
At the beginning of this year, I remember wanting to explore other cities around the world that are brimming with writers, artists, musicians to unlock an energy inside of me to be inspired, learn and discover what’s next. But I’m finding all of that in Nairobi. Since I’ve been back, I’ve had numerous conversations with brilliant people about different opportunities, interesting problems that people globally are solving in the wackiest of ways, how to truly assess market size and build something that both matters and is sustainable. There’s also a resourcefulness of my community: always sharing new tools to use (like Notion for organizing my thoughts, life, decisions), growth/learning communities to join (like Bentoism which pushes one to move out of ‘short term individualism’), and the one-degree of separation from someone who can help give their perspectives on some of my learning questions.
Our lives are truly an adventure and I’m so inspired by it. I have friends who are moving from architecture to film, private equity to education technology, traditional lawyer to driving commercial growth. The muscle they are building to reinvent themselves is one that will serve them for a lifetime (and possibly lead to numerous existential milestones rather than a mid-life crisis triggered by a safe and predictable life). When people shine, the world shines.
Questions to reflect on:
- Who inspires you in your life and why?
- What does your daily environment: home, work, city, community — allow for reinvention or hold you back from reinvention?
- Are there pathways you want to prototype? What are light-touch ways you can do so to start?
Our Gut and the Basal Ganglia
A friend shared about the basal ganglia this week and I couldn’t help but go down a rabbit hole learning more about it.
To share more, here’s an excerpt from Brian Foley’s article:
Back in the more primitive part of the brain, directly connected with the brainstem, is the basal ganglia. The basal ganglia is the place in the brain where all habits, feelings, emotions, experiences, memories and instincts are stored. This is often called the subconscious mind, and it is where all decision-making takes place — not some, all. Now according to Charles Duhigg in The Power of Habit, all learning takes place in the frontal cortex. However, once this learned behavior becomes a habit, the neurological connection responsible for this behavior moves from the frontal cortex to the basal ganglia, where it is stored as a habit.
The reason for this move is two-fold. First, it alleviates the mind from over-thinking for every common task and getting stuck in paralysis. Second, it is always freeing up space in the frontal cortex, so we can continue learning new things and take in new experiences. This is why you don’t have to think about which shoe to tie first, what hand to hold your toothbrush with or how to drive every morning on the way to work. What this also means is that most of the subconscious mind — the part of the brain that drives decision making — is made from past experiences and skills previously learned, which went on to become habits. So when you’re making a gut decision that feels right, many times, it’s not solely based on feelings but rather on sound logic and past experience. You just don’t notice it at the time.
I felt a sigh of relief learning more about the basal ganglia. I’ve struggled with how some articles define gut decisions as emotional and impulsive and logical decisions as well thought out. Learning about the basal ganglia showed me that gut decisions are based on knowledge and wisdom gained over the years (which might not be in our immediate consciousness).
Intuitively, I’ve always believed in the intelligence of my gut. In 2014, there was a gut instinct that I couldn’t shake when I was in Chicago that ultimately led me to moving to Nairobi without knowing anyone there. I could feel an incredibly strong pull everytime I thought about the work in Nairobi, my purpose and the questions I wanted to answer. I had never set foot on the continent before then and couldn’t logically explain why I needed to go to Nairobi at that time.
In my decision-making around my YoD, I’m also giving enough space and time to listen to my gut. Last weekend, I had a brainstorm session (to throw out different problems and ideas) with some friends. During the conversation, I could feel my gut get pulled towards certain ideas and feel completely indifferent about others. I took that to reflect more within myself about why that was: was it because of who the idea was serving? Was it because of what the work truly entails and requires to bring that idea into life? Was it because of the geography? Allowing my gut to drive has been helpful so I can tune in more to my body and it’s wisdom and allow my logical mind to try to comprehend why my gut reacts in certain ways.
Learning about the basal ganglia helped me understand the importance of
- my ongoing spiritual practice to train my mind
- the habits we start, stop and continue
- therapy as a gym for the soul
As Buddhist monks can train their gross mind (conscious mind) and subtle mind (subconscious mind) and meditate with any mind, it allows for more clarity and groundedness on true wisdom and how to decrease suffering (instead of holding onto beliefs that create more suffering in ourselves and others). On the habits we start, stop and continue, eventually, all of the mind and habit training we do on a daily basis impacts moves into our subconscious mind, which is what drives our gut reactions. And on therapy, if the basal ganglia stores feelings, emotions, experiences, memories, then if we haven’t been able to understand our narratives with more compassion or find peace from our past and traumas (through acceptance, forgiveness, etc) then all of those ‘subsconscious’ feelings get stored into our gut and drive the way we make decisions too. What we put into our basal ganglia (and therefore into our gut) is also what we get out (and therefore where we go).
Questions to reflect on:
- Do you trust your gut? Why or why not?
- How do your gut reactions factor into your decision-making?
- Which inputs into the basal ganglia (habits we have built in our minds, our beliefs, our feelings) do you want to build more awareness around first? How do you want to work on maintaining or changing those inputs?
What I’m reading now (that’s blowing my mind): Exhalation by Ted Chiang.
