Tiny Experiments: How to Live Freely in a Goal-Obsessed World

before you can relearn to experiment and turn life into the giant playground it ought to be, you need first to unlearn your cognitive scripts.

CAN YOU EVEN hear yourself when so many voices tell you what to do next? In the thicket of all those exhortations to write your story within the well-defined conventions of cognitive scripts, it’s easy to become disconnected from yourself and your curiosity. Fortunately, just like you have learned these scripts, you can unlearn them.

By making you dream too big, the Epic script can keep you from performing small but meaningful experiments that could open unexpected doors.

We each have within us unlimited possibilities; purpose is therefore never a singular discovery. Life is a continuous opportunity.

When people ask me what I do for a living, I tell them I breathe—I’m a professional breather. We create those false transitions, we make it all look like it’s separate, just like we separate a garden, from a state, from a country, and ourselves from nature. I didn’t go from fashion to gardening to being a humanitarian. As a gardener, I was already

Escaping the Tyranny of Purpose

three profound shifts in how you navigate the world: From Response 1 to Response 2. Response 1 is automatic and rooted in the anxiety of uncertainty. Response 2 is autonomous and based on a strong sense of agency. We all oscillate between the two responses, but the more we flex our curiosity muscles, the more uncertainty transforms from something t

mindset.

we tend to fall back on one of three defense mechanisms, where we abandon our curiosity, our ambition, or both: Cynicism: Doomscrolling, passing up opportunities, poking fun at earnest people. Like the Beast before he meets Belle, we see transformation as a source of meaningless work, and we abandon any desire to build a good life. Why suffer when