Jay Matthews

Caveats to the "Underdog Strategy" When a really credible person tells you you can't succeed, in some sense, you basically internalize those expectations, your confidence drops, you actually believe them, and you don't perform as successfully. On the other hand, when you receive low expectations from someone who's not seen as credible, you perceive... See more

Belonging gives us the confidence to take care of ourselves, others, our planet, and all the members of our ecosystem. Knowing this, it becomes clear that building a community is one of the most important, generous, and creative acts a human can aspire to.

After letting go of the guilt associated with “losing” core parts of myself, I quickly realized how nurturing it was to function as me first. My curiosity skyrocketed because I felt safe questioning; I became less dogmatic and even grew proud of the ability to change my mind when presented with new information; my sense of self was no longer... See more

One of the biggest challenges people have when embarking on an unconventional path is disconnecting from extrinsic markers of success and listening to internal motivational cues. On the default path, you can spend an entire career playing other people’s games. At first, people on a pathless path try to fill the lack of extrinsic goals with new ones... See more

If the knowing process is thought of as a kind of dancing, as an interactive, reciprocal, give-and-take relationship between knowing subjects on the one hand and the physical and social environment on the other, then the resulting pattern of thought and behaviour, the known, may be thought of as the dance itself.

wild to think people are out there just... winging it 😅

Let’s assume that you think you have a choice of eight paths to follow (all pre-defined paths, of course). And let’s assume that you can’t see any real purpose in any of the eight. THEN— and here is the essence of all I’ve said— you MUST FIND A NINTH PATH.

It is within this paradigmatic drama that learning is realised. Invariably, such experience also raises questions about how learning comes to be understood and communicated. These epistemological questions are similar whether the experience is considered from the viewpoint of ‘dancer’ or ‘learner’. ‘What does it feel like?’ ‘How do you understand... See more