Personal Canon

Here is a collection of the words that have had an impact on my life. I say words because there is not a single media type that can contain everything that I am. I am spread out throughout videos, books, voice notes… Here is everything that has touched either my heart or my brain.

This interview of Yukio Mishima about WWII & death created my perception of death & what it is to die meaningfully. See I want a meaningful death. He wasn’t a good person, but some of his ideas shook me to my core. I feel the resonance to this day. The screams of his ideas loud on my mind.

Anna Karenina is a book that struck me very deeply. I saw myself in Levin & his struggles accepting mortality & religion. La vida es sueño is a play that allowed me to deepen both my understanding of “dreams” as consciousness & the idea that what we believe becomes our reality.

At a young age I read Breaking The Habit of Being Yourself by Dr. Joe Dispenza. Although I’m no longer sure about whether I should trust his intentions or not, reading that book planted a seed in my mind that opened it up to the possibilities of changing my life by changing my thought. This is a recurring theme & subject that I come back to in my life.

James Scholz is a part of my being that will never be erased. When I first found him years ago, I saw a weird a guy that was into the same things I was & thought in incredible ways. To this day I engage with his content & sometimes use his streams to study. A lot of the baseline ways my mindset works I got from watching him in those formative years. Through him I discovered Cal Newport, of whom I have read many works throughout the year. His idea of LCCP was groundbreaking & is what my goals for the future are set upon.

The Courage To Be Disliked & Four Thousand Weeks, while not being related to each other, worked hand in hand to change my perception of time & of myself. While Atomic Habits set the foundation for identity-based change, TCTBD taught me that I must first accept who I am in order to move forward with that identity shift. FTW refactored my perception of time & how I cannot fight it or contain it.

I am a Zen Buddhist. Nothing I encountered before felt as right as this does. A lot of my preexisting worldview is very aligned with Buddhism in general, but Zen, specifically, goes beyond. I don’t know a lot & I don’t have a teacher, which is something that I would like to remedy at some point.

Arcane is a show that allowed me to see someone that was like me for the first time in my life. The show taught me that it is possible for me to exist as I am, without having to explain myself to others. I do not exaggerate when I say that this show changed my life & allowed me to see myself for who I am without judgment in my eyes.