We often hear that we should dare to dream big dreams even if such dreams are outrageous or nigh unattainable. Why is that? Why not better dreaming of things within reach?

When I was a kid we often played the famous boardgame “Ludo” (that’s how it’s called in the UK; some may know it as “Parcheesi” (US), “Sorry!” (UK, US, Canada), “Frustration !” (Ireland), “Mensch ärgere Dich nicht” (Germany) or the original “Pachisi/Chaupar” (India)).

Of course, all these different versions of Chaupar vary in their specific set of rules but the common overall objective remains the same: The goal is to completely move one’s set of game pieces from a safe home base alongside a cruciform playing area to a safe target base. The player who moves all its pieces to the target base wins.

The players take turns in moving their pieces along the board in the amount determined through some mechanism to generate more or less random numbers—usually dice. 

A player may have any number of pieces on the board at one time but only one piece may be moved with a single throw. If a piece moves to a position occupied by an opponent’s piece, this piece must return to the opponent’s home base.

Doesn’t this sound quite familiar to our life situations?

My go-to strategy when I was a kid was to send as many pieces on their journey as possible. I would then, with every turn, pick another piece to move all of them equally toward the target space. I assumed that multiple pieces on the board would prevent them from getting killed and sent back to the home base.

Well, I thought wrong.

At some point after constantly losing I noticed that I can’t win this game if I distribute my focus and the number of points on the dice. To win you need to push forward with just one single piece. Moving any of the other available pieces must always serve the one piece that is furthest ahead, for instance, to protect it from getting sent home by an opponent.

To succeed we must move in one single direction with one piece at a time until it reaches the target base. We can’t follow all the different ideas and impulses that constantly come up. Everything that is not top priority must either be sacrificed, structured around, or otherwise serve the advance of the main objective.

Making such painful sacrifices in favor of one single objective can never work if our dreams are mediocre. The one dream we follow must be worth abandoning the others.

So let’s practice dreaming big—and playing Chaupar.

Have a phenomenal week!

⏤Ferdinand

✨ Sparks

📝 Article: Quit Your Bucket List

Lovely article which shows how bucket lists seem to lose their meaning in the face of death because they’re mostly experience and novelty-oriented. Thus, they are not an accurate representation of what we actually value most.

I suggested in another article to habitually remind oneself of death because it immediately forces clarity and cuts through the unimportant like a hot knife through butter. What comes up for me with this exercise has always been two things: Firstly, pushing one thing as far as possible which I believe from the bottom of my heart would contribute to the world. Secondly, spending as much time as possible with loved ones. Interestingly, “new things to experience” have never come up. 

At the end of life, you might expect people to feel regret for all the things they wanted to do and never made time for. But I have yet to know a patient or friend who, facing the blunt fact of their own mortality, had anything close to a bucket list. This squares with some recent research that shows that people tend to prefer familiar experiences more when they are reminded that their days are limited. The people I know even regretted the novelty they’d chased along the way, whether it was recreational-drug use or dating exciting people who they knew weren’t relationship material.

New and unexpected experiences activate the brain’s reward pathway more powerfully than familiar ones, leading to greater dopamine release and a more intense sense of pleasure. But on its own, excitement won’t bring about enduring happiness. Human beings habituate rapidly to what is new. To achieve a lifetime of stimulation, you would have to embark on an endless search for the unfamiliar, which would inevitably lead to disappointment.

Novelty-seeking is most valuable when you use it as a tool to discover the things and people you love—and once you find them, go deep and long with those experiences and relationships. The siren call that tells you there might be a new and better version of what you already have is likely an illusion, driven by your brain’s relentless reward pathway.

My colleagues who treat children and adolescents have mentioned that, in the face of life-threatening diagnoses, even young people prefer the familiar. They do so not only because the familiar is known and safe, but because it is more meaningful to them. After all, things become familiar to us because we choose them repeatedly—and we do that because they are deeply rewarding.

Imagine, just for a moment, that your death is near. What might you miss out on if you put your bucket list on hold? Sure, you won’t make it to Bali or Antarctica. But maybe instead you could fit in one last baseball game with your kids, one last swim in the ocean, one last movie with your beloved, one last Long Island sunset. If you prioritize the activities and people you already love, you won’t reach the end of your life wishing you’d made more time for them.

🌐 Website: Urban Dictionary

An online dictionary of English slang words and phrases. This website has helped me manifold, especially during my earlier learning phases of the American English language on the streets of Manhattan and I still use it today. 

Urban Dictionary, October 4: save scumming

In video games: Manually saving your game over and over again (usually before important decisions/boss battles, etc.) to make sure that if you screw up later on, you can always just return to your most recent saved game. Used in games that allow players to save whenever they want, thus making the ga…

Urban Dictionary

🎵 Music: Der Leiermann – Franz Schubert

From Franz Schubert’s song cycle “Die Winterreise” for voice and piano, D. 911, Op. 89 in 1828. Performed by Thomas Quasthoff (baritone) and Daniel Barenboim (piano) at the Berlin Philharmonie on 22 March 2005.

Thomas Quasthoff is yet another shining example of a human being who did not let his perceived condition define who he is or who he wants to become.

💡 This Week’s Wisdom

Going hungry to a restaurant or party is a common pitfall that can lead to some major overeating, especially since it’s these places where you typically consume the most unhealthy food. Unlike when you prepare your meals yourself, you can’t control your food’s content when you’re out on the town. Even if you try to eat the healthiest thing on the menu, you’d be amazed by the amount of butter and oil they throw on just about everything in the kitchen.
A great secret to not overeating at restaurants and parties is to simply eat a small meal right before you leave home. That way, when you get there, you’re focused on having fun, instead of waiting for food to fill your belly. Focus on enjoying yourself, the company you’re with, and the party or restaurant—not on dieting or gorging yourself. You order less, save more money, and tend to really enjoy what you eat because you’re eating to satisfy your taste buds, not your empty stomach.

From You Are Your Own Gym by MARK LAUREN.
Captured and resurfaced using the phenomenal Kindle reader.

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