Hey friend,

I hope you've been well!  

This week I had the inspiration to research my family history online and see how far back I could trace my name, and where the name comes from. There is a cool website called www.houseofnames.com where you can look up the history of your family, which country it originates from, details on your coat of arms, early settlers to America and so much more.

I found out that my family is from a region of France called Burgundy, and my earliest ancestor was the governor of a town called Dijon over 1000 years ago, where the mustard is from lol!

One of the cool things I found was that this region of Dijon was an art hub for hundreds of years between 1000-1500 AD and flourished during the Renaissance.

Learning all of this inspired me to want to take a trip there someday and put my feet on the ground and see what it feels like to visit the roots of my blood line. There is something cool about learning about where my family comes from because as a white Canadian, we are so far removed from our ancestral lands.

Hundreds of years ago my ancestors came across and settled in New France, or Montreal as we know it today, and left behind our way of life to start something new here. There is a feeling of historical amnesia when your ancestors lose their way of life, and it makes me feel compassion for the people who’s way of life changed when we showed up here.

I feel like understanding where you come from helps ground you, I would highly suggest going down the rabbit hole and looking into your own family history!

1 Cool Insight on Creativity and Psychology

Something cool I learned this week about creativity is that because of their open mindedness, creative people may live longer, and become more creative with age. Creative people are natural problem solvers, and it is this ability to think of new ways to solve problems that keeps the mind young. One interesting contributor is how creative people react to stress. We often see obstacles as something to be overcome, a problem to be solved, rather than a roadblock that stops us in our path.

This is something I really liked about Ryan Holiday’s book The Obstacle Is The Way that I have recommended in the past but I will post again below. It frames you to look at obstacles as something that will make you stronger, so use it as the lesson to be learned and keep moving forward. We can’t predict when obstacles will inevitably come our way, but if we have the mindset that obstacles are necessary for our growth, then we won’t be held back by them but rather use them as the stepping stone towards something greater.

Book Recommendation

Why I love this book

This is one of the easiest and most profound books I have read for helping deal with common stresses from life. The idea is that we can not choose what happens to us, but we do have the ability to choose how we react. When we realize that this obstacle that is in front of us has a lesson for us to learn from, we can use the obstacle as the stepping stone for our growth.

The obstacle that is in our way, becomes the way. This is the message behind the stoic phrase “Amor Fati” which means a love of fate. The idea isn’t that your life is necessarily predetermined, but that whatever has happened to you made you the person you are today, and to love it. When you take that further, you realize that when something doesn’t go our way, we can use that as an opportunity to learn, to become more patient, to be humbled, etc. We are not meant to get everything we want all the time, sometimes we need to learn humility and temperance. If you look at the obstacles that come up in life as a stepping stone and not a road block, life becomes easier.

Key Takeaways

• Perception - How we react to a situation is a matter of how we perceive it. We do not have to react with anger or frustration when something doesn’t go our way.

• Action - Focus on finding solutions instead of dwelling on problems.

• Embracing Adversity - Things will not always go our way, and to think they will is naive. Putting ourselves in hard situations makes us better at dealing with hard situations. Teach yourself that you can deal with hard situations. This is where I am a big fan of Jiu-Jitsu, hot yoga, lifting weights, running, etc.

• Resilience - Knowing that you can deal with hard things makes you stronger and better able to deal with problems when they arise.

• Embracing Challenges - Life will inevitably send us challenges, and it is up to us to turn those challenges into triumphs. You hear countless stories of people who overcame hardships and became much stronger because of it.

• Amor Fati - If you live your life as if there are lessons for you to learn when things go wrong, you will be better equipped when they eventually do.

If you want to check out this book, i’ll leave a link below!

The Obstacle Is the Way - Ryan Holiday

 Take care my friend,

- Niko