ERIC KIM ₿

Bodily awareness. More wisdom in the body, muscle and sinews than the “mind”.

When we think about “willpower”, we tend to think about the mind. Why the focus on the mind? We like to think that the mind is immortal… and after we die, somehow our mind or “soul” will continue to live indefinitely. Also, the hope of Silicon Valley utopists about somehow uploading your mind or consciousness to the cloud and living forever or whatever.

However, my thought:

When we think about “willpower” in the general sense, all our “willpower” actually is rooted and comes from our body.

In other words, respect and obey your body!

ERIC

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First, optimize for your physical, physiological health and well being. Sleeping 10+ hours a night without waking up to the agency of an alarm clock. Sleeping before midnight. Muscles full, supple and ripe and full of energy and zest to take on and to conquer the day. If we focus on our physiological strength, rest, recovery and bodily well being, everything else will come quite naturally to us!

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What we are seeking isn’t to “optimize” our lives in the sense of making our lives more “efficient”. Actually what we are seeking is to improve or “betterfy” or “betterify” our lives!

So in simple terms when making any certain life decisions ask yourself the simple question:

Will this action make my life better or worse?

If someone says to you:

“Not to sound racist but x, y, z” this means they’re a racist.

However if someone openly says something that *sounds* racist, it often isn’t. Things that sounds racist are often people who are ignorant or don’t “know any better”.

Beware, those who seem the most “woke”, “progressive”, “liberal”, and “democratic” are often the most low-key racist.

When you’re tired and have low energy, perhaps best to eat some meat and take a nap. Or just take a cold shower and a nap. Or a hot bath, followed by a cold shower and a nap. And to prioritize sleeping early that day, to power up for the next day.

Coffee as a best stimulant not when you’re tired, but ironically when you’re well rested and full of energy, and drinking coffee *enhances* your well-being?

The more we can broaden and democratize the notion of “street photography”, the better.

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What we are seeking is the *right* or optimal amount of stimulation. Too much stimulation is bad, but too little stimulation is also bad.

To discover this “golden mean” (Aristotle) is our creative flow goal!

The more I’m out on the streets or in public spaces, the happier and more creative I am. So simple thought:

Our physical and creative happiness is directly proportional to the time we spend out doors and in public spaces and in the city?

For example, lots of small fires can be controlled but one really huge fire cannot.

So also perhaps in relationships, better to have lots of small little scuffles and arguments (which can be quickly and easily consoled) rather than one really huge argument which can lead to a divorce or even something worse which cannot be fixed.

Focus on minimizing your downside when it comes to error, and also be very anxious and paranoid when it can come to a really huge accident which can end your life (for example, best to be hyper paranoid when driving a car or riding a bicycle in a city), because these accidents can truly end your life or end up leaving you having some sort of permanent disfigurement.

Some quick thoughts.

First thought:

When it comes to our abilities, we often under-estimate ourselves greatly. This is bad.

However we often over-estimate our ability to plan, forecast, and predict/control the future.

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Long story short, stoicism is good for us right now:

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A good stoic way to approach and live life:

If you’re part of society and not a recluse, when you interact or engage with others who are pretty, just ignore them, don’t acknowledge what they said, and perhaps just act if you didn’t even hear what they said.

This as a means to become less emotionally sensitive, and to become less petty, for us to become bigger and more!

Visual acuity — the skill, your creative and compositional sensitivity to the world:

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You’re a visual artist. You love the visual. Photography is just your core competency and passion, but all visual arts are good visual arts!

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A thought:

You express much via your photography in terms of what you consider beautiful and worthy to be shared!

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What is our goal being photographers and visual artists? Simple; not to become a petty and small photographer, but to strive towards greatness, magnanimity, and to become a great photographer!

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Everything is beautiful, if you look closely enough!

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A thought I had while looking at this warmup video I made:

Wow, seeing this video in monochrome, high contrast, sporadically going in and out of focus seems very artistic.

To me, it was interesting because even though the videos were out of focus, it promoted focus meaning–

The ambiguity of the shapes forced me (the viewer) to *actively INTERPRET* what was going on (using my brain power) in order to identify the human shape and form, and I found the whole thing to be very beautiful!

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More squats, more thoughts:

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How I warmup at the gym:

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We go to the gym to lift weights and get fit and exercise. Perhaps we should approach photography the same; the metaphorical gym for photography, replete with exercises, approaches, form and technique as well as programming and philosophy!

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We all seem to acknowledge the fact that fitness is essential to physical health. But why don’t we acknowledge the fact that photography is also essential to our creative health?

Why exposure compensation is so valuable:

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A realization:

It seems the reason I love coffee shops, the gym, the mall, the library etc is because they tend to be “public” spaces … often indoor, which creates a better sociological space where people and strangers can bump into one another and rub shoulders with one another?

In other words, I like being surrounded by other people, and strangers are hugely fascinating to me; friends and folks I have yet befriended! Perhaps this is also the root of our interest in street photography?

Also the reason I like living in apartment or condominium complexes is because I like seeing and interacting with other people?

Why do we typically join collectives or are interested in collectives? Perhaps because we lack the self belief that we alone … we as individuals can do, attempt and enact great change by ourselves!

In life, it seems what we are striving towards is this:

To be less foolish in life when it comes to our pragmatic decision making, and to become more wise.

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The grand master in chess (and perhaps in life) starts with the end-game, and works his/her way backwards:

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My #1 piece of advice for aspiring photographers:

Start your own self-hosted photography blog (via WordPress.org)

I see an uber-bright future for photographers and photography bloggers for the future — new unlimited heights of creative expression!

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Question —

What fun and interesting things can you discover about yourself or about reality through photography?

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Thought:

With work flow, and almost everything in life… strive to cut out the “middle man” or kinks in the pipe which prevent the directness of what you desire to do, or achieve.

For example, the upside of using the iPhone/iPad lightning to USB connector — to import photos from my Ricoh GR III — photos shot in small JPEG. Photos look great “out of the box” in the RICOH JPEG, and don’t require any further post processing! This is great then it simplifies and streamlines our workflow, because all you gotta do is shoot the photos in jpeg, import them to your device, then directly upload to your WordPress media library to quickly share!

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It seems evident that our de is nosire as photographer-artists is to make beautiful photos. But how do we achieve this? Some thoughts:

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Insight: when we perceive our personal growth and we see our self development augment itself, we are happy. When we see ourselves or perceive ourselves to be degenerating, we are unhappy.

Then the question:

What do we really want a a final end– happiness or self development?

Or are the two things like an interconnected flywheel and yin-yang; both powering the other?

Also perhaps when we perceive that we aren’t growing and developing ourselves into something further and beyond, we become frustrated and that frustration (unhappiness) becomes the spur to motivate us to seek that happiness (self-growth and self-development?)

My hypothesis:

It is self development which we seek, and happiness is the means to that end!

Because when we witness and the self developmental growth becomes factual and true in our eyes, we get a spurt of happiness (serotonin, other hormones and bodily-brain chemicals). Thus in order to feel the happiness, we keep striving for more self growth.

So happiness is the drug which addicts us, and self growth and self development is the true goal and end into itself!

Our desire … to beautify ourselves. This is what drives our desire for fashionable clothes, hair cuts, cars, accessories, shoes, body building yoga and health fitness things, our diet and lifestyle, etc.

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Our desire as artists, or as individuals with very sensitive eyes and visual senses:

We hate the aesthetically ugly in shape, texture, and form … and we desire to banish ugliness from our eyes by either changing our environment (our homes, exterior and interior design, architecture, community, city, climate, and neighborhood).

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Your photos will reveal your own personal politics and world view!

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Technically we don’t get stronger *as* we lift the weight. When we successfully lift a new PR (personal record) in any of our lifts, it is just an acknowledgement of our pre-existing and innate (latent) stength.

Technically we become stronger when we’re eating more meat, and sleeping and recovering and building our muscles through this “post traumatic growth” period. The weight lifting is the trauma trigger to stimulate growth. The “resting” or “recovery” phase is when the real growth is happening. Thus the thought:

Let us remember it is the times when we are resting, recovering, eating, and consuming and sleeping when the “real” growth happens, not when we are just “forcing” ourselves to work more!

Active rest, leisure, and emptying your mind as taking more skill and discipline than just “forcing” yourself to work more!

What we delight in as photographers and visual artists: form!

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Why are music videos so fun (BlackPink)? Because– it seems we humans love the combination of both the visual *and* musical:

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Words of wisdom from homeboy Publilius Syrus on ‘planning’.

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Some pragmatic tips and ideas on how to do a one rep max squat, with no silly belt, knee wraps, steroids, protein powder, pre-workout stuff, creatine, testosterone, crazy genetics etc:

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Of course beyond the obvious cases (like booking flights, or perhaps some work-related things), strive to never schedule a day in advance. This means, with any of your personal, life, health, fitness, art, creativity things … attack every day, day by day as it comes!

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Innovation: your external conditions will never be optimal or best. So given your sub-optimal life conditions right now, what are the levers or triggers you can enable in order to optimize your sub-optimal for the better?

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Since I’ve been getting back into weight lifting, I’m a trillion times more inspired in my art and arts creation. Which makes me think:

Perhaps the core root and primal instinct of us to make art is derived from our physiological, bodily desire to express our physiological joy and well-being?

What Gives us the Impetus to Create?

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Our goal isn’t to make the “best” or the most complex photo. I say it seems more interesting to contemplate what are the most basic and simplest elements of a photograph; to take it back to “first principles” (Aristotle, Physics).

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It seems life is far more fun, interesting and fulfilling when we put ourselves in a situation which allows us to (self-directedly) maximally engage ourselves with either thoughts, ideas, knowledge, wisdom, art, or the act of creation.

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Photography is about photographing, documenting and creating images that have to do with human affairs.

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First sent on ERIC KIM NEWSLETTER

Dear friend,

In today’s topsy-turvy world, now is your opportunity as a photographer to shoot and document it.

An interesting insight I had recently:

Political photography IS street photography, which means… if you shoot things which are political, the photos are very interesting and meaningful.

This means:

Don’t allow yourself to become a prisoner of any genre of photography; just strive to make photos which are interesting or entertaining to you.

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Politics pertains to the “polis” (city, as good old Aristotle has taught us). Political photography and street photography seems to be the same thing.

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Not sure what to photograph? Just photograph a full 24 hours in the day of your own life. To document it all— what you wear, what you do, what you eat, what you drink etc. And it isn’t about making a single great photo, but just a series of fun photos to document a simple day in your life, and also as a means in the future to look back at your old photos and to relive the wonderful past memories and experiences you had!

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The purpose of life, art, creativity, entrepreneurship is this:

To always iterate upwards and forwards, to the heights and beyond!

Or like Buzz Lightyear says:

To infinity and beyond!

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There is much we can change in our lives and much we cannot change in our lives. Which makes me think:

In which contexts is it best to literally change the external circumstances of our lives (our environment, home, abode, lifestyle) and when should we change the internal attitude we have towards these certain things?

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A life with photography is soooo much more fun and enjoyable. Why?

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To shoulder press more weight (via dumbbells), do it one handed:

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Life ain’t about pain avoidance. Instead, my thought:

How can we use pain as a stimulus towards making us more active, to do more, and to become more?

Not to make the purpose of our life to maximize our pleasure and to minimize our pain. But rather, to use pain *AND* pleasure in novel ways to empower us to act more, do more, create more, think more, and become more?

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Life is too precious to live in a conservative, defense-based mode. Let us be more active, forward… let us ATTACK!

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What makes a street photographer a street photographer? Not our camera, not our approach and not even our technique. I say street photography is the ethos and the love of being out in public, interacting with others, being out doors and in public spaces, and harvesting the joy of life!

The harder you go, the harder you must also recovery! To force yourself to recover is also an active thing!

We cannot just force endless productivity with no recovery.

Work hard, recover hard.

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Towards an anti-soft and flabby approach to life.

The new motto:

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Our great privilege as photographers, bloggers, vloggers, and digital creators:

There is really no downside to sharing more than ‘necessary’.

Thus I say let us harness this benefit, and just share it all!

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Don’t use money to just buy stuff. Treat yourself like a scientist; use money as a tools for more interesting life experimentation!

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The point of photography: to better engage with the external world, to witness beauty, to highlight beauty, and to *ELEVATE* beauty using our skill as photographers!

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Happiness as a concept as too vague. Better to think about physiological happiness– the physiological thriving, growth, and splendor of the body!

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How to cultivate courage in modern times:

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This is the aesthetic and state/approach we are going for.

Life is not a competition, but there are certainly ways you can gain a competitive advantage compared with others, by identifying your ‘archimedes lever’ (your one thing that you are probably at least 10x better than others in) and focusing on maximizing that.

For me, it is very easy and seamless and requires me almost no effort to blog, shoot YouTube videos, lift weights, shoot photos, write, think, walk, talk to people, etc. Then it seems wise for me to focus on my greatest strengths, and disregard my weaknesses.

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