WHAT IS YOUR PRIME VISION IN LIFE?
LASER FOCUS.
HYPED UP on ERIC KIM OMAKASE COFFEE— I’m currently drinking the black bag, THE PHOTOGRAPHER, which is 50% fine robusta and 50% liberica. This stuff is seriously liquid gold, gives me more focus, hype, and general good attitude toward life.
Anyways, I thought on my mind is in regards to focus, laser focus. Some thoughts on focus:
How to focus?
The philosophy of focus is tricky; on one hand, in modern-day times it is seen as virtuous to focus. To “not get distracted“.
I know for myself, I am easily distracted by superfluous things. Therefore it is my personal passion to not be distracted.
The first question you must ask yourself is this:
Do I want to focus?
For example, Nassim Taleb writes that contrary to popular wisdom, by him not focusing on a single given subject, he was able to advance his thinking and philosophy.
On the other hand, innovators like Steve Jobs gave advice to Sergey and Larry Page about how focus was critical.
For example, the advice that Steve Jobs gave to Larry Page and Sergey Brin was how Google should just focus on search, their most critical component, and not get distracted by other things like android, etc.
Looking at things a little bit zoomed out, I think Steve Jobs may have been correct. When we look at Android, it is a very sad and poor imitation of Apple and iOS. If Android was never invented, I don’t really think that the world would suffer.
In fact, thinking about things more critically, upon much consideration and thinking, and also personal use of android and android products, essentially it’s Google’s sneaky way of injecting more advertisements into your life. The decade+ plan of android and Google Maps is quite simple; gather more personal preferences of users and user behavior in order to deliver more “relevant“ advertisements.
Your life
There is certainly a difference between your life, and the life of these corporations. The reason why I think corporations are not a good example is that ultimately, the strategies don’t really pertain much to the individual. It seems more effective to focus on your own personal life and thriving, rather than just look at what companies are doing.
The philosophy of living and life
To think deeply, ultimately what you want to think and consider is that you only have one life, this one given life. So the question is in this life, what do you desire to achieve, attempt, or do? Do you care for your legacy? Do you care for the thriving of other future human beings beyond you? Do you not care? Underlying all of these considerations is a certain life philosophy. And I think that is guiding principles are critical.
In terms of my personal legacy, what I want to leave behind, how I wish to contribute to society, the general thought is I want to help assist empowering other individuals. For example, I just think of my 12-year-old, 15-year-old, 16-year-old, 18-year-old, 19-year-old, 21 year old, 26 year old self, and I think and consider; I thought given point in my life in that age, what advice and wisdom do I wish that other people shared with me?
No external media?
In terms of laser focus, another strategy and path is no external media, beyond yourself, the vibrations of your own mind, and other embodied reality experiences you have in person with other human beings.
For example, one of the best things that I’ve personally done is go to the hot sauna every single day, religiously. Why? I consider it like my meditation zen focus, chamber, in which I come up with lots of great creative ideas.
There are also some theories that perhaps being in a really really hot sauna, in which the heat and humidity is much higher, which forces your body to sweat, might be positively good for you in terms of your hormones. Hot heat therapy in the hot sauna at the gym, or even doing hot yoga, a form of hormesis.
Why movies or media?
There are always great new movies coming out, great new TV shows, series, etc. But I think out of all of this, the ultimate goal is towards human thriving, some sort of strengthening, or challenges.
A simple thought:
The time you spend watching media movies or shows, just use that time to go to the gym instead.
For example, I love superhero movies. I love the Marvel movies, the superhero movies, mostly the ones that came out before Disney bought out Marvel. I personally love the hero struggle, the hero narrative, etc. Why? I see myself in their shoes; when I watch a superhero movie, it makes me think that I’m the superhero.
What does a superhero have to deal with? In America, which has Judeo Christian, Protestant, Jesus sacrifice mentality, the general thought is that a hero sacrifices his life for the collective. That is, let us consider all of these heroic movies and films, typically the lead sacrifices his or her life in order to save humanity, people beyond them, etc.
The tricky thing is when we go further back in history, let’s say studying the Iliad, the Odyssey, etc., the narrative is a bit different. For example, let us consider Achilles in the Iliad. He is not sacrificing anything for the collective. Instead, his initial plan was just to go back to his own land, ideally take Breisis with him, stop war campaigning, and just retire and chill out. However it was the death of his best friend Patroclus which drove him to seek revenge. I wonder if John Wick is almost like the modern-day Achilles; some sort of antihero that we are actually rooting for.
Your goals?
Once again, the tricky thing is that for you, what are your personal goals, or life mission?
Discovering your creative mission
Another critical thing is discovering your creative mission in life. That is, assuming you were a trillionaire, what would you do with your time life and physiological energy?
My general thought is that everyone is unique, and has a diverse range of skill sets they could use to leverage and move the world.
For example, let us say that you’re into cars, photography, and innovation. I think there is an interesting way you can cross pollinate all of these interests.
Or for myself, my passion for photography and coffee. Creating the first photographers blend, the first coffee optimized to help stimulate and motivate photographers.
The traditional wisdom is everyone tells you to stay focused on a single small niche. Based on my life experiences, and thinking more long-term, I don’t think this is the way. Much more effective instead of taking insanely long term.
That is, allow yourself to indulge all of your creative interests.
Focus and diversity
A simple thought is when you are investigating and pursuing all of your diverse interests, just be insanely focused on each one at a time. No need to justify yourself. In the long run, all of these things will dovetail nicely.
Now what?
Focus on your health, your physicality, and don’t sacrifice your health for anything. Also focus on the health of your wife, your kids, and certainly yourself.
Assuming you want to become more productive in life, the simple path is focusing on your health. If you are insanely healthy, productivity will come naturally.
White space
Another thought on my mind in regards to design, as well as a mental thing; how white space is critical.
What is white space? Simply put, white space is having buffer, not overloading yourself or your schedule, even for the promise of making more money.
If you’re confronted with the question; should I take on this additional work to make extra money, or should I choose to refuse it in order to maximize my mind space and mental white space, choose your mental white space.
The philosophy of making money
Another thought I had this morning is in regards to money. How to make money, why make money, how much money should we make.
I think the upside of being self-employed, an entrepreneur, is that in some regards, you have some control over this.
Social life is the best stimulus
Another thought; a simple thought I have is that perhaps the best stimulus is other people. That means, being at the gym, being at the park, being at the mall, any opportunity to be around other human beings is good for us.
Why is the modern day man so antisocial?
My theory is that because it is almost seen as a new ethic; to intrude upon other people is considered bad.
For example, when you interact with other human beings, sooner or later you will offend somebody. And this is all part of the game.
This is my theory:
Better to risk a social interaction, be friendly and say hi, and be given the cold shoulder or a bad interaction, rather than not attempt it at all.
I think this might be the cure and panacea for modern day living.
STREET PHOTOGRAPHY X STOICISM
A great crossover that I personally think about the difference of stoicism, and modern day life, is that stoicism must be practiced, almost like a martial arts.
Typically speaking, our use of stoicism, ethics, modern day ethics, etc. is predicated on opportunities.
For example, other people. If you’re at home all day, don’t have to expose yourself to any real life interactions with other people, you have no need for stoicism.
Also, the Internet is fake. Nowadays with ChatGPT, it is really impossible to know whether the online commentator, troll, Twitter account, etc., is a real human being or not. Therefore my suggestion is to just disable all comments on the Internet, don’t read any comments on the Internet, And only rely on face-to-face interactions.
Demigod focus
I personally believe that one of the best ways to focus is that there needs to be some Mokadem of danger, that is, there needs to be some sort of downside risk, some sort of risk of life or death.
For example, my 10 plate challenge. The general gist is easy;
Put a barbell on the squat rack, and load it up with 10 plates. Then see if you can successfully lift it up, a little bit off the bar even half a centimeter, once, for even half a second.
It doesn’t really matter whether you are able to successfully lift it or not, what is most important and critical is the attempt, your focus, your courage.
The reason why I find this to be so essential is that before attempting to do this, the courage necessary is phenomenal. There is really no other time in which I truly am afforded the opportunity to focus that much.
I think the reason why this gives me such zen and intense focus opportunity is that if I don’t focus, and give it my 100% effort, who knows, maybe there is a risk of injury? Funny enough though, with the atlas lift, I’ve suffered zero injuries. At worst I cannot budge the bar. But my desire is to move the bar, so regardless, my focus is to get into a zen mode, to tune out all distractions, channel 100% of my strength and courage into that one single moment, and lift the weight with all my might.
Adrenaline training
I have a theory about focus; it has to do with adrenaline. That is, people often think that adrenaline, fear is a bad thing, but even the notion of “fear“ is misguided. Maybe fear is nothing but adrenaline in overdrive, which is untamed.
I often think about the movie 300, the moment in which king Leonidas and his heroic 300 are preparing to go to battle with king Xerxes and the millions of Persian missionaries. What happens is this— the narrator says something like,
He felt no fear. Simply a heightened sense of things.
Very very interesting, I think I may feel the same sentiment. When I am ready to hype myself up for a godly lift, it isn’t necessarily fear which I feel, rather, a heightened sense of things.
Also interestingly enough, wondering and while doing the lift itself, and the barbell is on my shoulders, my hearing goes deaf. For about a few seconds, I literally cannot hear the music, but the second I put down the barbell, the music turns back on.
Therefore, once again, the interesting thought is that perhaps, adrenaline training is what we need. And this is the focus of my workshops; to help you tame your adrenaline, to train your adrenaline, and for you to learn to turn “fear” and your adrenaline into your slave, your own pet monster, to unleash it when you deem it necessary.
Focus for the sake of what?
I think the difficult and tricky thing is that in modern day times, notions of “focus“ are deemed as some sort of pseudo-virtuous thing in which becoming “focused” is towards money and capital accumulation. That is, the purpose of focusing, being “productive“, is in order to make money, accumulate and accrue more capital, etc.
Call but what if focusing, your own personal desire to focus isn’t for any of these things? Then what?
How to see and look further
Elon Musk vision goals; essentially to see and think beyond.
My simple thought is in regards to your life goals, be laser vision focused on what you consider truly critical, your life mission while you are still on planet earth.
For example, one of my current life goals is propagating fine robusta to the masses. Also I got lots of goals with diet health and fitness, and certainly photography, street photography courage, philosophy stoicism and everything in between.
Also with my workshops, honestly at this point I’m starting to think that I just want to do it because I care, and I have a lot of insane fun doing it! In my mind I see myself as a bitcoin billionaire. Therefore, at this point I almost see things like making money as a hobby.
Prime Vision
To have a prime vision, a primary vision. To find yourself, your entrepreneurial ventures, etc.
It seems that in modern day times, we are always seeking funding, some sort of external externalized funding. But perhaps, this isn’t a good path. Why? If you want someone else to find you, external funding, maybe the thing that you’re doing isn’t really worth doing. That is, true genius is shown through what you are willing to sacrifice, out of your own pocket etc.
For example, I think a lot of people want external funding in terms of traveling, expenses, building something etc. however, while traveling is great, perhaps a lot of trouble is more romanticized than anything.
My thought instead is fund yourself. True skin in the game.
Now what?
Some thought and philosophy assignments for you:
First, the philosophy of money. For you, what is the meaning of finances? Why does it matter to you, and also what does it mean to you?
Second, think about your health. How would you define health for yourself, and also why does it matter to you?
Third, think about your own creativity, your own creative life. What is it that you desire to create as an artist, and towards what ends, why, and also how to best propagate it?
To think these thoughts deeper, have a chat with ERIC KIM AI.
CONQUER WITH EK
If you’re hungry and ready to conquer, conquer with me:
- Conquer street photography in Philly, this upcoming October 14, 2023
- Discover your creative mission in life, my brand new workshop in downtown LA later on this year November 4, 2023 – ALL NEW!
- Achieve peak creativity in Seattle, next year February 10, 2024
Some new workshops in the making:
- Introduction to stoicism workshop, later on this year in downtown LA
- Street photography master workshop
- Next year, Seoul/Hadong South Korea workshop 2024
Always stay tuned to the ERIC KIM workshops page, or this newsletter.
Now what?
Pursuing your own passion for photography is still a noble goal.
Keep shooting, keep making art, and upload your best photos to ARS BETA >
Random thoughts on my mind
Prime, primer thoughts. Perhaps the best color or the paint concept is primer flat gray. Why? The promise of infinite opportunities, anything is possible.
Morning Routine
Just vlog your morning routine! And drink more EK COFFEE!
Forward the turbo
If this sparked even one interesting thought within you, feel free to forward to a friend!
ERIC
And when lost,