Joan Didion Night & Upper Limits
- hailo
- 1d
- 3 min read
hello my beautiful Hot Literatis,
Practice Week
As what it means to be a "Hot Literati" becomes more clearly defined, It's important to move from being a passive consumer of media to actually being a Hot Literati in your day to day life. For example, take one of our core pillars, "writing by hand daily." I'm crazy about this one because it actually changed my life. Even just the act of writing daily helps me think about my goals, my emotions, and the sort of person I want to be. I write down my long-term and then my monthly goals every single day, and I just posted my monthly goals on our chat/hang out message board.
Dostoevsky Night
On Saturday, in Crown Heights, we gathered a group of Hot Literatis to discuss what makes a Dostoevsky Character so distinct and to collaboratively imagine their own Dosteovsky Characters. One group invented “Dmitri” who was born to wealthy parents and bought a new overcoat, the other invented “Avery” who was recently passed up for a low level promotion at a non-profit. Then we put our characters on trial for murder and our fake jury decided which one was telling the truth. We also were blessed with a brief excerpt from an essay by Chris Jesu Lee and a mix of music by Knyck.
Our next event is a book swap at Dumbo House on May 26th. Hot Literati Members can RSVP here. Make sure you use the same email that your Hot Literati Membership is under. We also have "Joan Didion Night" coming up in June.
Little Deaths/Delights #93
Three things I’m letting go of, and three things I’m embracing this week
Little Deaths
Summer afternoons - during the summer, it's hard to catch me unless it's very early or evening time
No dog - I would love to have a small dog at this point in my life
friends out of town - my close friends have been traveling so I haven't seen some of them lately
Little Delights
Sweet Potatoes - I'm still in love with a roasted japanese sweet potato
This hair mask - I sauna a lot and my hair can get brittle in response, so this mask has been really helpful
This cleanser - I've been using it for a while now and I love
The Upper Limit
One concept from Hot Literati Academy that I keep coming back to is psychologist Gay Hendrick's work on Upper Limits.
Hendrick noticed that high-performing people self-sabotage when things go badly when things start going well. He called it the upper limit problem, which is the idea that each of us has an internal thermostat set to a certain level of success, joy, or abundance, and the moment life threatens to exceed it, something quietly kicks in to bring things back down to familiar territory.
I've found that daily work like writing my goals, sharing them with others, and doing the work consistently is a big part of how you raise that thermostat and build evidence that more is available to you.
This is one of the frameworks inside How to Get Rich, which is part of Hot Literati Academy. Memberships are currently $15/month and include the full course catalog, book club, community, and events.
hailo’s corner
Today I am sun-soaked and sleepy!!! I got to spend a good part of the afternoon poolside with a friend of mine and am 50 pages into a friend's novel and 50 pages into a biography about Michael Bloomberg. One of my favorite things about going to the library is that I leave with very random things and somehow these books end up meaning the most me.
