Secret Portals to Your Next Self

In stories, the narrator tells you which ordinary things are portals to magic and adventure. In real life, you have to find them yourself. This episode reveals 5 secret portals to the next version of yourself: seemingly ordinary choices, traits, and habits that are thresholds to the future version of you who lives with more courage, clarity, and freedom. It’s for you if an old version of you has died but the new one hasn’t been born yet. You might have recently experienced a big life change: a move, or a relationship ending, or a career change. Or maybe you know one is coming. It’s for you if you have an unshakeable feeling that there is a more alive version of you out there, if only you could figure out how to get to them. We’ll examine the work of philosophy’s greatest minds, like Nietzsche, Kant, Kafka, and the Ancient Greeks, to uncover the hidden thresholds between who you are and who you're becoming, and point out clues for how to spot them when they appear in your own life. EPISODE OUTLINE 00:00 Intro 04:54 I missed you 06:05 Help me keep Soul Gum ad-free 07:35 Talk to me!!! 08:18 1. Intuition is a portal 08:49 Nietzsche’s beef with Socrates 10:44 The neuroscience of intuition (Gary Klein) 12:31 I exist because of a woman’s intuition 13:03 The tension between ambition & intuition 14:13 Mary Oliver on reacquianting with your intuition 15:05 Small ways to reconnect with your intuition 15:42 2. Solitude is a portal (Pascal) 16:39 The fear of being alone with your thoughts 17:33 2014 study on the discomfort of being un-stimulated 18:05 Solitude as a tool in my creative process 18:58 Brain drain study: it is that d**n phone 19:30 Going phone n*k*d 20:12 3. Aligned friendship is a portal 21:36 Nietzsche: Friends should be your “best enemies” 23:06 Friendship as a mirror 23:40 The research of social contagion 24:18 Look for friends that show you what’s possible 24:52 4. Nature is a portal 25:40 Our increasingly sanitized relationship with nature 26:15 Kant, the sublime, and the gorpcore of it all 28:41 The ego-interrupting power of awe 29:45 5. Action is a portal (Kafka’s Before the Law) 31:29 Mary Oliver on the most regretful people 32:00 You deserve to know what’s on the other side of fear 32:33 Leap by Joy Sullivan 33:34 For the Ones Who Left by Me (Victoria Hutchins) 34:29 Lightning round recap 35:40 Subscribe, rate, share, talk to me!!! LINKS My debut poetry collection MAKE BELIEVE is out everywhere now Subscribe to Soul Gum’s new instagram :-) Follow me on Instagram and TikTok