Sometimes double-negatives can be very helpful. “be yourself” can be endlessly frustrating, but I believe that “be not not-yourself” is a much more useful directive.

You are always you, whatever you do, even when you’re playing a role of some kind, even when you’re awkward and forced. that’s just you being awkward and forced. the issue that lots of people have is they get burdened by ideas of what they think they’re supposed to be

having ideas is not intrinsically bad, but the issue is when carrying those ideas in your mind takes up all your attention, distracting you from the reality you’re inhabiting. it’s like you’ve opened too many tabs, and you start to “glitch” and “lag”.

so like morpheus saying “stop trying to hit me and hit me”, ip man saying “stop reciting theory and hit your target”, luke closing his eyes to Use The Force, batman making the climb without the rope, it’s all about closing the tabs that free up the RAM you need to surf the wave

this is the mind of no mind, the formula of no formula, when you stop clinging on to some rigid frame of how you think things are supposed to be, empty your cup of expectations, renounce your assumptions, open yourself up to surprise and possibilities, and react in real time.

the problem when you’re being “not-yourself” is not that you’re “fake”, it’s that you’re not present. you’re not there. you’re somewhere else, in your head, worrying about something that hasn’t happened yet, you’re anxiously ahead or behind the beat, rather than grooving with it.

the thing i really like about this moment is the way neo looks at his hands. his hands are doing the things by themselves, he has gotten out of his way. he has stepped out of not-himself, and he is free. he has stopped trying. he is surfing the wave, effortlessly pic.twitter.com/mt5j0scxCK

— Visa ✈️ NYC (Feb22–Mar13) (@visakanv) December 12, 2021

when you stop anxiously trying to explain the tao, you find that the tao is perfectly capable of explaining itself, through you

miles davis said, “man, sometimes it takes a really long time to sound like yourself”. part of this is that all learning begins with imitation. everything is a remix. we mimic, experiment, distort, modify, switch, invert, twist, extend, expand, contract, and we feel for resonance

sometimes the best way to close the tabs is to open so many of them that the whole thing crashes. amuses me that I never hear anybody suggest this. maybe it seems like an irresponsible suggestion. it’s certainly what worked best for me

"be yourself" is a very rare instance in which introducing a double negative actually makes it make more sense:

be not not-yourself https://t.co/PBwtkLL6h8

— Visa ✈️ NYC (Feb22–Mar13) (@visakanv) October 5, 2022