Guess what?

This week, I timidly spoke with many people about The People's Garden, and I got a vast diversity of reactions. I know that I am on the right path because good ideas are not relatable to everyone. But I could lose it in a snap if I pampered myself with the sweetness of the beautiful words they spend on me.

That's why this issue is about being a fool and building something valuable.

Embrace bad reputations, like saints and geniuses.

A good reputation is neither for learners, geniuses, or saints. A good reputation creates the inevitable muscle of thinking to be the saver, to elevate oneself as a magister.

My grandmother used to call me "Golden Pebble", and I have always been The Perfect Son. High school grades, active social life but without any excess, hard work, waking up early, decent sports results. I graduated in engineering, and then I joined the family business.

Amazing, right?

What are the burdens of the Trustworthy Charlie in his Chocolate Factory? Every deviation from the public image that people create about you is highlighted in pink.

The first time we do a cold shower, you would scream until we irritate your bronchi. After some buckets of water (not some, a long streak of), we get used to it.

What if failure was the real reward? Living is a matter of learning, and learning requires the humility of making mistakes. However, our society rewards success, not failure. What if the best life is hidden behind those sad moments, that anger brought by shame, when we would like to slam someone with all the kinematics of our shoulder, but we finish biting our nails?

Living is learning, a superpower I embrace as a foundational principle: it's a 3-steps process: Trying, Making Mistakes, and Learning. And trying again, in a loop.

Action is the engine of learning, but Deliberate Practice is the key fuel. The brain evolves to accommodate the learning you do. 

The first times are hard. However, repetition of the same learning process evolves the structure of cells so that it eventually becomes automated and wasteless to perform. This low energy consumption is the structure that creates new habits.

But we must pass from the narrow fork where a hidden path uncovers the path to new skills. We try, and we will inevitably make mistakes.  Something happens that diverges from expectations. There, we can learn and build new muscles. Then we try again. New deviation, we learn. 

Wax on, Wax off. In Artial Marts is defined as Shu-Ha-Ri.

Why is it worth it to make mistakes? It prunes you. And it is the only way that brings you nearer to the Whole and allows you to create new things. Learning is the only way I know to live.

Remember: making mistakes is hard. People will bring their judging eyes into the playfield and shred you with their gardening shears.

When we have an excellent reputation to defend, we give up learning. Avoid living with your excellence covering our eyes; embrace humility, and we will learn again. If learning is the only way to live, it's better to be treated as a fool than a winner.

New blossoms

Here are some quick updates from me:

• In the last weeks, I have related daily action to a great life plan. It is fuzzy at the moment, but ever since, I have felt a new determination emerging in my heart.
• I suffered from a herpes virus that affected my mouth, and I was not capable of speaking for some days. That's why I only published this newsletter (also on my website); without conversations and feedback, I can't refine my ideas.
• On Sunday, we had our patronal feast, Santi Lucchese e Bonadonna. My town, Poggibonsi, sleeps on a valley between many hills, and over one of them, there is the basilica with the remains of Blessed Lucchese. All the town comes to venerate him, and it's an opportunity to meet people you haven't seen for a long time. Accidentally, our house is on a hill overlooking the basilica, and for the party, we invite our friends to see the majestic display of fireworks. In the beginning, there were about ten of us, but then the children were born, and this year we had 40 guests! It was wonderful.

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Something worth sharing from my weekly readings:

• "The productivity world is oriented around coffee mode because it's easy to define, easy to measure, and therefore, easier to write about. Meanwhile, beer mode is filled with surprises that are impossible to predict." David Perell is an incredible online writer; he hosts the Write of Passage school I'm into. Here he wrote about how important productivity that comes from random, apparently useless moments: https://perell.com/note/open-mode-and-closed-mode/ ​
• "True saints are the perfect children of the Gospel. Not supermen, but weak and defenseless. They are often ridiculed, and the world rejects or ridicules them. The saint does not play strong. The saint is often afraid of suffering and "carries his cross with weakness", as Saint Teresa of the Child Jesus says." - The idea behind this week's issue comes from one of the books I appreciate the most, The Way of Imperfection: Holiness for the Poor by André Daigneault, who taught me how harsh and important is to pursue the way down.

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That's it!

Tell me if something stood out to you.

I'm curious about everything, for example:

• good leadership
• beautiful things that happened
• healthy productivity tricks
• parenting suggestions
• discoveries that would change the world
• unknown facts about you that everyone should know about

See you next week,

Matteo