Welcome to Doug’s Newsletter. Every Thursday, I share a theme from my journey to provide you insight along your spiritual path.

Today’s Setlist

🎩 One Theme → Nature Math

😄 Funny Business → 48 is a tough number

📊 Community Poll → Floss habits

🎩 One Theme: Nature Math

I’ve always loved math.

When I entered public school in 4th grade, I was introduced to the highly competitive and exciting sport of “Around The World”.

In Around The World, one student—The Champion—stands next to the desk of a seated student. The teacher counts down the reveal of a giant multiplication flashcard. If the seated student beats The Champion, they become The Champion, and take on the student at the next desk.

There were no higher stakes before recess.

My runs around the classroom, reminiscent of Roger Federer in his prime, might have made some enemies—like my fiercest competitor, Jared L.—but they deepened my love for math.

As I've grown older, I've delved deeper into the inward journey, exploring our shared connection with All Things. As a result, I’ve become fascinated with a new type of math.

Nature Math!

Beyond graphing my own observations (like The Line Of Fuck It), my favorite Nature Maths include:

The Flower of Life is a geometric pattern composed of multiple, evenly-spaced, overlapping circles arranged to form a flower-like shape with a sixfold symmetry, resembling a hexagon. It is a symbol of sacred geometry that is said to contain ancient, religious value, representing the fundamental forms of space and time. In nature, this pattern is significant as it is thought to illustrate the interconnectedness of life and the fundamental symmetry in the universe.

The Fibonacci sequence is a series of numbers where each number is the sum of the two preceding ones, usually starting with 0 and 1. It is significant in nature as it appears in various biological settings, such as the branching of trees, the arrangement of leaves on a stem, the spirals of shells & galaxies, and the growth patterns of flowers, reflecting an underlying mathematical order in the natural world.

Chladni figures are patterns that emerge on a solid surface when it vibrates in resonance, typically seen when a plate covered with fine sand is subjected to specific frequencies of sound waves. These figures illustrate the nodal regions of the vibrations, where no movement occurs, and the sand collects along these nodes, creating intricate patterns. They are significant for demonstrating the physical principles of sound and vibration, showing how sound waves can organize matter into distinct patterns. Check this out in action, it’s awesome.

So I’ve been wondering…if math is inherent in nature — maybe it IS nature — can changing my math change my nature?

An opportunity for exploration…

If I can spend as much attention on gratitude as I spend on trying to create change, that would be 50%.

50% attention on gratitude for all that is, and 50% attention on change for all that could be. Seems fair, right? Also seems easy…yet we all know it isn’t.

Self assessing, I estimate myself to be around the 2% mark for attention devoted to gratitude. Don’t get me wrong, I’m thrilled with this number!

I was at 1% until quite recently. Moving from 1% to 2% has done incredible things for my life, completely altering my nature of being and how I show up. It’s my greatest accomplishment in life, and that is a lie because my greatest accomplishment in life was winning the New Yorker Caption Contest. So, second greatest.

My being around 2% is a function of how much time I spend trying to make things different. Usually not out of pain in the present, but excitement and desire for the future. I expect many people are below 5% with me.

The good news is, there are many simple ways we can even the scales.

💭 Your invitation to contemplate: Cultivating 1% More Gratitude

Here are the free tools and practices that have helped me most:

• The WeCroak App: Offers five daily reminders of mortality. I've shared its significance for me in a prior post.

• The Triple Flame App: Provides daily three-minute contemplation reminders, with options for silent, guided, or background music.

• A Simple Post-it Note: Sometimes, the best reminders are the ones we can stick in our habitual sight lines, visible tokens of what we're thankful for or reminders to bring in gratitude.

• Gratitude Scrapbook: Your own visual collection of grateful moments that you continuously build over time, as they happen. Here are my 3 favorite ways to start your scrapbook.

• Old-Fashioned Pause: Slowing down, simple as that! I also find sharing moments of gratitude, especially with loved ones before meals, to be wonderful.

As you navigate your day, I invite you to ponder: What small step can I take today to tip my scales toward gratitude?

😄 Funny Business

📊 Community Poll

Results for last week’s question: How do you try to remind future you to do something?

The two best ways to do it. I recommend tying them together: Write them down, then set a reminder (i.e. time in your calendar) each week to review them. I wrote about this process of having one inbox.

On to this week’s question…

“Don’t explain your philosophy. Embody it.” - Epictetusith