The other day I was reading Seth Godin’s brilliant manifesto-book The Icarus Deception.

btw, for curious souls: I was actually standing on one leg while reading. Laughing. Yep. That’s like me. 🤓

Why? Well, Phil Maffetone says balancing on one leg is a phenomenal way to increase your foot strength which is the often-overlooked foundation of endurance. And, as we’ve discussed, I’m ALL IN on seeing what the optimus athlētē version of me looks like AND I know it’s all about marginal gains and it’s just fun and funny for me. So… That’s why I was standing on one leg while reading. 🤓

Anyway…

That’s not the point of this +1.

This is: I’m reading Seth’s book and getting my soul-wings filled with oxygen when I come across a word I wanted to really understand: artifice. As in: “When we strip away self-doubt and artifice, when we embrace initiative and art, we are left with kamiwaza.”

We’ll come back to what “kamiwaza” means tomorrow. For now, a little pop vocab quiz: Do you know the meaning of the word “artifice”? I didn’t.

Enter: A short walk from my desk to the bookshelf on which I have my old-school 2,084-page piece of art: my American Heritage Dictionary. I open it up near the beginning. I look at the upper right corner of the page to see how close I am to “artifice” and what word did I open it up to? “Bliss.”

I literally laughed to myself and said, “No way. Bliss? Really? Awesome.”

Then I looked up the definition of bliss just for fun: “Extreme happiness; ecstasy.” (btw: I actually prefer my Apple Dictionary’s definition: “perfect happiness; great joy”; although, I must say that I strongly disagree with their sample word usage: “a state of spiritual blessedness, typically reached after death.” ← Why in the world would we wait for AFTER death to experience bliss? Hah. That’s another discussion.)

OK. Back to our hunt for the meaning of “artifice.”

Here it is: Artifice means “deception or trickery.” (Apple says: “clever or cunning devices or expedients, especially as used to trick or deceive others.”)

Fascinating.

All of which leads us to Today’s +1.

I just love the beautiful symmetry of those two words. Want bliss? Drop the artifice.

Be you. All of you.

Today.

(Standing on one foot while reading or waiting in line at the grocery store or any other random time is, of course, optional. 🤓)

Artifice + Bliss #563

Remove One to Get the Other

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This +1 Inspired by:

The Icarus Deception

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This +1 Inspired by:

The Icarus Deception