https://andresruizc.github.io/andresr/ Recent content on Andres Blog Hugo -- gohugo.io en-us Fri, 01 Nov 2024 09:00:00 +0100 https://andresruizc.github.io/andresr/posts/a-sense-of-urgency/ Fri, 01 Nov 2024 09:00:00 +0100 https://andresruizc.github.io/andresr/posts/a-sense-of-urgency/ We’ve all been there. Standing at the edge of our comfort zone, heart pounding, your dreams so close. Maybe it’s that book you’ve always talked about writing, or the marathon you’ve been putting off, or that ticket to a far-off place with a name you can barely pronounce. You can see it, feel it, almost taste it. But when it’s time to turn that vision into reality, something strange happens. We freeze. https://andresruizc.github.io/andresr/posts/aim-high/ Mon, 01 Jan 2024 09:00:00 +0100 https://andresruizc.github.io/andresr/posts/aim-high/ “Ideas are like fish. If you want to catch small fish, you can stay in the shallow water. But if you want to catch the big fish, you have to go deeper. In the deep, the fish are more powerful and pure. They are giant and abstract. And they are very beautiful. ~David Lynch The goals we set for ourselves are like fish. Do we choose a small fish or a big one? https://andresruizc.github.io/andresr/posts/control-your-emotions/ Mon, 01 Jan 2024 07:00:00 +0100 https://andresruizc.github.io/andresr/posts/control-your-emotions/ There it was. The blank page. My fingers over the keyboard, frozen by an invisible force that seemed to mock my every attempt at creativity. Words, usually flowing like a gentle stream of through my fingertips, had become strangers in the night – elusive, distant, and maddeningly out of reach. This wasn’t writer’s block. No. This was war: a daily battle against the twin demons of frustration and self-doubt. “Maybe I’m just not good enough. https://andresruizc.github.io/andresr/posts/questions/ Mon, 01 Jan 2024 06:00:00 +0100 https://andresruizc.github.io/andresr/posts/questions/ In the science fiction saga The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, a group of space explorers search for the answer to the meaning of life by creating a supercomputer. After seven million years of work, the supercomputer comes up with the answer: 42. To everyone’s astonishment, the computer replies: “That’s definitely the answer. I think the problem, to be honest, is that you didn’t really know what the question was”. https://andresruizc.github.io/andresr/posts/take-a-step-back/ Mon, 01 Jan 2024 05:00:00 +0100 https://andresruizc.github.io/andresr/posts/take-a-step-back/ The lake was still, its surface a mirror reflecting the cloudy sky above. A young man sat in a boat, his muscles tense with frustration. This was Bruce Lee, the martial arts prodigy known as “Never Sit Still,” and he was doing something that felt utterly foreign to him: nothing. But this moment of forced inaction would lead to an epiphany that would change the course of his life and redefine martial arts forever. https://andresruizc.github.io/andresr/posts/the-power-of-incentives/ Mon, 01 Jan 2024 04:00:00 +0100 https://andresruizc.github.io/andresr/posts/the-power-of-incentives/ Picture this: It’s the 19th century, and the British government has a problem. They’re shipping prisoners to Australia, but only 40% are surviving the journey. Humanitarian groups propose improvements, the government tries various solutions, but nothing works. The survival rate remains stubbornly at 40%. Enter Edwin Chadwick, a visionary economist with a different perspective. He realizes the problem isn’t the voyage conditions - it’s the crew’s behavior. Why? Because captains were paid for each prisoner shipped from England. https://andresruizc.github.io/andresr/posts/aim-to-be-a-zero/ Mon, 01 Jan 2024 03:00:00 +0100 https://andresruizc.github.io/andresr/posts/aim-to-be-a-zero/ Nelson Mandela spent his life fighting to overthrow apartheid and bring democracy to South Africa, where all South Africans, regardless of their social status or color, would be allowed to vote. He was imprisoned for 27 years. He endured hard labor, severe isolation and very basic living conditions. He had to overcome internal conflicts within his political movement, whose members had doubts about the best course of action for the overthrow of apartheid. https://andresruizc.github.io/andresr/posts/who-are-you-becoming/ Mon, 01 Jan 2024 02:30:00 +0100 https://andresruizc.github.io/andresr/posts/who-are-you-becoming/ Hundreds of millions of people were watching television. It has been an intense decade of relentless work, without rest. Expectation was at an all-time high. Too much was at stake. It was 20 July 1969, and two American astronauts were about to become the first humans to set foot on the moon. Eight years earlier, President Kennedy had inspired an entire nation by announcing his goal of putting a man on the moon before the end of the decade. https://andresruizc.github.io/andresr/posts/the-choice-of-hercules/ Mon, 01 Jan 2024 02:00:00 +0100 https://andresruizc.github.io/andresr/posts/the-choice-of-hercules/ This article is about the story of The Choice of Hercules’, which is a metaphor for the ability we all have to make choices and the consequences of those choices. The version of The Choice of Hercules presented here is an excerpt from Donald Robertson’s book How to Think Like a Roman Emperor. One day, as a young man, Hercules was walking along an unfamiliar path when he came upon a fork in the road, where he sat down and began contemplating his future. https://andresruizc.github.io/andresr/posts/create_future/ Sat, 18 Nov 2023 16:23:18 +0100 https://andresruizc.github.io/andresr/posts/create_future/ SPOILER ALERT: This blogpost is based on the book Lessons In Chemistry and contains spoilers. Elizabeth Zott hated being in class, sitting at a desk listening to monotonous teachers talking about boring subjects. It wasn’t that she didn’t enjoy learning. She loved it. But all the learning there was based on memorisation, and Elizabeth liked creativity. Elizabeth also disliked her classmates who did not share her hobbies. And all this made her suffer. https://andresruizc.github.io/andresr/posts/i_wish-you_bad_luck/ Tue, 03 Oct 2023 22:23:18 +0100 https://andresruizc.github.io/andresr/posts/i_wish-you_bad_luck/ This is a excerpt from the graduation speech that John Roberts, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, delivered at his son’s high school in Cardigan on 3 June 2017: From time to time in the years to come, I hope you will be treated unfairly, so that you will come to know the value of justice. I hope that you will suffer betrayal because that will teach you the importance of loyalty. https://andresruizc.github.io/andresr/posts/edith_4/ Sat, 27 May 2023 16:23:18 +0100 https://andresruizc.github.io/andresr/posts/edith_4/ Edith and her sister Magda achieved what seemed impossible: to get out of Auschwitz alive. They survived the most lethal Nazi concentration and extermination camp, where nearly one million people died. But they were not free. Not yet. When Nazi Germany was on the verge of defeat, the SS organized “death marches”, forced evacuations of concentration camps over long distances under guard and extremely harsh conditions. Edith and Magda were moved to other concentration camps like Mauthausen, where prisoners were made to hack and carry granite to construct Hitler’s desired new capital for Germany. https://andresruizc.github.io/andresr/posts/edith_3/ Sun, 16 Apr 2023 18:23:18 +0100 https://andresruizc.github.io/andresr/posts/edith_3/ Right after arriving at Auschwitz, Edith and her mother and sister were waiting in the selection line. They didn’t know it, but this would be their last moment together. While Edith and her sister Magda were sent to the left, their mother was sent to the right. When Edith, just sixteen, entered the camp and asked where her mother was, one of the women dressed in striped dresses pointed to the smoke rising up from one of the chimneys in the distance. https://andresruizc.github.io/andresr/posts/edith_2/ Sun, 16 Apr 2023 17:23:18 +0100 https://andresruizc.github.io/andresr/posts/edith_2/ When I started university, I met a girl. She was funny, pretty, and kind, and I completely fell in love with her. It was an amazing feeling. The problem was that I was very shy and introverted, and sometimes connecting with others wasn’t easy. Because I didn’t have confidence in myself, and I was the only one who seemed to have this issue, I assumed that something was wrong with me. https://andresruizc.github.io/andresr/posts/edith_1/ Sun, 16 Apr 2023 13:23:18 +0100 https://andresruizc.github.io/andresr/posts/edith_1/ Edith Eger is a hero of mine. She was born in 1927 and grew up in Nazi-occupied Europe. When she was sixteen, Edith and her family were sent to Auschwitz. She and her sister Magda survived, but their parents and nearly everyone she loved did not. When the Nazi concentration camps were liberated, she was discovered under a pile of dead bodies. Edith was severely malnourished, and had a broken back, pneumonia, and typhoid fever, among others. https://andresruizc.github.io/andresr/posts/shackleton/ Tue, 14 Feb 2023 21:23:18 +0100 https://andresruizc.github.io/andresr/posts/shackleton/ In 1914, Ernest Shackleton chose one of the most audacious goals at that time: make the first land crossing of the Antarctic continent. It was inconceivable that a group of people could do that. And they failed, but are not remembered as a failure—quite the opposite. Just a couple of months after their departure, Shackleton’s trip, the Endurance, became trapped in ice and eventually sank. They spent several months in the harsh Antarctic, isolated from human civilization, trying to survive under extreme conditions with temperatures reaching minus 40º and winds reaching up to 200 km/h. https://andresruizc.github.io/andresr/posts/cold_showers/ Mon, 13 Feb 2023 22:23:18 +0100 https://andresruizc.github.io/andresr/posts/cold_showers/ Do difficult things every day. Step out of your comfort zone daily because that will callous your mind. Sounds good, so I researched cold showers and discovered they have been shown to have several benefits, including reduced inflammation, reduced stress levels, boosted energy, increased immunity, and enhanced focus, among others. And because I considered them as self-imposed torture, I decided to take cold showers every morning. Then, everything went differently than planned. https://andresruizc.github.io/andresr/posts/charlotte_poem/ Tue, 07 Feb 2023 22:23:18 +0100 https://andresruizc.github.io/andresr/posts/charlotte_poem/ You who are passing by I beg you Do something Learn a dance step Something to justify your existence Something that gives you the right To be dressed in your skin in your body Learn to walk and to laugh Because it would be too senseless After all For many to have died While you live Doing nothing with your life Auschwitz survivor Charlotte https://andresruizc.github.io/andresr/posts/think_negatively/ Sat, 04 Feb 2023 22:23:18 +0100 https://andresruizc.github.io/andresr/posts/think_negatively/ Feeling ready to do something does not mean feeling certain that you’ll succeed, though of course that’s what you are hoping to do. Truly being ready means understanding what could go wrong – and having a plan to deal with it. Chris Hadfield, An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth Eliud Kipchoge is considered the greatest marathon runner of all time. As with the most iconic athletes, the principles and values they embody are far more relevant than their achievements. https://andresruizc.github.io/andresr/quotes/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://andresruizc.github.io/andresr/quotes/ Edith Eger “Our painful experiences aren’t a liability—they’re a gift. They give us perspective and meaning, an opportunity to find our unique purpose and our strength.” “It’s the first time I see that we have a choice: to pay attention to what we’ve lost or to pay attention to what we still have.” “Survivors don’t have time to ask, ‘Why me?’ For survivors, the only relevant question is, ‘What now?’” https://andresruizc.github.io/andresr/about/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://andresruizc.github.io/andresr/about/ This is Andres. dekfksdskdfndkn https://andresruizc.github.io/andresr/archive/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://andresruizc.github.io/andresr/archive/ 2024 01 Nov – The Power of Urgency 01 Jan – Aim high 01 Jan – Embrace discomfort 01 Jan – Ask good questions 01 Jan – Take a step back 01 Jan – The power of incentives 01 Jan – Aim to be a zero 01 Jan – Who are you becoming 01 Jan – The Choice of Hercules 2023 18 Nov – Create your own future 03 Oct – I wish you bad luck by John Roberts https://andresruizc.github.io/andresr/reading_list/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://andresruizc.github.io/andresr/reading_list/ Next Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making by Tony Fadell Outlive: The science and art of longevity by Dr Peter Attia The beginning of infinity by David Deutsch The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron Books read Clear Thinking by Shane Parrish Awaken your genius by Ozan Varol Think Like a Rocket Scientist by Ozan Varol Elon Musk by Walter Issacson Thinking in Bets by Annie Duke Courage is Calling by Ryan Holiday Ego is the Enemy by Ryan Holiday Crea y Divaga by Jeff Bezos Be Useful by Arnold Schwarzennegger Same as Ever: A guide to what never changes by Morgan Housel El arte de la estratagema by Giorgio Nardone Mastery By Robert Greene The science of storytelling by Will Stor The Song of Achiles by Madeline Miller Meditations by Marcus Aurelius When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chödron How to meditate by Pema Chödron Can’t Hurt Me by David Goggins The Gift: 12 lessons to save your life by Edith Eger The Choice: A true story of hope by Edith Eger Atomic Habits by James Clear Be Water, My Friend by Shannon Lee Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl The War of Art by Steven Pressfield The Midnigth Library by Matt Haig How to Think Like a Roman Emperor by Donald Robertson The Obstacle is the Way by Ryan Holiday The Art of a Good Life by William B.