074 • The body always keeps the score

Welcome back, I’ve not been taking particularly good care of myself recently. The signals that I’m not quite getting enough quality sleep, and that I’m carrying some stress around with me, are showing through and it’s come to the point where I’ve consciously decided to turn things around. The body keeps the score. No matter what you’re holding in your head, how you feel about yourself and the work you’re doing or what food you’re putting in your body, you get a lagging indicator of how well you’ve been living just by paying attention to your body’s signals. ...

November 17, 2024 · 3 min · Theo Stowell

073 • The overlooked power of flinching forward

Recently I’ve found myself taking more inspiration from one of the most influential books that I’ve ever read - The Flinch by Julien Smith. Even though I read it for the first time a year and a half ago, the book’s main lesson is still seared into my mind… Flinch forward. What this means is to simply accelerate when you notice a feeling of resistance that holds you back from doing something that you know will be good. ...

November 9, 2024 · 5 min · Theo Stowell

072 • The best way to spend time in new cities

This year I’ve been travelling a lot more than I have done in the past. I’ve been to London twice, Edinburgh and also a selection of places in Europe, from Lisbon to Porto, and a selection of cities in Belgium and Italy. This means I’ve had to get a little more used to spending time in places that I’m not used to. It’s not as easy as you might think either. Go wrong and you end up spending too much money and not feeling the impact or resonating with where you’re spending time. ...

October 28, 2024 · 6 min · Theo Stowell

071 • View negatives in a new light to turn them into positives

My first source of online income was royalties from the Medium articles I was writing a year and a half ago for my growing audience. And it did well. Really well. In my first full paid month on the platform I earned $600, and in the second the story was similar, where I scored $680. As a student who was only writing when I found the spare time, I was laughing. ...

October 22, 2024 · 3 min · Theo Stowell

070 • Walking very far + turning twenty-one

The other day I walked from Sheffield to Manchester with my university housemate. I’m not kidding. Here’s the route… But how did this come about? Having talked about it since March, we were wondering whether a walk like this was possible and how hard it was going to be. The involved housemate finished his summer internship a week before the university year was going to start and walked into my room that Monday saying ‘Bro, we need a side quest…’. I mentioned that we had been talking about doing this for the longest time and we fired each other up until train tickets home from Manchester were booked for the coming Wednesday. ...

October 15, 2024 · 4 min · Theo Stowell

069 • Revealing the reason behind the name Fundamentalised

Since around the start of 2022, I’ve made daily notes/journaled in some capacity, recording the happenings and feelings of my life as it happens. And the other day I looked through some of these journals, especially the ones made around a year ago and earlier. What I came across surprised me. Although I feel as though life has progressed in lots of different ways in the last year, the problems that I was coming across in my journal were very similar at their core to the ones I still experience. ...

October 8, 2024 · 3 min · Theo Stowell

Commandments for a better life

Originally, this note was going to be completely private. I started writing these commandments with no intention of sharing but the further in I got, the more I realised the piece looked like Twenty observations from 20 years on Earth, a piece I published almost exactly a year ago (I’m turning 21 on Thursday). So I thought I’d tidy this list up a bit. There’s no harm in making it easier to consume for the reader and in turn easier for me to refer to. ...

October 8, 2024 · 4 min · Theo Stowell

068 • Becoming more 'stylish'

One of the short pieces of writing that has resonated most with me is ‘Style is consistent constraint’ by Steph Ango, the CEO of Obsidian (convenient, I know, seeing as I do all my writing in that app). The first time I read it, the piece put into words something that I understood was true but could never quite cross the line from simply feeling to having a set description for. ...

September 28, 2024 · 3 min · Theo Stowell

067 • In the pursuit of simplicity and reduced stress

Hello again, This week’s issue is going to be about the evident decision to move my newsletter writing back to Substack. Here’s the lowdown on the change… This is intended to be for the foreseeable future - I give a bit more detail on what I picture as a goal for the future later in the issue I’m going to take videos down from YouTube and hold them here on Substack in each week’s issue instead This is where I’m going to post personal pieces and newsletter issues from now on, rather than the Fundamentalised website The newsletters will look and read the same as they always do and I won’t send emails for new essays, meaning I’ve still got work to share in the ‘What I’ve written this week…’ section that you haven’t seen yet The fundamentalised.com domain now points to this publication rather than the old website, so original links should still work. I’ll go through all the issues and change the ones that need updating though. The reason for doing this right now is because Fundamentalised is something that doesn’t earn me money - it’s really just for me to write because I love writing. ...

September 22, 2024 · 3 min · Theo Stowell

066 • Perfection shouldn't be the goal

I’ve been building and launching PARAZETTEL V3 for the whole of this week and this has come with little problems and issues that I have to be on my toes to fix. But there’s no worry about there, as I’m not aiming for a perfect launch - I’m aiming for a launch that gets the product to people to help them work on their own things. And as of today, two out of three days in, it’s done just that. ...

September 15, 2024 · 2 min · Theo Stowell