Uncommon summary

Once you start scaling the physical mountain, you can direct some energy towards the next peak you’ll face: the mental mountain.

Achieving mental mastery starts with honing the ability to concentrate and practice metacognition, which is an awareness of one’s own thought processes. You can cultivate this critical skill through breathwork, such as box breathing or concentration meditation exercises. These practices will enhance brain function by engaging the control centers and calming your mind’s ever-restless default mode.

Having set forth on the physical and mental mountains, you’re now well on your way to becoming uncommon. Let’s get you geared up for the next summit that looms ahead – the emotional mountain.

Emotions are integral to holistic human well-being, serving as a link between our minds and bodies. You may not always be aware of them, but you experience emotions constantly, and they color every one of your thoughts, reactions, and behaviors.

Intuition is a unique form of intelligence that many misunderstand or overlook because it isn’t communicated in words. Unlike our rational, critical thinking, intuition comes to us through images, gut feelings, sensations, and sometimes even sounds and smells. But just because intuition speaks a different language doesn’t mean it isn’t communicating something important. In fact, our intuition contains an abundance of wisdom, and as a result, it’s the next peak of personal development to conquer.

There are two main types of intuition: transrational and inferential. Transrational intuition involves receiving insights from external sources, and seems to defy our conventional understanding of how we come to know things in the physical world. Inferential intuition, on the other hand, is the more commonly accepted means of acquiring information – drawn from our life experiences and training – and acts as a mental map we refer to when we encounter similar scenarios.

Achieving spiritual fulfillment requires aligning your heart and mind in every action, a concept the Japanese call kokoro. This alignment signifies a unified approach to life where inner thoughts and outward actions play together in concert.

Now is a great time to revisit your primary purpose, or svadharma, which will remain constant even as your specific duties change. If you need a little more clarity or would like to double down even further, consider the Japanese ikigai framework. Picture four overlapping circles – one representing what you love doing, one representing what you’re good at doing, another representing what the world needs doing, and the last representing what you can be paid for doing. The intersection at the center of these overlapping circles is what the Japanese believe reveals your ikigai.