How Do You Measure Your Life? by Mark Manson. As humans, we’re wired for comparison. It’s an inevitable facet of our being. We are constantly trying to gauge how we measure up to those around us. Comparison and the drive for status are innate parts of our nature and that’s unlikely to change anytime soon. But what we can change is the basis of those comparisons. What yardstick are we using? We may not be able to stop measuring ourselves against others, but we can decide which yardstick we use to measure. It’s all in how you choose to measure success. I don’t measure my success by displays of monetary wealth. I prefer to measure it based on social and global impact. Is that totally self-serving and biased? Absolutely. And that’s the point: You get to choose how you measure success.
No, You Can’t Have It All by Mark Manson. Doing anything truly great requires some sort of inherent sacrifice that may or may not be immediately obvious. You know, like missing a series of your daughter’s birthdays.
Modern society multiplies our opportunities. Therefore, modern society also multiplies our opportunity costs, making it costlier and more difficult to commit all of our time and energy to any one thing without feeling some form of remorse or regret.
Every person who decides to sacrifice their dating life to advance their career is now bombarded constantly by the rambunctious sex lives of their friends and strangers. Every person who sacrifices their career prospects to dedicate more time and energy to their family is now bombarded with the material successes of the most exceptional people around them at all times. Every person who decides to take a thankless but necessary role in society is now constantly drowned in inane stories of the famous and beautiful.
This is the typical work/life balance, woe-is-me complaint we always hear: “I have all of these things I want to do and not enough time.” What if the solution is simply accepting our bounded potential, our unfortunate tendency as humans to inhabit only one place in space and time. What if we recognize our life’s inevitable limitations and then prioritize what we care about based on those limitations?
The Myth of Making It (longreads.com). That lack of internal contentment, I think, is the problem. It’s what makes grasping at outside validation so fruitless. An already mythical idea, “making it” becomes ever more elusive when measured externally — by accolades, wealth, any sort of acquisition. It becomes as fungible as those things are, whether according to your own circumstances or to the world’s. You’re either competing with yourself to outdo what you’ve already achieved, or you’re competing with someone else for a bigger share of some pie (and there’s always someone else).
The Most Successful People Are The Ones You’ve Never Heard Of (And Why They Want It That Way) by Ryan Holiday. There is a big difference between having enough that all your needs are met and being a billionaire. Between being Taylor Swift, the global superstar, and Sia. And those differences are not all good. In fact, many of them are objectively not good. The next time you feel screwed that you haven’t gotten your big break, or watch as some potential life-changing opportunity to level up escapes your grasp, ask yourself if that’s really the case. Is it really bad luck? Or has Fortune done you a kindness?
The Disease of More by Mark Manson. The trick is that our brain tells us, “You know, if I could just have a little bit more, I’d finally get to 10 and stay there.” Most of us live most of our lives this way. Constantly chasing our imagined 10. Nobody is fully happy all the time. But similarly, nobody is fully unhappy all the time either. It seems that humans, regardless of our external circumstances, live in a constant state of mild-but-not-fully-satisfying happiness. Put another way, things are pretty much always fine. But they could also always be better.
What if All I Want is a Mediocre Life? (nosidebar.com). What if I all I want is a small, slow, simple life? What if I am most happy in the space of in between. Where calm lives. What if I am mediocre and choose to be at peace with that?…What if I embrace my limitations and stop railing against them. Make peace with who I am and what I need and honor your right to do the same. Accept that all I really want is a small, slow, simple life. A mediocre life. A beautiful, quiet, gentle life.
In Defense of Being Average by Mark Manson. We all have our own strengths and weaknesses. But the fact is, most of us are pretty average at most things we do. Even if you’re truly exceptional at one thing — say math, or jump rope, or making money off the black gun market — chances are you’re pretty average or below average at most other things. That’s just the nature of life. To become truly great at something, you have to dedicate time and energy to it. And because we all have limited time and energy, few of us ever become truly exceptional at more than one thing, if anything at all…Which leads to an important point: that mediocrity, as a goal, sucks. But mediocrity, as a result, is OK. Few of us get this. And fewer of us accept it.
How to Be Content in Life : Three Paradoxes by Mark Manson. Below are three sets of conflicting needs that everyone experiences throughout their lives. We experience these conflicting needs as sorts of paradoxes—unresolvable contradictions in our own motivations that feel impossible to win. Instead of getting everything we want, we ping back and forth, sacrificing one need for the other and vice-versa, never fully satisfied, always full of anxiety and angst.
- The Paradox of Control: Stability vs Change. Obviously, some people will desire more stability than change and others will desire more change than stability—after all, everyone’s thermostats are set to different temperatures. So, the correct amount of self-discipline for you might be different from me and vice-versa. But the principle remains: we achieve both stability and change through steady, controlled discipline.
- The Paradox of Choice: Commitment versus Freedom. Our commitments, when made out of insecurity and fear, shrink ourselves. When I commit to binge-watching 72 episodes of The Office, I’m not benefiting from greater freedom. I am arbitrarily limiting myself. Whereas if I commit to writing 72 episodes of a comedy show, I am expanding myself from my commitment, opening myself up to greater freedoms provided by my efforts.
- The Paradox of Relationships: Individuality vs Conformity. We resolve the paradox of relationships through acceptance—both the acceptance of oneself (I will be different and yet, I will also be the same) as well as the acceptance of others (they will be different and yet, they will also be the same). It’s the ability to recognize yourself both as an individual and as someone who conforms to their relationships without identifying too much with either one.
How Life Became an Endless, Terrible Competition (theatlantic.com). Meritocracy traps entire generations inside demeaning fears and inauthentic ambitions: always hungry but never finding, or even knowing, the right food.