I have two:
Way back when I was 16, I worked as a host at a busy restaurant, I would get really stressed when we had a long line at the door (the wait would easily get up to 1 hour on weekends), and I just started repeating, "you can only do what you can do, you can't do any more". As someone who has always really struggled with the need to please everyone all the time, it's really helpful when I'm running busy events (I work as an events manager now) or when anything is approaching FUBAR because of things beyond my control.
On a broader, life-changes perspective, I always loved a quote from The Riches (said by the actor now known as Suzy Eddie Izzard),
"Life's a river kid, you gotta go where it takes you."
Its helped a very risk-adverse me take some huge leaps and I've not regretted any of them.
I get a lot of intrusive, negative, catastrophising thoughts late at night. Worrying about things I would never worry about during daylight.
I always try to tell myself: don’t think about this stuff right now, it’s not helpful. Put it aside and if it still feels important in the morning then you can do something about it. Fixating on it right now serves no useful purpose.
Well not all the time, but a lot more of the time. Here’s a philosophical question. Do you think being on a holiday is easier than having to go to work? Why would not being on a permanent holiday be easier? Do extremely rich retired people look like they’re having a hard time aside from physical decline?
We have those problems too. We have to worry about money at the same time.
If you were rich:
Relationship issues> the best counseling, less time working, more holidays, de-stress any number of other ways to make solving those issues easier.
Family member dies> stop working for a period of time (if you even choose to work) spend time with family, pay for funeral for a nice send off, pay to have cleaners and meals cooked for the house of the deceased to ease their burden. Pay for people to fly or take time off work so they can spend time with family.
Diarrhea> fancy toilet and bidet.
The idea life is not easier with money is a lie. We know this because everyone who has it will do everything they can to keep it and get more. The difference is the more money you have, the more problems your brain has to manufacture. Not knowing which Bentley to buy or feeling like your too busy while you have the power at any moment to pay to have other people do a lot of those things aren’t real problems because you have the resource to solve them. When you’re poor your problems are more real. Not having enough food or worrying about rent or paying to medical costs are real problems.
This is really close to what I do as well. If I’m overwhelmed, I think to myself, “Just start with one small thing. Then do another small thing. Eventually, lots of small things add up to a large thing. Won’t get anywhere doing nothing and worrying about how much I have to do.”
When I was in college I had a therapist. I was telling him how I wasn’t sure if I was being perfectly efficient about how I was going about things, that I was wasting time and energy in my approach.
His advice was just to focus on doing something rather than nothing, without trying to optimize it.
Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive.
YMMV but to me it’s a comforting thought that, in the very end, nothing you do actually matters. From the most insignificant pauper to Musk, eventually we all die, rot, fade away and are forgotten.
That may be sad, but it liberates you in this moment. It does for me somewhat, anyway.
Hey I just want to say that in my own life, I had a rough upbringing. Lots and lots and lots of emotional abuse, and it wrapped me in a cocoon of inhibition. I was terrified of taking on shame, so I didn’t want to do anything.
The perspective you’re referring to did indeed help me escape the cocoon of fear, to allow me to try things that I was afraid could possibly go wrong.
I took it pretty far. I did intense zen training for about three years, and about nine years in total. I pursued “no self” pretty hard, and it was helpful.
However, at a certain point I had to switch polarity in order to progress. At a certain point I had freed myself of the initial terror of action, but it wasn’t working. The next step, which took me beyond that place, was to reverse that orientation and find things that really did matter.
Not saying you’re wrong. Just saying be prepared to switch vehicles at a certain point. As the buddha said: When you get to the other side of the river, leave the boat behind.
And it’s true. We don’t survive the trials of life we just molt into the next version of ourselves.
If a certain transformation is going un-completed because it feels like death, it can be helpful to recognize that it is death. That’s no illusion.
To truly live life to the fullest, one has to sacrifice their self to a future person again and again and again. When you finally get there, it won’t be as the person you are now.
I tried sacrificing myself to a future person once. But the future person had the same feelings, interests, and shortcomings. Then the future person realized herself as being no better than the person who sacrificed herself to her.
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