And thank whatever force within you that knows there’s something bigger for you—the one that’s pushing you to be comfortable with less.
6 Pfeffer, Jeffrey. The Knowing-Doing Gap: How Smart Companies Turn Knowledge Into Action.
2000. Harvard Business School Press.
13
101 THINGS
more worth
THINKING
about than
WHATEVER’S
CONSUMING YOU
01. The way it will feel to have the life you want. The place you’ll live, the clothes you will wear, what you will buy at the supermarket, how much money you’ll save, what work you’ll be most proud to have done. What you’ll do with your weekends, what color your sheets will be, what you’ll take photos of.
02. The parts of yourself you need to work on, not because someone else doesn’t love them, but because you don’t.
03. The fact that sometimes, the ultimate expression of self-love is admitting you don’t like yourself and coming up with steps to change the things that you know you can and will do better.
04. A list of things that turned out to be very right for you, and what similar feeling accompanied each of them.
05. The way you will quantify this year. How many books you want to say you’ve read, how many projects you’ve completed, how many connections with friends and family you fostered or rekindled, how you spent your days.
06. The things in the past that you thought you’d never get over, and how insignificant they seem today.
07. What you will create today, what food you will eat, and who you will connect with. (These are the only things you carry with you.) 08. How you learn best, and how you could possibly integrate that form of comprehension into your life more often (do things that are more
visual, or listen better, try to experiment more often, and so on).
09. The fact that you do not need to be exceptionally beautiful or talented or successful to experience the things that make life profound: love, knowledge, connection, community, and so on.
10. The cosmos, and how despite being insignificant specks, we are all essential to the core patchwork that makes up humanity, and that without any single one of us, nothing would exist as it is right now.
11. The proper conjugations for a language you could stand to speak conversationally.
12. The people you smiled at on the street this morning, the people whom you text regularly, the family you could stand to visit more—
all the little bits of genuine human connection that you overlook because they’ve become givens.
13. How you will remember this time in your life 20 years from now.
What you will wish you had done or stopped doing, what you overlooked, what little things you didn’t realize you should have appreciated.
14. How few of your days you really remember.
15. How you likely won’t remember this particular day 20 years from now.
16. Everything you honestly didn’t like about the person you’re no longer with, now that you’re not emotionally obligated to lie to yourself about them.
17. A list of all the things you’ve done for yourself recently.
18. Little ways you can improve your quality of day-to-day life, such as consolidating debt, or learning to cook an easy signature meal, or cleaning out your closet.
19. The patterns in your failed relationships, and what degree of fault you can rightfully hand yourself.
20. What you subconsciously love about the “problems” you struggle to get over. Nobody holds onto something unless they think it does something for them (usually keeps them “safe”).
21. The idea that perhaps the current problem in your life is not the problem, but that your perception is skewed, or you aren’t thinking of solutions as much as you are focusing on your discomfort.
22. The ways you have sincerely failed, and how you can commit yourself to doing better, not only for yourself but for the people who love and rely on you.
23. The ways in which your current situation—though perhaps unplanned or unwanted—could be the path to the place you’ve actually always wanted to be, if only you’d begin to think of it that way.
24. Your mortality.
25. How you can more actively take advantage and appreciate the things that are in front of you while you still have them.
26. What your life looks like to other people. Not because you should value this more than you value your own feelings, but because perspective is important.
27. What you have already accomplished in your life.
28. What you want to be defined by when all is said and done. What kind of person you want to be known as. (Kind? Intelligent?
