05. If you’re doing something right, results will be instantaneous. If you’re doing something right, the results will take a very long time
to build up and produce an outcome you’re happy with.
06. “Busyness” is a good thing. Being busy is what happens when people are ill equipped to manage their stress. People who actually have a lot to do focus on getting it done simply because they don’t have another choice.
07. There’s a “right time” to create. Or get married, or have a child, or start pursuing the life you feel called to. If you’re looking for an excuse as to why it’s not the right time, you’ll always find one.
08. Adulthood is “hard.” There are lots of things that are challenging and heartbreaking and trying in life, but learning how to perform basic functions is not one of them.
09. Your purpose is something existentially profound. Your purpose is just to be here and to do whatever job you find yourself doing. You don’t have to be consciously changing the world to fulfill it.
10. Everybody can have a job they love if they work hard enough.
Everybody can find a way to enjoy their job—regardless of the inevitable challenges that come with any job—but nobody is entitled to do work that happens to fit precisely within their realm of interest and comfort.
11. You’re not responsible for that which you do unintentionally.
Accidentally hurting someone’s feelings doesn’t really hurt them; time you don’t realize wasting isn’t wasted; money spent on
“necessities” isn’t money spent. Essentially, if you aren’t conscious of the repercussions of something, they don’t count.
12. Your life partner is responsible for making you feel one very specific way. And you use that singular feeling to determine whether or not your relationship is “good” or worthwhile.
13. To accept something, you must be happy about it, or at least okay with it. You can accept your circumstances (acknowledge they are real) while still disliking them strongly. You don’t have to like everything, but if you want to preserve your sanity, you have to accept whatever comes into your life before you can change it.
14. People are ruminating on the embarrassing stuff you did five years ago. They’re busy ruminating on their own stuff the same way you
are. (Are you thinking about things other people did over the years to any significant degree? It’s unlikely.)
15. You must be “right” to be a valid, intelligent human being. Really the most intelligent people are more open to being wrong than anyone (that’s how they learn) but regardless, you do not need to be consistently right or exceedingly smart or stunningly beautiful or anything else to be worthwhile and lovable.
16. You are your struggles. You say, “I am an anxious person” rather than “I sometimes feel anxiety.” You identify with your problems, which is likely a huge reason why you can’t overcome them.
17. You can only be as happy as your circumstances allow. You will only be as happy as you choose to focus on what’s positive, reconcile and problem-solve what’s negative, build the relationships that matter, validate yourself, and develop your mindset. You cannot choose a feeling, but you can always choose what you think about.
Rejecting the idea that you can do so is to submit and doom yourself to a life in which you are never truly happy at all.
60
HOW TO BECOME
the kind of person who
DESERVES
THE LIFE
YOU WANT
We’re conditioned to believe that there is only so much happiness to go around.
Beginning at a young age, we’re almost pitted against one other in the race for superiority. That mindset still seeps into our daily interactions and is certainly a pillar of the me-centric media culture we’ve created. We’re taught that there are winners, there are losers. There are people who make it, there are people who don’t, and you need to be someone who does. There are only so many positions, so many success stories, so many opportunities to make the life you want. You need to choose from the human catalog of physical success and fight for a limited-edition lifestyle.
We settle ourselves into the idea that happiness and success are things that somebody else bestows upon us—bosses give jobs, lovers commit to
“forever.” No wonder we constantly feel out of control. No wonder we suffer so much at the hand of what we assumed we wanted.
Wanting is the ugliest thing you can do. It keeps your experience in a state of “not having.” It keeps good things at a distance. You get what you most want when you don’t want it anymore. When you shift your mindset and your experience to that of “already having,” you naturally create and attract things that align with your idea of yourself. Acceptance is the root of abundance.
The things you genuinely want rarely have to be thought out. Putting labels and words and ideas to them is creating an image of something that’s pure and essentially yourself. The way we get the most tripped-up is when our ideas don’t evolve as our beings do, and we create what we want while still being attached to an old idea.
This is how you let go of those ideas. These are the things nobody will teach you about doing so.
These are the ways you carry yourself out of the life somebody else constructed for you, how you stop fighting and tearing apart old ideas, and start creating new ones. These are the things you need to know to become the person who deserves the life you most genuinely want—not the life that somebody else wants for you.
There are ways to pay the rent. There is no way to make somebody love you if they don’t. Creating the moment-to-moment, day-to-day life you want, with the people you want, happens one job and month of rent and load of laundry and sink of dishes and electric bill at a time.
Adults don’t do these things just to do them. These things are freedom.
They are holding your own roof above your head. They are reducing yourself to the single notion that nothing matters more than your peace of mind.
Leave if you have to leave. There is rarely an excuse to remain with people who don’t love or accept you. There are ways to survive. There are second jobs and extra hours and rooms that kind people are willing to rent or share. But these things are reserved for the people who place their mental well-being over immediate convenience. These are reserved for the people who deserve them and who know they deserve a space or room or home or apartment in which they decide what is and is not acceptable for their lives.
You are not supposed to always be happy and certain and stable. If you were, it wouldn’t be such a struggle. Transcending the pain of humanness is one thing and one thing only: allowing yourself to be it. The struggle is trying to escape that which is inevitable.
Surrendering to it is not accepting defeat; it’s being honest. It’s being real and messy and gorgeous and tortured and darkly nuanced and glimmeringly hopeful. That’s what we’re meant to be. The only thing we really want to transcend is the inability to be what we are, as we are it.
There is just as much value in the negative space. Not every second of your life has to be filled. A packed agenda is not success. Living to work as opposed to working to live is not a quality of life. Things are not split into