The Imperfectionist: You Have to Do the Living Yourself
The Imperfectionist: You Have to Do the Living Yourself
Section titled “The Imperfectionist: You Have to Do the Living Yourself”
Metadata
Section titled “Metadata”- Author: Oliver Burkeman
- Full Title: The Imperfectionist: You Have to Do the Living Yourself
- Category: #articles
Highlights
Section titled “Highlights”- And yet… No matter how many guardrails for good behaviour you erect, however much you stack things in your favour, in each moment, it’s still you showing up for your life. And there seems to be something crucial about owning that fact – about actively committing and recommitting, again and again, to going in the direction you want to travel, instead of acting as a spectator to your life, watching to see whether the systems you’ve put in place perform as you’d hoped they would or not.
- Tags: #favorite
- What this means in practical terms (“What’s one thing subscribers to The Imperfectionist could do to put these ideas into practice?”) is grasping that the central moment-to-moment challenge isn’t one of building habits, modifying your personality, or realising your potential. Instead it’s a matter of coming back and back and back to the question of what you could do right now that would constitute living the way you aspire to live. I’m not really suggesting you consciously ask yourself that question thousands of times per day; I’m trying to encapsulate a certain kind of stance or orientation I can’t fully express in words.
- Tags: #favorite
- building a meaningful life is much less about discovering the right set of practices or habits than it is about cultivating the willingness to step up moment after moment and just do more of the things that matter, for the projects and people and causes you care about most.
- Whereas self-mastery – or presence of mind, or whatever you want to call it – can only ever happen now. You’re forgiven all the times you failed in the past, and needn’t worry about the times you might fail in future. You just need to give it a shot now, accepting that it’ll probably make you feel a bit queasy: to choose the healthy option, close the social media app, write another hundred words, really listen to the other person, and so on. As soon as you try, you’ve succeeded – and along comes a fresh moment in which to try again.
- Tags: #favorite