1. We don’t want you to be authentic, we want you to be kind. I recently wrote about Seth Godin’s advice to professionals: we don’t want you to be authentic—we want you to be professional. This got me thinking about how we can apply this to our greatest duty as human beings: being kind to one another. Oftentimes people will excuse their intolerant behavior by saying they’re just being “authentic” and “real”. But we don’t want that. We don’t want you to be authentic—we want you to be kind.
2. Mindfulness, or there’s no point. A great experience “can still end up feeling fairly meaningless if you’re incapable of directing some of your attention as you’d like. After all, to have any meaningful experience, you must be able to focus on it, at least a bit. Otherwise, are you really having it at all? Can you have an experience you don’t experience? The finest meal at a Michelin-starred restaurant might as well be a plate of instant noodles if your mind is elsewhere; and a friendship to which you never actually give a moment’s thought is a friendship in name only.” -Oliver Burkeman, Four Thousand Weeks
3. From the fear of missing out, to the joy of missing out. “Once you truly understand that you’re guaranteed to miss out on almost every experience the world has to offer, the fact that there are so many you still haven’t experienced stops feeling like a problem. Instead, you get to focus on fully enjoying the tiny slice of experiences you actually do have time for—and the freer you are to choose, in each moment, what counts most.” -Oliver Burkeman, Four Thousand Weeks
4. Don’t let anyone tell you reading isn’t work. We’re quick to accept a meeting invite when we’d probably be fine missing it, but how often do we schedule something that is always 100% worth our time? I’ve been scheduling a half hour each day for reading (instead of just reading when I have time) and trying not to miss it. And don’t let anyone tell you reading isn’t work. It is. It’s some of the most important work you can do.
5. There are fools and there are seekers of wisdom. Everyone else suffers. “An idiot is incapable of drawing conclusions. A [wise person] is unwilling to draw conclusions. The rest have glorified their conclusions as knowledge. The fool just enjoys whatever little he knows and [the wise person] enjoys it absolutely. The rest are the ones who constantly struggle and suffer.” -Sadhguru, Inner Engineering
6. You don’t become useful when you find your calling, you find your calling when you become useful. (Source: Kevin Kelly’s review of So Good They Can’t Ignore You)
7. Enjoy what you’ve worked for. I think of this quote whenever I feel discontentment start to creep in: “There are two things to aim at in life: first, to get what you want; and, after that, to enjoy it. Only the wisest of mankind achieve the second.” -Logan Pearsall Smith
8. I wrote a piece about how to handle insults. Here’s the shortened version: There’s really nothing to handle. What someone says about you doesn’t concern you—it concerns them.
9. Roosevelt’s imperturbable cheerfulness. Theodore Roosevelt’s zest for life has been well documented. Stories abound of wilderness excursions that left him and his friends badly injured, exhausted, and starved. Through it all, according to fellow riders, Roosevelt always appeared to be having “the time of his life”. His cheerfulness persisted even when facing grave uncertainties. “What Roosevelt termed the “great day” of his life—the day that ended with the triumphant charges up Kettle Hill and San Juan Hill—began with him exhibiting to the Rough Riders the most placid morning-time demeanor,” says Doris Kearns Goodwin in Leadership in Turbulent Times, “calmly shaving and knotting a blue polka-dot bandanna around his neck. Rough Rider Arthur Crosby found it heartening ‘to see our commanding officer on the dawn of a great battle performing an everyday function as though we were on an enjoyable camping trip.'”
10. Notable books I read this month: Buddha by Karen Armstrong, Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman, The Art of Happiness by Epicurus, and The Girl Who Would Be Free by Ryan Holiday. Also, I made a list of the best books I’ve ever read.