244. broaden your horizons
We tend to lose our imagination as we get older. Or maybe we trade it in for our increasing level of priorities or our increasingly limited bandwidth. Either way, it gets continuously harder to imagine a future we want than to remember a past we’ve lived through. So that past becomes a guide for our decisions, instead of the opposite. Making it through the day becomes the goal, rather than envisioning new horizons. This serves us to the point that it allows us to “fly” on autopilot through our day — and if we aren’t careful, even our life — by completing tasks and getting things done, but ultimately falls short on improving that life.
We’ve become less creative and imaginative as we age, and consequently more fixed and dogmatic in the narrative we allow ourselves to live by. And while this can be a way of life, it is certainly not a way to live.
188. distractions
Anytime you’re chasing after something that isn’t aligned with your highest values, just know that by default, that desire will fade away.
If what we’re after isn’t absolutely inspiring or deeply meaningful, we’ll eventually find distractions that take our mind away from the things we think we want, only to return it to the things we do. Allowing yourself to notice where your attention goes, what it is distracted by, and what it ultimately returns to is a good way to orient because if we’re leaning into our highest priority, you won’t be bothered by distractions.
When we do, it’s a bit like entering flow, where we’re in the moment, executing on all cylinders through inspired, strategic, and focused intention. Whereas, if we pursue something we only think is important (because of someone telling us so), something of lower value to us, we automatically go into another part of the brain that seeks to avoid this short-term unease or pain, and seeks to replace it with pleasure which comes in the form of distractions.
Easily finding ourselves distracted from the things we think we need to accomplish, in an effort to be someone we think we need to be, is not because we need to try harder, to double down, but that we need to rethink or refine the goal. There’s still a bit of fantasy whirling around in our mind, that the things we continuously try and fail to achieve are simply remnants of who we thought we needed to be. When we stop and become aware of what is happening, we can stop chasing shadows.
It mostly stems from our comparison to others, allowing their ideas to work their way into our decisions. Because of this, we inevitably try to become something we’re not, all the while wondering why we repeatedly fail to do the things we should be doing to deliver us into a life we think we should have, not understanding that we’re distracted for a reason.