2 years ago, I watched this video by Derek Sivers and found it really inspiring: Why You Need to Fail. He recently released another video, and a very thoughtful one: The Meaning of Life.
Some notes I made after listening to the talk:
Life is time
- Have a plan, but remember that you can die any time.
- Think about the future, but not too much. Learn, practice, exercise, delay gratification, save and invest your money, and build towards your ideal future
- Think about the present, but not too much. Sometimes, pull your head out of the future, and give your full attention to the present
- Think about the past, but not too much. Keep your life in the context of the past, to see how far you’ve come. This will make you feel much grateful for all that you have.
Life is choice
- you’ll make better choices if you listen your instincts
- Stop when you find an option that is good enough. The entire purpose of doing anything is happiness. Happiness, counts.
- Set limits to your choices in life. Sometimes, let others choose for you.
- You know the difference between what’s long-term important versus short-term urgent. What’s urgent are emails, texts, tweets, calls, and news. What’s important is spending a thousand hours to learn a new skill that will really help you in your life or work. What’s important is giving your full undistracted attention to the important people in your life. What’s important is taking time to get exercise, or to collect and share what you’ve learned.
Life is memory
Change routines. Break monotony. Move. Make a major change whenever you can. These are your chronological landmarks. These are the hooks where you’ll hang your memories.
Life is learning
Wired
A moth is so deeply wired to fly towards the light that it may never accept that your light bulb is not the moon.
We are so deeply wired to find patterns that we may never accept that many things are just random.
Life is NOTHING
Erase any meaning you put into past events. Erase any meaning that’s holding you back. Erase those times where people said that this means that. None of it is real. Life has no inherent meaning. Nothing has inherent meaning. Life is a blank slate. You’re free to project any meaning that serves you. You’re free to do with it, anything you want.