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The Sunday Night Review #165
Hey everyone,
For the first few months of this year, I was feeling uncharacteristically frustrated with life.
I like to think of myself as a very happy person, but one of the obvious dangers in my line of work (social media) is that I’m constantly on the receiving end of people’s highlight reels.
My job is to help make YouTube videos, and as a result I spend a fair amount of time on YouTube watching a lot of content from hyper-successful people. I love the videos that we make, but spending any amount of time online makes it a lot easier to fall into the trap of envy and comparison.
It can be hard to spot sometimes as well. You can feel content with your life, but there’s this lingering voice in the background saying “but you could have more! Look at all these impressive people doing all these cool things! That could be you!!” It doesn’t alway show up obviously front of your mind, but it’s there, subtly undermining the life that you have.
The fact that I’ve written about the idea of comparison a couple times in the past year, and this recent post on measuring life from where you started, also indicates that it’s something that’s been on my mind.
The scariest part about it is it doesn’t stop no matter how successful you are (however you define success). The feelings of being behind, not good enough, not successful enough follow you at every single stage of life.
And I don’t like it. I know it won’t fade with time or success, so I decided to start actively coming up with a system to manage my monkey brain.
I’ve experimented with a few things over the past year, but one recent thing I’ve really enjoyed has been writing and reading some daily affirmations.
For the past 2 months I’ve had this list of things above my to-do list in a toggle called “To read every morning”. So before I start work each day at 9am, I read this:
Gratitude - I am so grateful for the life I have right now. For my girlfriend, for Mum, for Dad, for my siblings, for my friends, for my health, for my work. When I’m on my deathbed, I’d give anything to be back where I am today. Aged 27, living in London with my friends, doing fun things, surrounded by people I love and working on meaningful projects to improve lives around the world.
Perspective - No material, financial, or status gain will make me happier than I am right now, I have everything I need. I am luckier than 99% of people who have ever lived on this planet. For me, life is not about money, life is about service and building rich communities with rich relationships.
Growth - I can become whoever I want to become, it is merely a matter of focus, consistency and patience. My potential knows no limits. Growth is found outside of what’s comfortable.
Comparison - I compare myself only to myself, and strive to get a little bit better each day. Everything I want, including wealth, will come if I strive healthily to get a little bit better each day, and each year. Envy is poison.
Mission - My current mission is to serve as many educational YouTubers as I can. I turn up to work with energy, lightness and excitement to serve the team and the audience as well as I possibly can. I share personal and actionable YouTube lessons to serve others and share the learnings from my job. My work is meaningful, impactful and extends around the world. But I never take things too seriously, I’m just a monkey with a plan.
Now, to some this probably seems insane. But I’ve found having this kind of morning grounding particularly useful. I’ll probably keep iterating and updating them as time passes, but over the past 2 months of doing this they’ve helped me realised something important.
It really is a choice how I see the world, but it’s not an easy choice. I’ve found it’s less that I can suddenly choose to see the world differently in a given moment, it’s more that in the same way I can choose to get fitter by exercising, I can choose to become more grateful by practicing the skill over time.
I think about this paragraph a lot as I go about my day “When I’m on my deathbed, I’d give anything to be back where I am today. Aged 27, living in London with my friends, doing fun things, surrounded by people I love and working on meaningful projects to improve lives around the world.”
Recently, I’ve felt more gratitude than I have for a long time, and it’s down to the fact that I’ve just practised it more than I have before. Isn’t that amazing?
I’m going to sign off before I write more cliches about gratitude being the most important virtue.
Have an epic week!
Tintin :)
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