Endless Nature:

Shane Parrish

@shaneparrish

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5 Std.

"One of the challenging things about the really important stuff in life is that they’re endless battles. If you do a good job focusing today and prioritizing today, if you pick the right thing to focus on, it earns you no bonus points for tomorrow. Tomorrow you show up, and if you spend all that time on YouTube or getting distracted or whatever, that day is gone. Other things are like that, too. Just because you worked out two weeks ago doesn’t mean you don’t need to do it today. Or just because you were a good spouse yesterday, that earns you no bonus points for today. You still need to show up for them. And so I’m trying to get comfortable with the endless nature of those things. A lot of the time we try to resist the endless nature of that stuff. “Oh, I wish it wasn’t that way.” We try to convince ourselves that it’s like a finish line. “If I just do this 21-day cleanse, then I’ll be a healthy person and I won’t have to think about it anymore. If I just buy her something nice for her anniversary, then I can stop worrying about it and I don’t have to [do other things].” No, it’s not like that. It’s endless. As soon as you accept the endless nature, you start looking at it differently. You say, “Okay, it’s not about getting to a particular finish line; it’s about living a daily life that feels sustainable and that I like and that I’m fully engaged in. So it’s about liking my days."