Something You Do
Do you wish you had more confidence? Do you wish you could be more disciplined? Do you wish you felt happier?
Well I have a hypothesis about those things.
I believe that none of those are things you can have. And none of them are things you can be.
The only thing any of us can really be is ourselves. Which takes some of the pressure off, don’t you think?
And I know: “what about my confidence/discipline/happiness?”
Well I think there’s even better news on that front. I think those are all things we can do.
So you want to do be more confident and more courageous? Then just do the thing that scares you. Just do what a brave person would do, and snap, just like that, you’re brave.
You want to be more disciplined? Do thing you’re avoiding doing.
You want to be happier? Then do happy things in the world. Sit back and find happiness where you are now. Bring happiness to the people you love and around you.
And I got this far before I realized there’s an even better way to say it.
Courage isn’t some sort of personality trait. Discipline isn’t some immutable facet of your being. Happiness isn’t a feeling that may or may not come your way.
No. These are all actions. And if you do them often enough they are habits.
And it’s not limited to the three examples I came up with here. You can apply this to almost everything in life that comes from — as Marcus Aurelius would say — our own reasoned choice.
So act in the way you want to be. It’s the only way you’ll ever get there.
This reminder was as much for me as anyone reading it, by the way.
Might explain why I fixated on those 3 examples 😅