Home > Work > Notes on a Nervous Planet
41 " How much extra happiness am I acquiring? Why am I wanting so much more than I need? Wouldn’t I be happier learning to appreciate what I already have? "
― , Notes on a Nervous Planet
42 " All a writer can do is provide a match, and hopefully a dry one. The reader has to strike the flame into being. "
43 " Don’t compare your actual self to a hypothetical self. Don’t drown in a sea of “what if” s. Don’t clutter your mind by imagining other versions of you, in parallel universes, where you made different decisions. The internet age encourages choice and comparison, but don’t do this to yourself. “Comparison is the thief of joy,” said Theodore Roosevelt. You are you. The past is the past. The only way to make a better life is from inside the present. To focus on regret does nothing but turn that very present into another thing you will wish you did differently. Accept your own reality. Be human enough to make mistakes. Be human enough not to dread the future. Be human enough to be, well, enough. Accepting where you are in life makes it so much easier to be happy for other people without feeling terrible about yourself. "
44 " Aim not to get more stuff done. Aim to have less stuff to do. Be a work minimalist. Minimalism is about doing more with less. So much of working life seems to be about doing less with more. Activity isn’t always the same as achievement. "
45 " There is no panacea, or utopia, there is just love and kindness and trying, amid the chaos, to make things better where we can. "
46 " The whole of consumerism is based on us wanting the next thing rather than the present thing we already have. This is an almost perfect recipe for unhappiness. "
47 " Understand people are more than a social media post. Think how many conflicting thoughts you have in a day. Think of the different contradictory positions you have held in your life. Respond to online opinions but never let one rushed opinion define a whole human being. “Every one of us,” said the physicist Carl Sagan, “is, in the cosmic perspective, precious. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another. "