Doing our best to avoid all forms of stress isn’t a blessing, it’s a trap. We’re designed to response to short-term stress because without it, we only ever stay the same. And that’s far more dangerous.
Is happiness about ‘wanting what you already have’, or ‘having what you want’? The truth is… it depends. But the more important question is: are you willing to try to figure out what happiness means for you?
New scientific discoveries are revealing that certain patterns in our lives, such as our capabilities, attitudes or behaviours, are not as hard-wired as many might have you believe. Our brains are not blank canvases that become filled with a set picture for life. They’re a lot more like an Etch a Sketch. And that creates an exciting space for us to create new patterns.
Much of our time is spent worrying about making good or bad choices; trying to focus on the former and completely eliminate the latter. But these choices drive the arc of our life’s story, for better or worse. The road blocks in our story are not bad choices, but tragic ones; choosing to give up the power of choice.
It’s easy to beat ourselves up for what we think are poor choices when it comes to our fitness, diets and sense of purpose. Make no mistake, we’re responsible for these important things. But we can also give ourselves a break when we realise that our deeply engrained impulses exist for a reason, and make it understandable when we don’t always meet our own expectations.
Confidence isn’t something we’re born with, it’s a story that we learn. If you fight for your limitations, you get to keep them. But if spread them out on a spectrum, you create room for confidence to grow.
Rules suck, right? We’re basically taught to hate them as kids.
We’re indoctrinated into thinking that they’re the fun-sponges of life. They can feel like these hurdles designed to stop us from having the things we want most. But what if, as adults, we could turn rules into one of the most powerful tools at our disposal for getting what we want?
Three questions that will change the way you make decisions in your life, for the better.
Nobody thinks about you as much as you do. And in a world where no one is going to care, why should you when it comes to taking a risk?
The Building Blocks.
Consistently making meaningful choices is influenced by three points of view:
The way we see the world
The way we see ourselves
The way we see ourselves within our worlds
The Building Blocks series sets the platform for exploring how to consistently making meaningful choices through a series of foundational articles that explore each of these perspectives.
The awkward truth, is that it's a natural desire. But one we need to learn to tame in the modern era. Because wanting more is actually our embedded quest to attain status. Status is a core human need, but knowing how to achieve has never been more confusing than it is today.
Humans’ superpower is our ability to tell stories. Stories help us to make sense of an uncertain world. Stories are not facts; they exist to prompt questions. The ability to question and update our own uncomfortable stories is the key to building resilience.
What is The Grey Life?
The Grey Life is a collection of ideas exploring ways to live with life’s uncertainties.
It is an approach to help you to consistently make meaningful choices that are a fit with your own unique life.
Get in touch.
Do you want to contribute to The Grey Life? Get in touch to share a blog post, viewpoint or request to be a guest on our upcoming podcast series.
Self-improvement shouldn’t be a default way of being. When we improve at things, we feel better. And knowing how to do that occasionally requires us looking in, at our ‘self’. But we need to know when to stop looking in, and how to start looking out.