Don't Forget About The Bigger Picture

The happiness of pursuit is greater than the pursuit of happiness.

What “bigger picture” am I referring to, here?

You know, a PURPOSE to go about your day for reasons other than validating your emotions and feeling good about your appearance?

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Look. The basis of this newsletter is built upon SELF-improvement. But life’s problems aren’t fixed once you’ve perfected your morning routine and found a social circle to roll with.

We all have something bigger than ourselves and our personal lives that we should be thinking about on the daily. Like, how can we help SOMEONE ELSE feel better, maybe?

Forget Feeling Good & Find Your F*cking Purpose

Mark Manson, shameless self-improvement guru known for delivering information straight to the jugular, advises to:

“Forget feeling good and find your fucking purpose.

People who lead lives based on feeling good all the time find themselves perpetually on a treadmill, constantly needing more, more, more.

In order to step off the treadmill they need to decide that something matters more than their own feelings — that some cause, some goal, some person, is worth occasionally feeling bad for.

That ‘cause’ is often what we refer to as our ‘purpose’ and finding it is one of the most important endeavors we can take to enhance our health and wellbeing.”

The Happiness Prison

It makes sense, yes? We are in an exhausting pursuit of getting better abs, better kitchen cabinets, and better experiences for our children that we have completely (and embarrassingly) lost sight of what’s important in life.

Why? Because we have allowed ourselves to be blinded by the addiction of magic pills and potions promising to make us sexy, rich, famous, and fulfilled, in the matter of 4 weeks at the low, low price of $999!

The good news? I really feel like the pandemics (yes, plural — the coronavirus pandemic + the mental health pandemic + the racism pandemic) are going to flip the world upside down in the best way.

I think people are going to realize they don’t have to be on social media to live. I think people are going to look inside people’s souls before their skin color. I think people are going to realize that smaller, intimate gatherings are a hell of a lot more enjoyable than 200-attendee parties.

I think people are going to be more mindful of the toxic media, food, and people that they consume on the daily — and in turn, are going to replace that toxicity with healthy habits, positive people, inspiring environments, and uplifting behaviors.

How Do You Find The Bigger Picture?

• You take the focus off yourself. And you place it onto someone else — preferably someone who is feeling lost, alone, or frustrated in some area of their life.

• You cheer someone else up. Send them a funny video or a “miss you” card in the mail. In turn, this cheers you up (which should not be your motivation for doing it…but is a pleasant ripple effect).

• You make yourself feel small. Not in a demeaning way. More like putting yourself directly in front of a vast ocean sort of way — to serve as a reminder that most of our daily “problems” seriously do not matter.

Takeaway

When you’re nice to yourself, you’re nice to everyone around you. This, again, is the overarching point of self-improvement-ness. That niceness then compounds, and becomes contagious. And it keeps going and going, as long as you keep it up.

It’s like that popular post from a few years back on how you liking your outfit makes you a more pleasant person to be around, which therefore benefits more people, organizations and environments.

Apply the “I’m nicer when I like my outfit” approach to as many people as possible, and watch your life…No…FEEL your life become so full it could burst.

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Thank you for reading today! Let me know what you want to read about next week.

AND! Keep sending your advice questions in preparation for the upcoming monthly Q+A column. I am loving them.

Be you.

XOXO,

Ashley