If I ask you, 'What do you want out of life?' and you say something like, 'I want to be happy and have a great family and a job I like,' it's so ubiquitous that it doesn't even mean anything. Everyone wants that.
Interpretation
Desiring happiness and fulfillment is common, but these vague aspirations lack specific meaning.
Mark Manson highlights the notion that while many people express a desire for happiness, family, and a satisfying job, these aspirations are so universally shared that they often lose their significance. The statement urges individuals to dig deeper into what truly makes them happy instead of settling for generic goals that everyone has.
In practice
In a motivational speech about pursuing meaningful goals.
Whereas a lot of Buddhism concerns itself with stages of enlightenment, various precepts and moral codes, and even power structures and hierarchies, Zen is just like, 'Shut up, sit down, and observe your thoughts - oh, and by the way, what you perceive as you' doesn't actually exist.' I loved the minimalist approach of it.
I think people who become compulsive about fitness or eating right, a lot of the time it's out of fear that they're going to lose control or that they're not good enough, so I think anything done out of fear or motivated by fear is often unhealthy.
Many people come to self-help material because they feel like something is wrong with them or the way they are. The problem is that anything that tells you how to improve your life is also implying that there is something inherently wrong with you the way you are.
The first and perhaps most important thing to realize about being happier in life is to stop trying to be so happy in life.
Writing/reading is like visiting another person's brain. And a short book or article is like a short stay. You come in, have a coffee, talk about the weather or sports, and then move on.
I think humility - which I think is a very good value to adopt - is basically an extension of understanding your own ignorance.
[T]he normal and the everyday are often amazingly unstoppable, and what is unimaginable is the cessation of them. The world is resilient, and, no matter what interruptions occur, people so badly want to return to their lives and get on with them. A veneer of civilization descends quickly, like a shining rain. Dust is settled.
We only have so long to play in the dirt and ask questions of rivers.
Time is the coin of life. Only you can determine how it will be spent.
Life was just a tire swing. 'Jambalaya' was the only song I could sing. Blackberry pickin', eatin' fried chicken, And I never knew a thing about pain. Life was just a tire swing.
The latitude and longitudinal lines of where you are born determine your opportunity in life, and it's not equal. We may have been created equal, but we're not born equal. It's a lot to do with luck and you have to pass that on.
I'm not a bit changed - not really. I'm only just pruned down and branched out. The real me - back here - is just the same.
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