A question that often gets overlooked is “What does improving my life look like?”
It’s easy to use other people’s metrics, but it’s crucial to find the metrics that matter the most for your own life.
Speaking for myself, it’s easy to assume that it means the same as the improved life others are selling me: certainty, financial rewards, fame, recognition, working with people more famous and wealthy than I am.
Most of those things ARE appealing to me, but the context is key. It’s important to figure out what the price is that I’m willing to pay to get those things. And then when you figure out what boundaries you have, you by nature suddenly figure out what is the most important thing to you and that becomes the metric to measure that improvement by.
If you’re not willing to trade integrity for fame, then integrity is really what’s important.
If you’re not willing to trade your music for financial security, then your music is the actual priority.
If you’re not willing to make firm boundaries at work, then your job/income is more important than your boundaries.
There’s shouldn’t be any judgment about what priorities are “bettter” than another, as we all have different circumstances and life experiences that make us different and unique. It’s easier to say that financial security is less important than having fun if you’re single and don’t have dependents. It’s easier to say that fame is more important when all you’ve ever seen is famous people getting to do whatever they want without consequence.
The whole point is that you want to be aligning your choices and the way you carry yourself in the world with the priorities that are important to YOU, not the rest of society.
Better for someone else isn’t always going to be better for you.
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