Reminders of who I want to be.

I don’t think there is anything wrong with the way that I am living my life in this moment. I’m a kind person who treats her mind and body with care, and I am driven to grow. I am also driven to be there for the people around me and to make them happy. My parents have put loads of effort into raising me, into giving me all the appropriate tools to cultivate the conditions to live a good life. And in many ways, I have. When I ask the question of how I can be better, how I can come closer to the person I want to become, I honestly notice that I have in many ways hit my metrics of success. I am commited to cultivating the conditions for mental clarity: I see the value in meditation (in being non-reactive), in taking rest, in being kind to others and making friends with the mind. I live an examined life, or at the very least, understand the value in living an examined life, and I try to expose myself to the principles of those who have lived mindfully, lived intentionally, lived to understand the ways in which their minds operate.

The truth is that I do not exist in a vaccum. And that I live in a world of people, who’ve manufactured a kind of framework that I’ve chosen, now, to live in. And as I interface with this world, I’m coming to recognize that there is a kind of metric of success that you set for yourself and a kind of metric of success that the world sets for you and that you may or may not choose to set as your own.

Tonight, I feel inclined to share my metrics of success.

I want to become someone who takes an intelligent route to achieving a long-term goal.

I want to become someone who is a role model for others

I want to become someone who makes everyone feel safe, happy, and comfortable to be around.

I want to become someone who can bring out the best in the world and in others.

I want to become someone who appreciates the world.

Perhaps someone who is all of these things is someone who is: not identified with fleeting thoughts, is financially free and financially intelligent, is an expert at something, is in a lucrative and meaningful profession, is remembered for something wholesome and for leaving this place with something useful, is strong and healthy, is in a web of positive uplifting and inspiring human connections, is supportive to the people who’ve supported them & more, contributes to the causes that matter the most.

I’ve been asking the question of whether certain phenomena do or do not serve me in the quest for living the life I’d like to live. I’ve found that the following things have not served me in the direction I’ve set: trying to tackle too many goals at once, not using the environment around you to your advantage, not cultivate the proper biological conditions for success (mental energy etc), unintelligent plan, fear, judgement, negative mental affect states, the perception that you are too late in the game and that growth is impossible (self-fulfilling prophecies).

As I leave the page, I’ll design a plan to implement for tomorrow.