There’s only one you so why compare when there’s really no comparison. Apples to oranges as they say.
Just do you and better yet, be better than you were yesterday. That’s the comparison that matters.
Becoming the best version of yourself can be a selfish endeavor or you can frame it differently. Focus on self-improvement while being considerate of others.
To what end? As many unique paths as there are people. Up to you.
I would bet that meaning and joy come from service to others. Self-serving isn’t necessarily a bad thing unless it ends there.
“I find it helpful to see the world as a slot machine that doesn’t ask you to put money in. All it asks is your time, focus, and energy to pull the handle over and over. A normal slot machine that requires money will bankrupt any player in the long run. But the machine that has rare yet certain payoffs, and asks for no money upfront, is a guaranteed winner if you have what it takes to keep yanking until you get lucky. In that environment, you can fail 99 percent of the time, while knowing success is guaranteed. All you need to do is stay in the game long enough.”
“You pile up enough tomorrows, and you’ll find you are left with nothing but a lot of empty yesterdays.”
― Professor Harold Hill
“Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“In work, do what you enjoy. In family life, be completely present.”
― Lao Tzu
“Mindfulness helps you go home to the present. And every time you go there and recognize a condition of happiness that you have, happiness comes.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh
A familiar message from “The Alchemist”…
“Because I don’t live in either my past or my future, I’m interested only in the present. If you can concentrate always on the present, you’ll be a happy man…Life will be a party for you, a grand festival, because life is the moment we’re living right now.”
― camel driver, speaking to the boy in “The Alchemist” by Paulo Coelho
“Life is available only in the present moment. If you abandon the present moment you cannot live the moments of your daily life deeply.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh
“If you just sit and observe, you will see how restless your mind is. If you try to calm it, it only makes it worse, but over time it does calm, and when it does, there’s room to hear more subtle things–that’s when your intuition starts to blossom and you start to see things more clearly and be in the present more. Your mind just slows down, and you see a tremendous expanse in the moment. You see so much more than you could see before.”
― Steve Jobs
“Enjoy life now. This is not a rehearsal.”
“Sometimes you will never know the value of a moment until it becomes a memory.”
― Dr. Seuss
“If you presence doesn’t make an impact, your absence won’t make a difference.”
“Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow.”
― Albert Einstein
“One has to live in the present. Whatever is past is gone beyond recall; whatever is future remains beyond one’s reach, until it becomes present. Remembering the past and giving thought to the future are important, but only to the extent that they help one deal with the present.”
― S.N. Goenka
“Enjoy the little things in life…for one day you’ll look back and realize they were the big things.”
― Robert Brault
“Wherever you are, make sure you’re there.”
― Dan Sullivan, founder of Strategic Coach
“Don’t look for the next opportunity. The one you have in hand is the opportunity.” — Paul Arden
“Live Like You Were Dying”
― James 4:13-17
Excerpt from The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron (p.54 in chapter “Week 2: Recovering a Sense of Identity”:
Writing about attention, I see that I have written a good deal about pain. This is no coincidence. It may be different for others, but pain is what it took to teach me to pay attention. In times of pain, when the future is too terrifying to contemplate and the past too painful to remember, I have learned to pay attention to right now. The precise moment I was in was always the only safe place for me. Each moment, taken alone, was always bearable. In the exact now, we are all, always, all right. Yesterday the marriage may have ended. Tomorrow the cat may die. The phone call from the lover, for all my waiting, may not ever come, but just at the moment, just now, that’s all right. I am breathing in and out. Realizing this, I began to notice that each moment was not without its beauty.
A familiar message from “The Alchemist”…