Occasionally I come across words that motivate and inspire me to change my approach to life. I may take action based on those words or just appreciate the insight that they give me. I experienced that phenomenon just the other day reading this article by Barry Davret here on Medium:
“1. Give up any fantasy of fixing yourself. There’s nothing wrong with you.” — Barry Davret
I don’t need to fix, cover up, or improve my shortcomings and mistakes. I need to go with the grain of my weaknesses and allow any failures to become learning opportunities and stepping stones to the next level.
I made a decision this morning: I will search for, document, and share the insight that comes from reading, writing, and taking physical action. I will share the lessons I learn along the timeline of my life. I will create to give. But that single decision point gets nothing done. I need to do something (take a shot) to fulfill that vision (trajectory).
I have spent a lot of time reading and writing in my life. It has been rewarding in many ways, but I have gained just as much from life by taking physical action, which I may have done less frequently.
I have searched for so many answers to questions I have had in my life. Mostly I search on Google for a result that seems useful to me, but also directly into books that seem applicable. I have filled notebooks with my thoughts, ideas, and possible answers to the questions I have asked. All the questions have been different individually, but they all share the common theme that can be boiled down into one question:
How should I live?
I have searched so many self help books, many popular psychology books, articles, posts, even several classical texts.
I have not found an answer because one answer does not exist. The answer to the question of how to live comes from within me, not from advice or information outside of myself.
Words can never be enough. They point me in the right direction, but they don’t get me where I need to go. I need physical action for that.
