Pick the most interesting person you know—the one who posts their lives on Facebook and makes you wish you were them. Now consider this: their life is interesting because of about one or two hours of their day. Maybe even one or two decisions.
No matter how cool your life is, you spend most of your time like this:
- Sleeping
- Working
- Eating
- Pooping
- Debating with your spouse what restaurant to go to
When you look at the math, none of our lives are all that interesting. The truly enviable bits make up only one or two hours of our day. One or two decisions each day make our lives either cooler or lamer.
So here’s the discouraging part of this: You will never think your life is truly extraordinary. No matter how amazing you are, you’ll always go on Facebook or Instagram and see people who live cooler lives than yours. That’s because you don’t see the 22 hours of sleeping, working, and pooping. You assume they’re remarkable 24/7. They aren’t. But it’s hard to remember that when you’re scrolling through Facebook on the toilet, looking at your friend climb a mountain in Africa. I will always be easy to find dissatisfaction in your life. That’s the bad news.
But the good news is this: It’s just not that hard to live a remarkable life. It only takes an hour or two each day. It takes a couple decisions to set your life on fire.
Instead of watching that reality TV show, why don’t you seek out a local food festival. Instead of watching the football game, learn a new skill. Go on a hike. Investigate what a trip to Africa would cost. Start writing that novel.
And sure, if you want to make people envy you, take a few pictures and post them on Facebook. Capture that one extraordinary hour of your life and make people jealous.
But my guess is that you’ll have such a blast living your life, you won’t feel that need anymore.
Thanks for the blog. We so easily fall into that trap of envying someone else’s life.
Needed. This. Great reminder.
Thank you.