Let’s start with a quiz that everyone fails.
Imagine a piece of paper.
Now fold it.
It’s now 2X thicker than the original piece.
Fold it again.
Now it’s 4X thicker.
Again.
8X.
Say we do that 47 more times.
How thick would the piece of paper be?
As tall as the tallest person on earth?
The height of the Empire State Building?
Tim Ferriss guessed from earth to the moon.
All of those are wrong.
Every now and then I’ll get on Instagram or the Facebook and see someone posted a quote that I really like.
I usually think “that’s nice,” and maybe it sticks with me for the next couple minutes.
Then I move on.
I think most people are like this.
When have you ever read a quote and then done something of significance you wouldn’t have otherwise done?
I don’t know anyone who’s read something like this…
I was feeling depressed for several days in a row now. Not like real depression, just kind of down. One of the rough patches you get every now and then.
I was thinking, fuuuuuck, I’m gonna have to make a change.
Move somewhere else. Find a new job.
I had put in a good week of work.
Then I went out way too late Friday night.
“Hah, look at this guy with his Justin Bieber haircut and his nose ring. What a…”
I have conversations like this with myself sometimes.
I call that judging people.
“Did you hear she’s dating some guy from Oregon now?”
“Oh God, he doesn’t know what he’s getting himself into. She’s freaking crazy.”
These are conversations I have with other people.
Some call it gossip.
“I heard she started serving tables at that new restaurant.”
“Not surprised, she couldn’t even make it through college. She’ll never find a good career.”
I call this one talking shit about other people to feed your ego.
Really, all of them fall into that category.
I try to stop myself, but sometimes that insecure part of me comes out to judge. I have to tell him to shut up because that other part of me that I don’t have a name for knows better.
We all do it. If you’re thinking “not me, I never talk like that”, then you probably do it more than most.
Over christmas time last month, I sat down to watch a movie with my brother. I flipped around the channels and landed on Family Man. It’s not a great movie – I swear I don’t like romance comedy dramas – but there wasn’t much else on, and we were both in that “gotta watch a movie” mood.
Early in the movie, the audience is made aware of a decision earlier in Jack’s life. He had been dating Kate when he was younger and had the chance to move to Europe. He knew that leaving Kate would end their romance, but he left anyways and 20 years later he’s a super rich wall street dude who has everything money can buy. He mysteriously wakes up one morning to find himself married to Kate with 2 kids, a job selling tires, and a small house in New Jersey. He get’s a glimpse at what life would’ve been like if he hadn’t have gotten on that plane 20 years earlier – if he made a different choice.
Initially he’s confused and angry and wants his Ferrari and Armani suits back. Eventually, he finds that he likes this new, simple, low stress life better than the old. However, he can’t keep it as it was just a glimpse/gift from an angel or something like that. When he wakes up as the wall street guy again, he goes and finds Kate and true love and happily ever after. Truly a heartwarming story.
Anyways… this got me thinking about big decisions and regret.
Some decisions in life are easy.
You can take a week vacation to the Florida Keys or you can get a colonoscopy. Pick one.
The important, hard decisions are the ones we stress over.
Should I take this job offer in New York, or stay in San Francisco? Should we buy this house, or rent the one a few blocks over?
Those are the one’s I’m after.
“What do you want to do?”
A friend asked me that recently. It wasn’t the type of question that I could answer with something like “I want to have a cheeseburger and a cold beer.” It was the type of uncomfortable question most of us constantly avoid, the kind of question that makes us look within. Perhaps better stated it was “What do you want to do in your life?”