Umair Haque’s advice for a more meaningful life:
- Cultivate your better self.
- Create something dangerous.
- Forgive and fail.
My application and notes to myself:
- Cultivate your better self: As long as I’m not working on myself to make myself ready, qualified, good enough, or better than, cultivate away. Best fertilizer for cultivation: gratitude.
- Create something dangerous: Don’t give up. Keep observing and exploring. I do feel a deep longing to live meaningfully. it may or may not mean I create a successful business out of it, blaze a spiritual path, or have a single soul ever see these words. Roger Walsh, on the question “What can I do?” refined the question to “What is the most effective thing I can do?” And I add, keep asking this question. perhaps all that discomfort around it is a good sign. What I don’t know: how to weigh spending time on searching vs. time spent doing. I haven’t a clue.
- Forgive and fail: I like Byron Katie’s advice about forgiveness, “Forgive everybody for everything. Now.” And Mark, forgive yourself. Now. And don’t be afraid to fail again. And, what’s worse than an un-lived life? Now that is Hell.
Final and most important. Today. Act today. Now.