Week 5: How To Live With Integrity In a Chaotic World

Time to read: 45 seconds

Here's the part nobody puts on a poster: living well doesn't mean your circumstances match your values. Often they don't.

You value connection, but you're isolated. You value health, but your body won't cooperate. You value stability, but everything feels uncertain. This is where a lot of people quietly give up and decide that living well is only available to people with easier lives, or money, or beauty.

I think this is exactly where "well-used" gets tested.

Integrity in complexity, as I put it a few weeks back, doesn't mean the complexity goes away. It means you keep choosing your values inside it, however imperfectly, instead of waiting for circumstances to improve before you start living the way you actually want.

Some of the most well-used lives I've seen belong to people whose circumstances were challenging. They just refused to let that be the end of the story. They made one small choice after another until they looked back and realized they created their life.

This tenacity is available to everyone.

 

Summer Fun Week 6 - Freedom!

Time to read: 36 seconds

It's Week 6 and time for Tip #2.

In honor of the 4th of July holiday in the US, today's tip is about freedom.

I'm a big fan of freedom…to live according to your values and preferences, enjoy the things you enjoy, and choose what makes sense for you and your life. Freedom leads to happiness.

Freedom comes with ownership and self-management, meaning you get to make choices, and you own those choices. You own the consequences and outcomes of your choices. You own your successes and joys and the responsibility to clean up your messes.

Freedom also means tempering yourself and behaving responsibly toward others. The fact that we live in a world filled with other people who also want their freedom can be super annoying.

Today's tip for fun and joy: Consider what it means for you to be free, and to let others be free, too.

For those of you in the US, I hope your 4th of July is filled with delicious grilled food, family, friends, and fireworks.

If you know people who want to have more fun, they can join us here.