Meditations for Mortals: Four Weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time for What Counts

instead of thinking ‘What a great day!’ and luxuriating in your achievement, you find yourself thinking: ‘Yes! Now that’s the kind of day I’m aiming for, and now it’s my job to make sure that this is merely the first of many such days to come!’

many ‘insecure overachievers’ start off as children raised to feel noticed and valued only when they’re excelling at things. Oh, and you can also blame consumerism, which has an obvious vested interest in keeping people feeling inadequate, so they might be relied upon to purchase goods and services that promise to make the feelings go away.

Consequences aren’t optional.

‘insecure overachievers,’ which is a diplomatic way of saying that our accomplishments, impressive as they may sometimes be, are driven ultimately by feelings of inadequacy.

And yet despite the strange benefits that so often seem to arise from our lack of control, we proceed through life – as individuals, but as societies, too – as if the supreme goal should be always and only to obtain more and more of it.

the future destroys the present.’

essential sense of groundedness, persisting even through times of difficulty or unpleasantness.

‘the provisional life,’

economist Adam Smith,