what "living life to the fullest" looks like

Feel your feelings, big dawg, but also zoom out so you can hold at once how they feel huge in the brain and are utterly meaningless to everyone who walks this earth.

I encourage you to tune into the experience of seriousness in your day-to-day life. What aspects feel tight, heavy, and constrained? In these areas, see if you can tune into any undercurrents of enjoyment. In the context of games, the way to let go of seriousness is to focus on just having fun. And the same applies in life.

How can I overlap the things I enjoy?

For example, maybe you want to exercise and spend time with your spouse. What type of exercise sounds fun to do with your spouse?

Or perhaps you'd like to hang out with friends and build your career. How can you find ways to work with people you like being around?

It doesn't always work, but there are usually a... See more

It’s about how it’s critical to have people in your life who love you and see you when you’re fun and sparkly and on top of the world, but also love you when you’re stagnant and petulant and self-sabotaging and letting them down. It’s about how that kind of love makes you believe in other kinds of love. It’s about how the essential texture of life ... See more

the thing is, as an adult, you get to make your own cool. you get to choose your own friends, live your own life. and let me tell you, in my life, where i make the rules, i am the coolest cat around.

being passionate about your hobbies is cool. asking good questions is cool. reading books is cool. taking notes is cool.

thinking of projects and then d... See more

I am aware that I shouldn’t judge how people try to escape the 9-to-5 grind. I am aware that a job’s purpose is money, not emotional enrichment. I know!

What I am instead arguing for is something more expansive. The thing you should work hard at is everything . Finding ways to imbue each moment with meaning and purpose and effort is the only path t... See more

The basis for any approach to self-transformation is an ever-increasing awareness of reality and the shedding of illusions,” writes Erich Fromm in The Art of Being. He refers often to awakeness, to making conscious what is repressed. To not just hearing, but listening. Not just seeing, but looking, watching. You can do this anywhere, with anything.... See more

On their podcast “Poog,” comedians Kate Berlant and Jacqueline Novak often refer to secular things as “godly” and “godless.” As in: liking a friend’s Instagram, godless; running into a friend on the street, godly. I think about this bifurcation all the time. Kate and Jacqueline are forever fixated on finding a new wellness routine that might change... See more