Ellen Ridsdale

@ellenridsdale

All cardsCollections

"Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away." - Maya Angelou

The Beauty of an Ordinary Life: Romanticising the Mundane Changed My D

I was suddenly seeking out the feelings I had been longing for and it turns out, they were all around me, I just had to open my eyes.

I found myself feeling disconnected from everything around me, always longing for something more, something elusive. It kind of sucks the life out of you- the treadmill and ever-moving goalpost of what you want out of life.

You can’t ever reach perfection, but you can believe in an asymptote toward which you are ceaselessly striving.

Paul Kalanithi • When Breath Becomes Air

Everything needs to be unplugged from time to time. Including you.

In order to design successful habits and change your behaviors, you should do three things. Stop judging yourself. Take your aspirations and break them down into tiny behaviors. Embrace mistakes as discoveries and use them to move forward.

So when I talk about digital detoxing, for example, the number one step is to understand psychological discomfort. It's to understand that boredom is telling you, the emotion is telling you, I am underwhelmed with life. This life doesn't excite me.

The response is not Netflix. The response is how can I make my life more exciting? And once you get th