These problems matter a lot to me:
How do I be a good guy in a stressful world?
How do I do my part to build a marriage of mutual respect, even though I have selfish tendencies?
How do I show unconditional love and patience as a father, even though my kids need a LOT from me?
How do I bend society to be a more trusting place - even though I’m just one person?
How do I make the organizations and communities I’m a part of places where there’s a virtuous cycle of growth and development - even though I’m just one person?
How do I bend society to have fewer people die by homicide or suicide - even though I’m just one person?
This problem has caused me the most agony in my adult life:
How do I get powerful, influential people to tell me I’m awesome?
Honestly, I was ashamed of being vain and narcissistic enough to need others to tell me I’m awesome. For a long time, I deluded myself into believing that my ambition was wholly for the benefit of my family’s standard of living or the advancement of society.
Honestly, it wasn’t.
I know I shouldn’t be too hard on myself for being vain and narcissistic - I am human. But damn, over the course of my life, this problem has been so expensive. I was probably spending 20-30% of my emotion budget worrying about whether powerful people thought I was awesome.
That’s so expensive. That’s so much of my energy and emotion budget stolen away from more important problems. I just can’t afford that.
I’ve been struggling with this for at least a decade. Then, over the course of a few hours, I listened to a book during a long car ride that presented the question properly. Then, a decade’s worth of change happened in an afternoon.
The book I listened to was The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, and if you burn energy on unaffordable problems, I’d highly recommend it.
We can choose which problems in our life we give a lot of effort to. Once we have an honest catalog of what we’re spending our emotion budget on, it becomes much easier to say, “dawg, I can’t afford this anymore.”
If you enjoyed this post, check out my new book which is in pre-sale now. There's also a free PDF version. For more details, visit https://www.neiltambe.com/CharacterByChoice and be sure to let me know what you think after you read it.