Avoid extrinsically motivated changes to your life, and build an internal compass that is unwavering and principled.
This is a statement I’ve internalized and tried to live by the past few years to yield a lot more personal satisfaction. I realized that the easiest way for what I’m doing to feel dissonant with my values is using what others want as my personal yardstick. This has happened innocently and unbeknownst to me when acting on the suggestions of friends, family or coworkers or following their footsteps without sufficient introspection.
The culprit was and remains asking a flavor of the question “what do you think I should do?” and to do as they tell me, to belong with and feel validated by them. Whereas gathering what others think is useful as mutual knowledge to operate on, I’ve learned to counteract the instinct to treat it as a benchmark; instead I explore if there might be any upside beyond status quo as there so often is. It becomes much more fulfilling to work from a different vantage point and to strive for a higher order goal.
