What Is Your Best Life?

A little philosophizing

We live in an attention society. Everyday, all day, you have constant pulls on your attention from every angle.

Corporations spend huge money trying to figure out how to grab your attention. Marketing has gotten more and more insidious at figuring out how to manipulate you. Technological advances and all the apps have gotten people wired to look for instant dopamine. And it is working…Read this article from Time:

Did you read it? Or did you see it was a whole 2 minute read and say “nah i got the gist” (admittedly, I didn’t read it either other than seeing gold fish can pay attention for 9 seconds and the average person tops out at 8 secs and saying “good enough for me”).

We recently went on a very long 14 hour plane ride for vacation. The F’er kids rarely get TV, but for planes they can watch it. Our 3 year old found Cocomelon. Now I have heard it uses every stimulus-inducing trick in the book to turn kids into zombies (bright colors, quick cuts, lots of movements etc), and I will report that it is absolutely as advertised. Just completely brain melting stimulus that had this kid in a trance.

And with all this constant onslaught of attention-seeking, everyone of them is trying to one-up each other to grab those precious gold fish brains brains of ours. This results in more and more eye-catching claims.

Because if there is one thing that really makes people stop, it is a ‘too-good-to-be-true’ path to your wildest dreams. And despite our best efforts, these catchy hooks and claims of easy wealth, women (or men? I’m not sure what the equivalent for women would be…some sort of rom-com guy?), and the envy of your peers will bury into your subconscious.

It is easy to get have your dream life quickly go from something reasonable to completely absurd.

And to make things worse, as you start to achieve more, it is easy to always ratchet up your goal to another magnitude.

Now this isn’t to say be some weird froogal guy and lie to yourself and your twitter followers about being happy in a 20yr old car, settling for a spouse, never enjoying a luxury, etc etc. Having goals and aspirations is absolutely critical.

But just as being a cheapo is not ideal, being that guy who is miserable because they are full of envy is bad. Someone will always have more of something - money, love, girls (or guys), cars, skills, muscles. No one has been able to be #1 at EVERYTHING.

Now to give some credit - everyone seems to have at least part of the story:

• You should be grateful for what you have and happy, but

• You shouldn’t be content to budgetpoor through life being very below average

So how do you find that sweet spot of optimizing life? And what can you do to get back on track if you get out of whack?