Today is Tuesday, money nerds, and I have more fun stuff for you.
A couple of days ago, I had an interesting conversation with a friend about learning to let go of things you can’t control. (The context was how everybody in the U.S. is uptight about everything nowadays.) So naturally I was drawn by the serendipity of finding our first article…
How to stop worrying about things you can’t control. [Country Living] — “Letting go of what you can’t control enables you to regulate your emotions, which is especially helpful if you struggle with feeling the need for control. Acknowledge that there are things beyond your control, such as other people’s actions, external circumstances, or global events. Accepting this reality is an important step in shifting your focus to what you can influence.”
Doing nothing (part one) and Doing nothing (part two) [Money and Meaning] — “We’re so very busy because we want to be wanted. We want to be important, like our heroes. But what if you, like the Dude, didn’t want to be important at all? How much would you work? How much would you spend?” [True story: A couple of years ago, I came to the realization that I don’t want to be important. I’ve spent the time since deliberately learning to “do nothing”.]
How to be enough. [Vox] — “We’ve collectively overcorrected when it comes to the impulse to self-correct. When there’s always a new ideal to strive toward, a new workout to try, a new home renovation project, a new way to hack bodily functions, it can be hard to feel adequate, sufficient, enough. Very real socioeconomic, racial, and health factors impact a person’s ability to feel fulfilled, too.”
I didn’t intend for today’s installment to have a theme, but it kind of does, doesn’t it? Well, today’s video extends that theme. It’s a 20-minute feature from Answer in Progress on YouTube, and it’s all about how to stop scrolling and how to start paying attention.
The video is kind of all over the place, but that’s part of what makes it interesting to me. I too have been trying to find ways to fix my attention span, and my own journey has been just as scattered. (True story: I have a new device arriving later today that’s an attempt to focus my attention. It’s an e-ink phone-like device that I’ll set up ONLY for reading, etc. We’ll see how it goes.)