Weekly Share: Who Will You Be in a Year?
This one may be a bit controversial, I’m curious to hear how you interpret it:
“Anyone who isn’t embarrassed of who they were last year probably isn’t learning enough.”
Alain de Botton is a Swiss-born British writer of “philosophy of everyday life”. He writes about love, art, literature, happiness, mental health and more.
I don't like the word "embarrassed" - learning should be about personal expansion, not personal reproach, but I do like the spirit of this quote the way I understand it. It helps me push my thinking on how I intend to grow as a person in the upcoming months. Not to stress out and feel like a failure if I don’t - that is my old striver thinking, but to challenge myself to develop rather than just going through the motions of everyday life.
This thinking also helps moderate my perfectionist tendencies: If I know that in a year I'll be "embarrassed" by what I'm creating regardless of how much I try to perfect it, I can let go slightly earlier. In the future I'll probably be just as unhappy with the 80% or 90% version as I am with the 100% version.
What do you think?
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