“It feels less fun the more serious you take it.”
Ali Abdaal
When I came across this phrase from Ali Abdaal I felt rather star-struck – because this is the life that I have been living.
Month: December 2021
In the contemporaneous world that we live in today, we have insights into the lives of others like never before. Through the digital window that is social media, we know what our friend is having for lunch on the other side of the world as they experience their indulgent and luxurious holiday, accompanied by endless aesthetic photos that accompany this exhilarating existence. Amalgamating the experiences of all our friends, day by day, we are forced-fed this ‘feed’. Like cows lining up for slaughter, this culture encourages us to ‘one-up’ ourselves in speeding up our own hedonic treadmill of vanity. From this, we may feel disheartened, depressed, and even lonely. To fend off these feelings, we are obliged to join in on the bandwagon – adding another drop of the ocean of social media sharing that furthers the vicious cycle of comparison. Like the Instagram stories that only last a day and are gone tomorrow, these experiences are but fleeting – a chasing after the wind.
Stephen R. Covey’s classic – “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” has been quite a revolutionary read for me. The book wasn’t necessarily revolutionary in terms of content, as many of the concepts in this book are quite self-evident and ingrained in human behaviour. What makes this book revolutionary, however, were how the ideas of this book were organised and packaged as a whole – with one such concept titled “the emotional bank account”.