One of the most common problems I run into is taking myself too seriously.
Despite my best efforts, the events in my life seem like the most important things in the universe. And they feel that way for good reason – in my universe they are the most important things.
Of course, I doubt I’m alone in feeling like the star of my own reality TV show – and if I’m the center of my universe, and you’re the center of yours, then it follows that neither of us is paying much attention to each other. As Tim Urban says:
“No one really cares that much about what you’re doing. People are highly self-absorbed.”
Despite this reality, it’s easy to forget how irrelevant I am to the rest of the world. Not only does no one in Denmark care what I do each day, but even the people who love me the most have their own lives to deal with. Zoom out to the entirety of human history, and my existence on this planet is essentially meaningless to everyone but me.
Maybe that’s a cynical way to look at things – but it’s also freeing. No matter how important my life feels, it’s not. My failures are momentary, forgetful blips on other people’s radar. The same goes for my successes.
No one really cares that much about what I’m doing.
Even for the most successful among us, accomplishments will eventually disappear. Some of my favorite childhood books are no longer in print. There are thousands of CEOs that no one remembers. The lives of the most famous people in history have been cut down to short highlight reels.
Nowhere is this more true than on the internet, where volumes of great content disappear into the ether every single minute. My favorite writers have back catalogues of work that have been completely forgotten. There are 250,000 words on this website just sitting there, mostly unread.
In the past few months, I lost sight of my place in the universe. I got caught up in writing the perfect post, and left dozens of drafts and thousands of words unpublished. I let perfect become the enemy of done, ignoring the fact that any post I write will eventually disappear, no matter how great.
But here’s the truth: No one’s going to read this.
No matter how much my readers may support or encourage me, this newsletter is my pet project, not theirs. It’s easy to convince myself otherwise, but the data speaks for itself, and even my most committed readers can’t keep up with everything I write. They have their own sh*t going on, and couldn’t care less whether I publish a stinker once in awhile.
Ultimately, my goal is to help others succeed – not in my universe, but in theirs. That requires me to share my ideas, in the hope that they reach the right person at the right time. Nothing more. It would be nice to be a world class writer while I’m at it, but that’s not what this is about.
Besides, even the best bloggers write stinkers, too.
– Emmett
What I’m Reading:
50 ways to be ridiculously generous—and feel ridiculously good – Alexandra Franzen
“Put away your phone and close down your inbox for a day—or even just an hour. Give the world the gift of your undivided, non-digital attention.”
This Is Water – David Foster Wallace
“Except thinking this way tends to be so easy and automatic that it doesn’t have to be a choice. It is my natural default setting. It’s the automatic way that I experience the boring, frustrating, crowded parts of adult life when I’m operating on the automatic, unconscious belief that I am the centre of the world, and that my immediate needs and feelings are what should determine the world’s priorities.“
What I’m Listening To:
River Flows In You – Yiruma (Spotify, Youtube)
Davis Smith on Building Cotopaxi and Humanity In Business – Elevate Podcast