PEBBLE
Live the life you love, love the life you live.
~Muddy Waters, shared by Brittany in Rice Lake, WI (she and her brother each have a tattoo of this phrase)
BOULDER
The goal of adulthood is to let go of the other possible existences and to make the best of the one. A successful adult is one who understands that it doesn’t matter which life you ultimately pick, only that you live it well.
~Chris Ballas, shared via James Clear’s 3-2-1 Newsletter
PONDER
After a couple decades of assembling these little Ripples emails, I’ve developed some systems and routines to help make the process manageable and also fun. Writing this ponder section often comes together fairly smoothly once I pair up two quotes that complement each other and address a topic that seems relevant for the times we’re living in.
Except when it doesn’t. Every once in a while I get stuck in a loop where I start writing and then fall out of love with the pair of quotes, or I can’t seem to figure out what I want to say about a topic even though I’m really digging the quotes. What’s The Ripples Guy to do?
Well, I came across an NPR interview this week that piqued my interest: A surprising trick to making hard choices: Try thinking less. I was intrigued by the notion that a key barrier to good decision making is our fear of regret. They suggested one way to increase the speed AND quality of our decisions is to accept the fact that we’ll sometimes have regrets about some of our decisions: “People who feel less regret are people who are able to say, ‘I made the best decision I could with the information I had at the time, and this outcome–I couldn’t know it in advance.'”
So how about we make an extra effort to celebrate all the choices and decisions we’ve made that led us to this particular point in this particular life we’re living these days. And let’s decide to be okay if we’ve racked up a few regrets here and there. What do you think?
What do you think?
Peace,
Paul