How to (not) sleepwalk through life
thoughts on living an intentional life
How many times have you met someone and realized ‘Wow, they are really living the life they want to live.’ And contrast this to people who seem like they are just dragging themselves along.
In my experience, while a lot of people might want the former, the latter is where a lot of people end up to be.
So, how do you go about living an intentional life?
I like Charlie Munger’s way of thinking a lot and so it’s much easier to invert this and ask - how to sleepwalk through life and then avoid all of those things.
How to sleepwalk through life -
The best way to do this is to not have a direction. Yes people occasionally drift and get lost but a sustained indecision about your life’s direction ensures you float like a drunken sailor.
Another great way is to always listen to others and do those things to people please. This could be both - lack of awareness of what one wants or lack of prioritisation of one’s wants.
Excuses also serve great here - “I’m not ready”, “I can do this later” etc
Neglecting your internal wants (eg joy, excitement etc) for external things (eg money, fame, power)
Learned helplessness. Staying in a wrong situation long enough to believe that is always going to be the norm.
Inability to appreciate smaller things and believing only large things are great.
Inability to think for oneself
In a nutshell, not being aware of your internal wants + not translating them into clear actionables + not acting on those for variety of distractions leads to sleepwalking.
Sleepwalking through life ensures that you wake up one day and realize that everything around you (and may be even your own personality) is not at all what you wanted. So if you find yourself doing one or more of these, invert. And invert fast.