In 1933, a broken and disillusioned woman named Frau sent a letter to psychologist Carl Jung, asking “how to live.”
(She didn’t have any Instagram influencers to shout motivational platitudes at her, I guess)
Jung replied:
“Your questions are unanswered, because you want to know how you should live. One lives as one can.
…if you do with conviction the next and most necessary thing, you are always doing something important and destined by fate.”
He was sharing the key to life.
They are part of recovery communities such as Alcoholics Anonymous.
It was even the title of a song in the ,Disney’s Frozen 2,.
“The next right.”
Revisiting this story made me think about how much my thoughts on success and progress have changed over the years.
“Success” redefined
I’ve been doing this Nerd Fitness for 15+ years.
Millions of people visit the site every year, 50,000+ customers have bought things through NF and our coaches have served 15,000+ customers 1 to 1.
During this time, I have changed my perspective on “success” and “living well” quite a bit.
I believed that the only path to success required martial discipline following a specific plan. I never missed a workout and I was incredibly proud of that.
It didn’t occur to me how much a ,privileged and simple life, I lived where I had 100% control over my time.
(Apologies to all the parents and carers who read my 25 year perspective!).
Now that I’m 40 I can see the types of people we have actually help with Nerd Fitness, I have changed my perspective on success and “living well” quite dramatically.
Success doesn’t happen when we learn how to do everything perfectly, but when we become better at staying alive even when things go wrong.
In other words, success is learning to be inconsistent. Learning to be good enough for long enough.
And that means, when life seems chaotic, we narrow our focus to “the next right thing.”
Do the next right thing
A ,recent newsletter, by author Oliver Burkeman talked about how he has chosen to maintain a small sliver of sanity in an overwhelming world.
It led me to these suggestions by author Eckert Tolle:
“What you refer to as your ‘life’ should more accurately be called your ‘life state.’ It is psychological time: past and future.
…Forget about your life situation for a while and pay attention to your life.
Find the “narrow gate that leads to life.” It’s called Now.
Limit your life to this moment. Your life situation may be full of problems – most life situations are – but find out if you have a problem right now. Not tomorrow or in ten minutes, but now.
You have a problem now?
When we wonder about what has already happened and freak out about all the things that could or should happen in the future…
It’s easy to feel out of control and overwhelmed.
Which brings us back to that clichéd solution: “the next right thing.”
It’s a cliche just because it’s true.
We can zoom in and narrow our focus to something that is still within our control. In some cases, yes there is a problem right now. And we can only focus on that one thing.
But in many other situations, we often worry about all the problems that could be, or the problems outside of our control, that prevent us from taking action on the real things we can control.
Burkeman continues:
As for telling myself I only needed to do the next thing… you can always only do the next thing, then the next, whether you like it or not.
It’s a little odd, actually, to refer to any of these techniques as “narrowing your horizons,” as if they somehow involved artificially limiting yourself.
Really, you’re just consciously recognizing how limited you’ve always been already.
We all know how easy it is for us ,they overcomplicate things,.
And when the world feels like a garbage fire, it can help to zoom in on the next decision, the tiniest goal, and just do the next right thing.
It might include a workout or a walk, focusing on the next meal, calling our therapist or ,finally saying no, in a commitment.
If “now” is the only moment there is, then “the next right thing” is the only thing we can really do.
I’m going to do the next right thing for me: go for a walk.
-Steve
PS: Maria Popova has ,a great piece of writing about “the next right thing”, as it pertains to her life as a writer that inspired this piece.
PS: Nerd Fitness is hiring a few part-time remote people (especially with flexible nights and weekends) to take inbound, scheduled calls from potential clients interested in 1-on-1 coaching. ,Click here to learn more,.
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