Create the future #3 - Why we need lazy, and not ambitious people to save the world

Howdy, my hearts!

How are we today? 🤗

Good morning you wonderful beings! 🌿🥂🌺 How are you! Each of you deserves a big hug, lots of love and a gigantic cup of coffee this morning. If I could, I would serve you all three in person today! 🤗☕

I know: Things are rough in this world right now.
There is a lot of uncertainty out there, and 2020 will go down in the history books as the year of fear, anxiety, and ultra clean kitchen surfaces. 🙈 Anxiety silently creeps in through the cracks - in the form of an unkind word, terribly sad news, a harsh e-mail, or a stupid fight at home - we initially don’t see it, we can’t feel it, and BOOM, suddenly it’s crawling all over us, into us, and makes itself at home. If you feel it, rest reassured: you are not alone*. 💖

Through our education systems, humans are conditioned to excel and to strive to be competitively superior in almost all other aspects of life.
No doubt, great successes have been achieved by the human quest (or greed?) for more. Would we ever be able to travel to the moon without the ambition of a selected few? Would we be able to drive sports cars, wear snail-harvested face masks from South Korea, or drink the perfect cappuccino made by a DeLonghi coffee machine that I am using every morning (and noon, and afternoon)? The answer is simple: No. Without ambition, creativity and the insatiable human thirst for excellence, the world would surely be a different place. 🌱

However, the question we often forget to ask ourselves is: Are we focusing our higher abilities on relevant goals? Are we trying to create a better future for all of us, or a short moment of glory and external approval for just a few? Mark Manson, bestselling author of “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck” writes that “there’s this kind of psychological tyranny in our culture today, a sense that we must always be proving that we’re special, unique, exceptional all the time, no matter what, only to have that moment of exceptionalism swept away in the current of all the other human greatness that’s constantly happening.” This not only creates massive amounts of anxiety, but also makes us run, like little busy sheep, into the totally wrong direction. 🙈

It seems that being ‘average’ has become the new standard of failure.
The biggest fear of our generation: to be in the middle of the pack. To be completely unrecognisably in the crowd. To not shine, to never stand out, to neither be pretty nor particularly ugly, not thin, not fat, to be alway averagely dressed, to not really be relevant or influential, to not get the job, surely not rich, but surely not poor, and never to win the contests of followers, likes, awards, rankings, and all other lists we humans come up with. 🤷‍♀️ Even during this pandemic, the amount of people who seek validation for the amount of banana bread they baked, is scarily high. It takes a distracted monkey mind to remain caught up in this challenge. 🍞🍌🙈

In reality, statistically speaking, pretty much all of us are average in almost everything we do most of the time, and throughout our entire lives. Even if we manage to get to the top of our field - and if you are not driven like Michael Jordan (watch “The Last Dance” on Netflix if you want some serious motivation) - in this day and age, none of us will stay exceptional for very long. So why even bother, I hear you ask? 🤗

In order to create a new world, each of us has to redefine what success means to us.
We all have been there: Running like hamsters on our small wheels of day-to-day-life, chasing glory, money, approval, awards, and status, just to realise that no outward achievement will ever be able to fill that pitch-black hole we carry around in our souls for good. The result: Anxiety. Worry. Mental dis-ease. What we never ask ourselves though before we leave the house, fuelled by ambition and dreams of a better tomorrow, is why do we need to be special? Why do we feel the pressure of needing to achieve, why can’t we just - be?

The School of Life explains in this wonderful (under 8 minutes long) video how to be completely ordinary - and how special it is to accept the same.

Don’t hurry, just be happy! 🦚
We need a more gentler, more realistic version of what success means today, if we want to move forward into a future that focuses on happiness instead of top performance as its key goal. We need more love, more hugs, more soul, more understanding and better listening, instead of rankings, lists, material wealth and the glorification of being on top (and then falling from it again). The secret lies in our mindset and in our hearts, revealing itself in the way we judge ourselves and others, how we treat nature and work, and what meaning we choose to give to our mundane, simple, irrelevant, and thus, truly magical lives. 🌺

We need more lazy people in this world.
Imagine if all seven billion of us would be entrepreneurial and industrious? Our planet would be destroyed in a year. So, ironically, it is NOT the successful people that save the world - it’s the “lazy” ones, the ones who seek joy inside themselves and in the simple joys of life, instead of in unnecessary material wealth, stress, or self-created patterns of fear. It’s the lazy one’s who, once they found happiness, don’t need to seek anything more, and have learned to just be. It’s the lazy ones that find shortcuts on their way to contentment by being happy, healthy and ok with what they have and with what with what they don’t! 🌞 #theworldisupsidedown

If we don’t learn to find pleasure in the simple and the most mundane aspects of life (hello, painted flower pots!), we will not be able to find pleasure anywhere else.
Success can mean a lot, but for most of us it contains happiness, health, and a journey of self-actualisation - and if this means, for instance in my case, to be in love with my husband, grow carrots, spend time in nature, create little presents for my friends, take care of animals, crochet my heart out, read as many books as I can in this lifetime, help others to read them too, learn something new every day, and write funny poems, books, or articles like this one (which hopefully makes you feel better), then this, according to my very own standard is A VERY SUCCESSFUL LIFE. 🤗🌿🌺

Ask yourself today: What does true success mean to you?

Today, embrace being an aristocrat of the spirit.
So instead of ticking off your long To-Do-list, why don’t you try to be an inspiration to you and others by doing, oh, well, absolutely NOTHING! Celebrate the state of laying low and being idle, potter around in your little garden of joy with zero desire for any result, hang out with a friend or your grandmother for no other purpose than having a good time, lend someone an ear, or daydream on the couch about the best way of convincing your dog to bring you a snack … you’ll see, the world is your oyster. It is up to us to break the cycle - and just be. 🙏

If you need further inspiration on how to be slow and yet soooooooo amazing, please do yourself a favour, and watch this 5 minute video on the “extreme life of a sloth”. Thank me later! 😅

Remember: You don’t have to prove anything to anybody - including yourself. 💖#youareenough

Take a deep breath, yes, do it once more!, lean back, allow your thoughts to wander, and enjoy the wonderful warmth of guilt-free mediocrity. Today, wear it like a badge of honour! And don’t forget: Being idle is a full-time job. 🙏

Tell me how it goes! I am curious to hear what all you DID NOT DO today! I will be back on Thursday with the next edition of ‘Create the Future’. 💥

With love from Goa,
Isabelle 🌿

*If you feel, however, it gets too much, please speak to someone. Seek help. You’ve got this.