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In 1933, an overwhelmed and frustrated woman named Frau sent a letter to the psychologist Carl Jung, asking “how to live.”
(I guess she didn’t have influencers on Instagram shouting motivational platitudes at her)
Jung replied:
“There are no answers to your questions, because you want to know how to live. A man lives as he can.
…if you do the next and most necessary thing with conviction, you are always doing something meaningful and purposeful with destiny.”
He shared the key to life.
It is part of recovery communities such as Alcoholics Anonymous.
It was even the title of the song Disney’s Frozen 2.
“The next real thing.”
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 stuff for over 15 years.
Millions of people visit the site every year, 50,000+ customers have purchased items through NF, and our trainers have served 15,000+ clients 1-on-1.
During that time, I changed my perspective on “success” and “living well” quite a bit.
I used to think that the only path to success required militant discipline to a specific plan. I never missed a practice and I was incredibly proud of this.
It didn’t occur to me how much it was a privileged and simple life I lived, where I was 100% in control of my time.
(Apologies to all the parents and guardians who read my 25-year perspective!).
Now that I’m 40 years old and I see what people are like to me actually help with Nerd Fitness, I changed my perspective on success and the “good life” quite dramatically.
Success doesn’t happen when we learn how to do everything perfectly, but when we get better at staying afloat even when things are going badly.
In other words, success is learning to be inconsistently consistent. Learning to be good enough for long enough.
And that means, when life seems chaotic, narrowing your focus to “the next right thing.”
Do the next right thing
A recent newsletter by author Oliver Burkeman talked about how he chose to keep a little sanity in a vast world.
This brought me to these lines from author Eckert Tolle:
“What you call your “life” should be more precisely called your “life situation”. 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.
Narrow your life down to this moment. Your life situation may be full of problems – most life situations are – but find out if you have problems right now. Not tomorrow or in ten minutes, but now.
Do you have a problem now?
When we think about what has already happened, and freak out about everything that could happen or should happen in the future…
It’s easy to feel out of control and overwhelmed.
Which brings us back to that cliché solution: “the next right thing”.
It’s a cliché only because it’s true.
We can zoom in yyyyyy and narrow our focus to something that is still within our control. In some situations, 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 might be, or problems beyond our control, that prevent us from taking action on the real things we can control.
Burkeman continues:
As for telling myself that I should just do the next thing… you can always just do the next thing, and the next thing, whether you like it or not.
It’s a bit odd, actually, to call any of these techniques “narrowing horizons,” as if they involved somehow artificially limiting yourself.
Indeed, you only consciously recognize how limited you have always been.
We all know how easy it is for us overcomplicate things.
And when the world feels like a dumpster fire, it can help you zoom in on that next decision, the smallest goal, and just do the next right thing.
This can include exercising or going for a walk, focusing on the next meal, calling our therapist or finally say no on obligation.
If “now” is the only time 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 myself: take a walk.
-Steve
PS: Maria Popova has great article on “the next right thing” because it relates to her life as a writer who inspired this work.
PS: Nerd Fitness employs several part-time remote people (especially with flexible night and weekend hours) to take incoming, scheduled calls from potential clients interested in our 1-on-1 coaching. Click here to learn more.
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