The Thief Of Joy | #29

The Thief Of Joy

No. 29 — read time 3 minutes

Welcome to The Soloist, a weekly newsletter where I share timeless ideas and insights about life, business, and art.

Today at a glance

• Comparison Is The Thief of Joy

• Tweet: Retiring In Your 30’s And Feeling Shortchanged

This past week was an especially hard one for me — my mom went in for triple-bypass heart surgery.

I’m glad to report that not only was the surgery boring (read: successful, no surprises), she was discharged a day earlier than expected. Modern medicine is a miracle.

But for the 72 hours post-op as I sat by her bed while she tried to get glimpses of rest in between nurse checkups, I was struck by how fragile life is and how short our time here can be.

A healthy person wants 1,000 things, a sick person only 1

Sitting in the hospital as my mom shut her eyes to sleep, I started thinking about the ways in which we distract ourselves from the simple joys of life.

There was a time when my life was consumed with comparison. Who had the better car, who went to a better school, who had the better job, and later as a startup founder who had the better investors.

On and on it went.

These types of games are a choice. Playing them is a choice whether we realize it or not.

Theodore Roosevelt once said “comparison is the thief of joy”.

I’m fortunate for many things. My health, my wife, my daughter. But one of the biggest fortunes of my life has been the ability to take periods of rest in between spurts of activity to reflect. To look inward. To step off the treadmill of life and check in with myself.

How? I just choose not to optimize for squeezing every penny of productivity out of my life. I’ve saved enough where I don’t mind taking a few months off to think about next steps.

Aziz Ansari has a story about this idea of making space by chasing less:

@azucaradio

Aziz running into Frank Ocean #frankocean #azizansari #homer #comedy #fyp #viral

I’ve become comfortable with who I am (and who I’m not) and learned to avoid comparison as much as possible. When I sense that familiar feeling of envy, I notice it. I pay attention to it. And then I let go of it.

Ryan Holiday recently spoke with voice actor and musician Troy Baker on his Daily Stoic podcast. I loved this line in particular:

Gratitude Is The Only Antidote

Comparison, or envy, is outward facing. It presumes scarcity. “Someone else has something I don’t.”

Gratitude on the other hand presumes abundance. “I have everything I need.”

I started with meditation and eventually turned to gratitude journaling. I’ve written about this in past:

The point is we are all susceptible to feelings and emotions that rob us of the joy of life. That take us outside of ourselves.

Noticing it is the first step. The second step is the harder one — breaking free from its grip. But it’s possible with a bit of gratitude.

Till next week,

-Tom

Tweet: Retiring In Your 30’s (and feeling shortchanged)

This tweet tied in neatly with the topic I was thinking about this week, and rightly so. How many of us have promised ourselves we’d be happy if “we got X, Y, or Z”. This tweet (and accompanying reddit post) does a great job of holding the mirror up to our own faces and forcing us to ask — what if it doesn’t bring me happiness?

P.S. Whenever you're ready, these are the ways I can help you:

1. If you save a lot of bookmarks on Twitter (like me), try dewey. —
   the easiest way to organize Twitter bookmarks (I'm one of the makers).

2. For audience or business growth coaching you book a slot here.

This week’s newsletter is brought to you by Beehiiv.

Beehiiv is the only email service provider with a built-in referral program. Explode the growth of your newsletter by using the most powerful persuasion tool out there, word of mouth.

Start growing your newsletter faster here.

If you enjoyed today's newsletter, consider sharing it with friends and family. If they don’t hate you, they might thank you.

If this email was forwarded to you, consider subscribing to receive them in futur