Making Things Better Is Too Big A Goal

Is this too much?

I want to share a few thoughts about making things better. Whether that’s making the world a better place, or making your own life better. And the frustration of the overwhelming enormity of those goals.

It’s even more obvious now, where there’s so much volatility in our current political climate. Especially if you’re in the USA (or follow our news).

But whether or not you’re working actively to change what’s going on in the larger world, or in your own personal life, your individual efforts can only go so far. There’s a lot of causes, projects, goals, ideas, that you will never be able to work on, things that you will never be able to affect.

And that doesn’t have to be a painful thing. It’s neutral. This has always been the case. There are things that you can change and things that you can’t.

But it can become painful when we get it into our heads that we “should” be able to do everything. To advocate for every good cause. To support every worthwhile goal. To finish every project that you ever started. To follow through with every good idea.

Or it can become painful when we think that nothing good can happen for us until the world is better. That, until the collective wakes up and tears down injustice, capitalism, white supremacy, the gender binary, prejudice against neurodiversity, etc., we cannot have a good life.

But that can set the bar unreasonably (impossibly) high for a single person.

But that doesn’t mean that the opposite extreme is the only other option. We don’t have to give up and never do anything because we can’t fix it all. It’s not all-or-nothing.

An alternative

Here’s a third option.

How about acknowledging that there are limits to what you can do, and that limits aren’t necessarily a bad thing? They can provide structure, reduce overwhelm, enhance focus, offer clarity.

If you can only do so much, what matters most to you?
What’s busy work that doesn’t have as much meaning or impact?
What’s within your current capability?
What’s one thing you can do today that will matter?

These answers will vary from season to season in life, and from day to day. And that’s okay, too. That’s normal.

When I get overwhelmed by wanting to change so much in the world (usually when I read the news, which is why I only do that in short bursts and at intentional times), it helps me to focus small.

To narrow down the scope of what I want to change to my own life, and make something better.

Because making my own life even a teeny tiny bit better does make the world a teeny tiny bit better. Because I’m part of the world and my life is part of all things.

So if I’m feeling a little bit better, all the people that I interact with will get a slightly better version of me, and I can have a slightly better impact, and do slightly better work, and everything is slightly better around me.

It doesn’t change the world, but it changes the world. It doesn’t change everything in the world, but it does change my little corner of the world, and I count as part of the world. Does that make sense?

Ways I’ve made my life better

To give you a few examples of what I mean, here are three things that I’ve done recently to make my life a teeny bit better.

1. I rescheduled an appointment from a week out to two weeks out, to give myself more time to prepare, and felt an instant sense of relief.
2. I did another unsubscribe purge to get off of a bunch of mailing lists and YouTube channels that I don’t care about that much, and that just give me the feeling of being behind on things I thought I should read or watch, but which don’t provide enough value to make it worth using my capacity on. And that way the newsletters that I care about stand out more.
3. And this weekend I bought season tickets to my local symphony orchestra, so that from September through May, I will have a once a month special night out with my mom or my best friend, to listen to beautiful music, and do something a little bit different from my day-to-day routine. (And the season tickets were surprisingly inexpensive.)

Things like this may seem like not a big deal, or superfluous, but they matter. They make my life a teeny bit better. A teeny bit more manageable, more beautiful.

What’s something that you can do, that is within your current capacity, to make your life a teeny bit better?

If it would be helpful to get a few ideas of ways you can make things a teeny bit better, and even turn low level annoyances into fun, here’s a post I made about that.

Okay, I hope that this gives an interesting perspective. Take care and I wish you a neurowonderful day.