Are We Asking The Wrong Questions? – When Your ‘Best Life’ is Not Even Close.

I read something yesterday that made me seriously reconsider my definition of success. It was written by Jordan B Peterson, who I am intellectually crushing hard on, in his mighty superior tome, ’12 Rules For Life – An Antidote to Chaos’.

‘People often get basic psychological questions backwards. Why do people take drugs? Not a mystery. It’s why they don’t take them all the time that’s the mystery. Why do people suffer from anxiety? That’s not a mystery. We’re breakable and mortal. A million things can go wrong, in a million ways. We should be terrified out of our skulls at every second. But we’re not. The same can be said for depression, laziness and criminality.’

Maybe we are all doing better than we actually think we are? The fact that we are not all bombed out of our minds, freaking out 24/7 , succumbing to total sloth or nicking other people’s money instead of making our own, means we are at least doing a few things right.

I am not suggesting we should continually aim the bar so low, but just for those days when you are feeling especially cold, crap and lonely – remember this.

Sure, you might not be ‘Living Your Best Life’ right now, but you are beating some statistical odds by not being a total F*ck-up 🙂

This Get Happier post is brought to you by someone who was thrown so many lemons that she started to make her own squash.

Photo Credit: Wellcome Collection