Supporting your short term self versus your long term self

Humans of New York's photo.: 

"I wish I'd partied a little less. People always say 'be true to yourself.' But that's misleading, because there are two selves. There's your short term self, and there's your long term self. And if you're only true to your short term self, your long term self slowly decays."

Now that there is the truth! That's why I'm up doing my job before my job to catch up for all the time I spent partying when I was younger. And some of it was worth it, but a lot of it was me just acting out my "issues." Young'uns, take heed!

It behooves us to reflect on what we love and why we love it, and spend some quality time developing ourselves in that direction. Partying is fun and all, but it's not a whole life. A whole life is about balance. Satisfaction is about feeling in balance. There's a lot of satisfaction to be had from working through those issues that make us want to just party all the time. My issues were about escape. I had a lot of residual pain from experiencing too much death and separations in my early life. I kept moving, kept living for a good time (that usually wasn't all that good, but what was supposed to be fun), and being pretty half-assed with reaching my goals. And I was smart, but not committed. Had goals, but not enough discipline. 

So I want to just say you're never too young to learn about commitment to reaching your goals and cultivating the discipline to reach them. It might even be part of the prescription for overcoming those issues because it'll make you feel so good about yourself.


Come to my Salt in the Sugar Bowl book talk at Quail Ridge Books & Music, Raleigh on Sunday, March 9th at 3 pm.