PNTV: Perfectly Yourself by Matthew Kelly (#160)

Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to Philosopher's Notes tv. Today, another great book, Perfectly Yourself by Matthew Kelly. Perfectly Yourself, Matthew Kelly. We recently did another one of his books, the Rhythm of Life. Great stuff. Let's jump straight in. Philosopher's Note, Bunch of big ideas. Check that out. And five of my favorite big ideas here. We'll start with number one. If you want to be perfectly yourself and experience the nine elements of enduring happiness, which is the subtitle of this book, the first one is Embrace Progress. So too often we have these big goals we're super fired up about, but all we do is take an inventory between where we are and where we want to be, right? And we see this huge gap and it stresses us out. We're not perfect yet. So then what do we do? Oftentimes we give up. And he says, look, if we want to create a perfect version of ourselves in experience enduring happiness, we need to embrace progress. So we've been talking a lot about the process as primary. The process is primary, which is huge, and this is a little tweak on that. So when you make the process primary rather than the outcome, most of the time we're thinking about the outcome, right? The elite performers are focused on the process and we perform elitely. We're thinking about the process. So when you track progress and you can see, look, you're getting a little better, you're a little closer to your goal today or this week than you were yesterday or last week or this month or last month, you're making progress. You are a better human being right now than you were X days or years ago. We want to see our evolution in that context and embrace the fact that we're making progress rather than constantly beating ourselves up for not being where we want to be yet. So progress, embrace it. Big idea. Next. Big idea. That's a great catalyst for making a lot of progress is this. Do the next right thing. Just do. We've got Nike telling us, just do it. Matthew tells us, just do the next right thing. Just do the next right thing. Anytime you're feeling overwhelmed, you're confused, you don't know what to do, just do the next right thing in any given moment. Byron, Katie tells us there's only one thing we need to do now. We can confuse ourselves. Marcus Aurelius tells us, don't confuse yourself with the vision of a lifetime at once. Not necessary. You don't need to know the turn you're going to make in 342 miles on this trip. You're making right now you need to drive right where you are. Make the turn you're making right now. You'll figure out that turn in 332 miles when you get there. It's the same thing with life. Don't stress yourself out about all the things you need to do in a year or two or three or ten or whatever, or shaming yourself and all the things you think you should have already done a month ago or a year ago or a decade ago. Just do the next right thing. Just do the next right thing. Well, what's the right thing, you might ask. We always know the next right thing. It's really funny. How do I know? Come on. If we slowed down long enough and we were honest with ourselves, we know. The problem is we rarely slow down. We're so habitually addictively reacting to life and distress that we don't slow down long enough to ask ourselves the question, what's the next right thing I can do right now? Which is why we talk about cultivating the ability to step in between stimulus and response. You, you got to slow down long enough to even ask that question. Now, sometimes we have a hint of, wow, I really shouldn't spend more time doing this. I should in fact do that. And we know what the next right thing is. And then we just choose not to do it. Well, the first big idea in the other book we just covered by Matthew Kelly was everything is a choice. And if you want to be the best version of yourself, you need to start making good choices. The best choice you can possibly make is to just do the next right thing. It's the second element. I believe in his nine for enduring happiness. That's huge. Just do the next right thing. That's all you need to do. If that's all you did, if that was the one idea that you embraced, that we embraced, we'd be there. That literally is the way to live with Arete. Again, Greeks told us you want to have happiness and express the highest version of yourself moment to moment. To moment translates as excellence or virtue. But that's what it means to express the highest version of yourself. How do you do that? Just do the next right thing. It's not complicated, it's not easy to implement, but it is simple. Simple but not easy. But we want to do it. Make it a habit. Alright, next big idea. Discipline and happiness. Notice they're related. Discipline and happiness, he says they're perfectly correlated. Look at anything going well in your life. So think about what's really working for you in your life. Right now, he would say that you have the most discipline in that area. There is a wonderful correlation there. You're doing really, really well. You're super healthy. Well, you're very disciplined with your health, you consistently eat well, you consistently exercise, etc. Not so healthy. Oh, shoot. You're not paying much attention to what you're eating or how much rest you're getting, or whether or not you're exercising. There's a correlation between your discipline and your well being. Throw that into any part of your life, your relationships. If you're disciplined in how you treat people around you, your spouse, your children, etc. Well, guess what, you're going to have great relationships. If you're not and you allow yourself to fly off the handle and get upset and not be present, etc. Etc. Well, there you go. That's where your relationships are, your finances. Anything you want to throw into this, you're going to find the higher the level of discipline, the higher the level of flourishing or success or happiness in that domain. Matthew jokingly says, look, if you're too happy, then what you should do is reduce your discipline. That will take down your happiness. Now, if you want to be happy, you just need to drive it up a little bit. It's a really powerful idea. Discipline and happiness, he says. When asked, well, how much discipline should I exert? He says, well, how happy do you want to be? There you go. How happy do you want to be? Well, there you go. Use your discipline wisely, your willpower wisely, to create habits. We've got a class that's coming up right around the time that I'm sharing this on habits101. So you can become disciplined and use your willpower to set up habits that run on autopilot. That's the best way to go about doing it. Then you actually don't even need that much discipline. You use it wisely in the beginning and then it just runs itself. I'm not telling myself every morning that I want to meditate. I do a ton of stuff every day that doesn't require discipline. The things don't require discipline. The discipline was required to create the habits. Then the habits run themselves. Tiny little tweaks here and there. But I use my discipline and my willpower to create new habits and to move through whatever hurdles I have. But I don't exhaust it trying to get myself to do every single little thing. More on that later. Fourth big idea. Simplify, simplify. You want to have enduring happiness, Simplify. He quotes Henry David Thoreau who says we basically waste our times, right? We're all moving, you know, the ants are busy. What does that mean? We had to simplify. And he said, simplify, simplify, simplify. The joke is, Emerson apparently said one would have sufficed. Just simplify. You actually want to simplify. So there you go. If you find yourself with a ton going on, you're overwhelmed, et cetera. A lot of times that's related to the fact that you aren't clear on what you actually want. When you get clear on what you want, you identify your one thing. Like we talked about in the episode on Gary Keller's One thing. What's your one thing? When you actually know what you want in your life, you can let go of all the trivial many things that keep you busy. So simplify in every aspect of your life. If you have clutter going on, get rid of it. If you want more discipline, it's really funny. Researchers say just tidying up, just cleaning up your workspace makes you more disciplined. You have higher willpower. Bring people into a lab and they show them a dirty office, or they're in a dirty office that's kind of not that neat, or one that's super neat. And then they have them look at. Or they also separate from that, have them look at websites, websites that are nicely designed, they're tidy, and websites that aren't. Those simple variables directly impact the individual's willpower. So simple things like simplifying your workspace and your home and decluttering actually boost your discipline. Again, whole other conversation for later. Final big idea. Serve. Serve. We've got a great quote I'll share here. Albert Schweitzer tells us this. This is the question we want to ask ourselves. How can I serve? He says, I am certain of one thing. This is Albert Schweitzer, Nobel Prize winner, 1953. I am certain of one thing. The only ones among us who will ever be truly happy are those of us who have sought and found a way to serve. So if you want to create enduring happiness, find a way to serve. We talked about this yesterday in our note on Edward Deasy's why We do what We Do. Intrinsic motivation. The happiest among us are those who have found ways to give themselves away. How can I serve? How can I serve? Is a really good question. How can I serve? Make that the predominant question Matthew says, versus what's in it for me? Most of the time we go through life, what's in it for me? I'm going to do this. So I can get that. That's one orientation. Another one is how can I serve? How can I serve profoundly right now? How can I serve profoundly? Think about that. People in your immediate life, you don't need to go create a write in bestseller or create this artwork or create a whatever Oscar winning movie. How can you serve right now, today? The people in your life, your spouse or your girlfriend or boyfriend or your kids or your colleagues or someone at the grocery store who you just happen to bump into. How can you serve people in your life? Find a way to do that and you're going to discover ways to increase your happiness significantly. How can we serve? That's the key way to boost our happiness and be perfectly ourselves. So there you go. Focus on progress rather than obsessing about the outcome all the time. Process and progress. Good things. Just do the next right thing. This is a great idea. Just do the next right thing and quit pretending you don't know what it is because you do. Discipline is always correlated to happiness. We talked about it, right? Which area of your life are you really thriving in? Well, you have the most discipline there. Drive the discipline down. You drive your flourishing down. Simplify, simplify, simplify and serve. Hope you enjoyed. Look forward to sharing more with you soon. Have another awesome day. See you.