choose to be satisfied

concept · in 3 sources (2018–2024)

Decide at day's end that what you did was enough, whatever it was.

Sources by year: 2018: 2 · 2024: 1

Also known as: measure the gain, not the gap

Questions

The most important statements of each year; all statements.

2024-05-18 · The Best Advice I Received Lately 💭 — Ali calls the best advice he got recently the idea that no achievement you could reach will make you any happier than you are right now. — 00:00:00

2018-03-21 · Q & A - 5,000 Subscribers! — Ali says milestones such as 100,000 subscribers, a three-bedroom house, a raise or a million dollars never bring the promised happiness: in Miley Cyrus's words, it is about the climb, not the destination. — 00:13:55
2018-05-07 · Live Q&A + Hangout - Bank Holiday vibes - Ali Abdaal, Cambridge medical student — recommendation: Ali: To a student ill during A-levels, Ali says the choice is being okay with not doing your previous best or feeling bad, and feeling bad helps nothing, so being okay is the logical option. — 00:34:09
- Ali thinks that, for the most part, we can choose our feelings, which takes practice; he does not mean that someone with clinical depression should just man up. — 00:35:06
- Citing Stoicism, Ali says there is a gap between a stimulus and our response, and within that gap we have the space to choose our feelings about it. — 00:35:56
- Using Derren Brown's example of a friend's missed birthday invitation, which stops hurting once you learn their grandma died, Ali says the story we tell ourselves about an event dictates our response. — 00:36:46