Okay me, listen up:
Stop thinking about how to make money. Stop thinking about how to climb the ladder. Stop thinking about how you appear in the minds of others. Those are all dead ends. They all just lead to a life of suffering in search of a few fleeting moments of “victory” that evaporate in an instant.
Think about how to participate wholeheartedly in life. Right now. In this instant. In every “this instant.”
If you’re living above subsistence level, let go of the money thing. You’ve got what you need. If more comes, fine. All the better. But stop making decisions based on whether you’re leaving any money on the table or whether someone else will be getting too much of a share of your money. Trust that reality puts all the money where it needs to be.
Stop thinking about whether what you’re working on will set you up for status or will typecast you or pigeon-hole you. Just live, man. Do it because it works wholeheartedly NOW.
Stop thinking about how others will process your actions or predicting what they will tell themselves about your intentions. Just think about the love-rooted thing you are doing (everything you’re doing is rooted in love) and keep hold of those feelings of love. Be free to be the ‘you’ YOU love, the ‘you’ who loves others, and the ‘you’ who loves you back ...even if others seem to fail to.
Base your decisions on whether or not your choice constitutes wholehearted participation in life right now. On whether or not you are engaging the world and the people around you with connection, care, joy, generosity, fun, adventure, togetherness, community, support, lightness, understanding. On whether you’re being the you you want to be IN THIS FUCKING MOMENT. If you are, you’re doing your work. If you’re not, you’ve got some work to do. No big deal.
Do your work. The work that makes you you. Just connect wholeheartedly with the world and you’re DONE. Do that again. DONE. Do it again. Adding anything else to it - like a deeper meaning or a focus on some necessary future outcome - kills your joy. It frays your connections. It makes you feel lonely. You don’t have time for that shit. You only get one life.
Stop measuring your work against the work of others. “Others’ work” is none of your business. Your business is your work. And the world needs your work. That’s why you do it the way you do it. In the amounts you do it. When you do it. No one else does it like you.
Just do your work and give it to the swirling universe. Then do it again. What the swirl does with it is none of your business. It does what’s best. Period. Enjoy whatever good comes of it, but don’t let anyone tell you that the good was because of you. It wasn’t. It was a gift TO you. And don’t tell yourself any bad was because of you either. That’s a gift too, just harder to recognize. Receive it and respond lovingly. The swirl has got you. If you’re going to congratulate yourself for anything it’s for just doing your work and letting it swirl.
Anything that goes well, don’t try to repeat it. Anything that goes poorly, don’t try to permanently design it out of your life. You don’t have control over the outcome. That is the swirl’s job. And the swirl’s outcome is always a gift (regardless of how it appears).
What IS in your control is your wholehearted participation in the gift of this present moment. That is your work. That is your only work.
Do your work.
Do your work again.
Keep doing your work.
That’s it.
Now get to work.