Zooming in and Zooming Out

What’s up friend,

Today, I’m diving into how I’ve learned to live with significantly more purpose and inner peace than just a few years ago.

I share specific book recommendations and things to do, and while the backstory regards young men, the lessons are useful to anyone.

Let's get into it.

Backstory

I watched a video the other day on "Why Young Men Aren't Growing Up". The basic argument was that many young men are immature and living empty lives.

The video was good, but what shocked me was scrolling through the comments and reading how many other young men are struggling with feeling anxious, lost and purposeless.

Gerbert has ~200k subscribers but the video has 1.5m views. It clearly struck a chord. It's not just him.

I reflect to 3 years ago when I was 20. I certainly felt a degree of confusion and anxiety with what I was doing and where I was going.

But I was doing things about it.

I started what eventually turned into my business when I was 19. I had been working out consistently since I was 16. I had already been in a long-term relationship. I was attending a great university. I had friends.

The image Gerbert paints is much different.

Gerbert’s (Scary) Image

Gerbert paints an image of a high school graduate who lives in his parents' basement, plays video games, smokes weed, and practically lives on "the Hub".

He has few friends (because a lot of them left for university) and if he DOES have a job, his co-workers are all aged 40+.

He cites some scary stats that give evidence to this stereotype rising, (including the fact that more Americans aged 18-29 now live with their parents (52%) than anytime before the Great Depression).

This and other stats such as dramatically low male participation in the labor force and university graduation rates lead me to believe this scary image is more common than I'd like to believe.

I can't claim to know what caused this. Gerbert makes some claims to causation in the video, but they are such complex issues that I don't feel comfortable sharing an opinion.

What I will share is what has been useful to me.

My Advice

At first, I was going to just repeat the habits (gym, books, digital minimalism) that I believe helped me the most in getting from A (anxious/lost) to B (calm/purposeful).

But that felt a bit too much like playing a broken record.

Instead, I’ll share my philosophy on living a meaningful and impactful yet calm life as whole.

In short: Get better at zooming WAY in and zooming WAY out.

To avoid anxiety, zoom in.

It helps to treat each day independently. Anxiety is worrying about the future, so you want to get really good at focusing on today instead (see “How to Stop Worrying and Start Living” by Dale Carnegie).

However, a question that arises is, “What is important to do today?”

This is where zooming out comes in.

To find out what is important, you need to go beyond the news/social media to the distant past and future.

Read philosophy and history (e.g. “A Guide to the Good Life” by William Irvine and “Sapiens” by Yuval Noah Harari) to uncover the timeless truths about the human condition.

Read books like “The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity” and articles on the world’s most pressing problems to find where you’re most needed.

Realize the simultaneous insignificance and tremendous potential of your life and you will approach it with more excitement/purpose and less fear/anxiety.

When you know the value of your life, spending an overt amount of time on video games or “the Hub” is painful instead of pleasurable.

Get out of your own head/life for a bit and gain some perspective. Then, become the master of your time and attention and spend it wisely.

My biggest tip on how to do the latter is to delete all social media off your phone and turn off (almost) all notifications.

Minimize the chance of you picking up your phone and losing 20-30 minutes (or more) without knowing it. I’ve implemented the above (and more) and it’s shocking how little there is to do on your phone after doing so.

Every minute I don’t spend sucked into my phone is one I spend doing something much better for my life and others’.

In my opinion, getting in control of one’s digital consumption is perhaps the most influential change the average youth can make. I can’t overstate it.

Create space, then fill it wisely, and your life will change surprisingly quickly.

Conclusion

I'm not nearly as anxious about the future as I used to be despite valuing my life and time even more highly.

Despite having just graduated, not having any clear future lined up or even knowing where I'll live in a couple months, I feel calm (most of the time).

I can't point to any real cause of this other than the paradoxical skill of simultaneously zooming out and zooming in.

Mastering today while reading/thinking about the long-term past and future.

As I mentioned earlier, I have both a strong feeling of the potential of my life AND a knowledge of its relative insignificance in the grand scheme of things.

This feels like the healthiest option to me.

I'm curious to hear what your thoughts on the video are if you watched it.

As always, if anything in this email piqued your interest, shoot me a reply. I’d love to chat about it with you and see if we can’t both grow a little wiser.

Until next week,

Much love,
Ryan

P.S. Favorite Discoveries

What I'm reading:

“The Hobbit” by J.R.R. Tolkien. I’m in the fortunate position of being able to completely relax for the next couple weeks. It struck me that now was the perfect time to attempt to disconnect from “real life problems” as much as I could. Reading fiction is a fantastic way to do this, and is a surprising form of zooming out, too.

I specifically remember my rediscovery of my love for fiction a few years ago (around the time I was more confused/anxious about the future). I had been reading a LOT of non-fiction books, and randomly decided to pick up “Eragon” by Christopher Paolini again after not having read it since I was a kid.

I devoured the entire series (~3000 pages) within a month.

I rediscovered the joy of reading for the sake of reading.

If you haven’t read for the joy of reading in a bit, I invite you to take a break from the array of “useful” non-fiction to simply enjoy a good story for a moment.

You never know what surprising insights (or relief) may come from it. 😉