 The whole world of mindset and self-development is full of so many contradictions. You can get perspectives that seem to be exact opposites of each other and they both can be helpful in one circumstance or another. One example is this idea of how we look at our lives. For many people, we're just not satisfied no matter what and we are missing seeing the goodness in little basic things in our lives and of course because it's so easy to focus on the negative, focus on problems. We can miss all those little positive things that are happening in our lives every day. So that can be useful advice but that can also be taken too far to this idea of if you're not happy you just have to change your perspective. Look at all the good things in your life and you can realize that everything is okay. So you know you're concerned with this and that problem but really everything's okay you just have to see that it's okay and you'll be fine. And especially when it comes to matters of self-esteem and how I judge myself, you know if I maybe there's something about myself I'm not happy with, you know a common teaching a common advice would be you have to accept yourself, be who you are, you're wonderful and you need to let yourself see that, let yourself see all the good things about yourself and no matter what you're okay. So this can also be valuable advice and I think in many ways it is true and it can be useful but this again can be taken too far to the point where everything has to be okay and we all know those people and those interactions where everything has to be okay. If there's anything wrong it has to be immediately reinterpreted as oh no no no that's not really a problem because you know here's the bright side and here everything's going to be okay. It's like you hear a problem something comes up potential problem threatening this equilibrium of complete okayness and then oh no it's all okay here's why it's all fine and again this has its merits but there's also a merit on the other side of being able to say it's not okay being okay with not being okay to be able to say not good enough and yeah I could reinterpret the situation and say well and of course it could be worse it can always be worse you can always imagine a worse situation no matter what and you know maybe compared to some average you're doing okay compared to some expectation you're doing okay but it's okay to be able to say I am not satisfied this is not good enough I want something better. I remember you know I used to be unknowingly part of this everything's okay camp just with this kind of laid back I guess you could say zen but not in a technical zen sense but just a sense like oh it's all good go with the flow kind of mentality and you know I figured my life is okay and then a few years ago I just remember hearing something hearing somebody say if your life is okay it's not good enough your life should be awesome life can be awesome and so if your life is just okay something missing and that kind of bugged me because I realized that I believe that statement and that I knew that there were other ways to be there were better ways that I could be living my life better and the life that I was living I felt like it was it was okay it was all right I can always compare to worse lives and I'm happy that you know I'm in the position that I am I'm doing okay but when I compare it to this idea of having an awesome life it hit me that I was not having an awesome life not a life that I considered to be awesome and it was the time when I really decided that having an okay life is not good enough and I want something better the first thing that happened it felt uncomfortable it was like oh wow I kind of I envy people that can have a better life but it also gave me fuel it led to it led to the beginning of me making changes even realizing that change was necessary that I started to imagine and think about ways that I could bend my life more towards this living an awesome life and and a big part of it seemed to be meaning spending my time on meaningful things not spending my time on things that seem to be empty and wasteful such as working jobs that I don't consider to be meaningful and passing time with entertainment that I consider to be wasting time these things were taking me away from what could be an awesome life and I started to really investigate how I could make my life better but it wouldn't have happened if I was just okay with being okay okay with having everything at this mediocre level just telling myself that it's okay that it could be worse in order to get the fuel the hunger the drive to change I needed to have some of that uncomfortable unhappy feeling that I was missing something in my life I had to let myself feel that and that's when I started really taking the steps that I needed to to make things better