My distractions

Rensberry.com

Doing the right thing

written by Matthew Rensberry on 2024-11-19

Life is only in the right now.

You can only act right now.

When in doubt, just do the only next right thing.

How should you live?

“Your questions are unanswerable, because you want to know how one ought to live. One lives as one can.

…if you do with conviction the next and most necessary thing, you are always doing something meaningful and intended by fate.”

Find the "NOW"

What you refer to as your “life” should more accurately be called your “life situation.” It is psychological time: past and future.

…Forget about your life situation for a while and pay attention to your life.

Find the “narrow gate that leads to life.” It is called the Now.

Narrow your life down to this moment. Your life situation may be full of problems — most life situations are — but find out if you have any problem at this moment. Not tomorrow or in ten minutes, but now.

Do you have a problem now?

What should you do?

As for telling myself I only needed to do the very next thing… you always only can do the very next thing, then the next, whether you like it or not.

It’s a little strange, actually, to refer to any of these techniques as “narrowing your horizons”, as if they involved somehow artificially limiting yourself.

Really, you’re just consciously recognizing how limited you always already were.

We all know how easy it is for us to overcomplicate things.

And when the world feels like a dumpster fire, it can help to zoom way into that next decision, the tiniest goal, and just do the next right thing.