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In 1933, an overwhelmed and frustrated woman named Frau sent a letter to psychologist Carl Jung, asking “how to live.”
(She didn’t have any Instagram influencers to yell motivational platitudes at her, I guess)
Jung replied:
“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.”
He was sharing the key to life.
It’s part of recovery communities like Alcoholics Anonymous.
It was even the title of a song in Disney’s Frozen 2.
“The next right thing.”
Revisiting this story caused me to reflect on how much my thoughts on success and progress have changed over the years.
“Success” Redefined
I’ve been doing this Nerd Fitness stuff for 15+ years.
Millions of people visit the site every year, 50,000+ customers have bought stuff through NF, and our coaches have served 15,000+ 1-on-1 clients.
In that time, I’ve changed my perspective quite a bit on “success” and “living well.”
I used to think that the only path to success required militant discipline following a specific plan. I never missed a workout, and was unbelievably proud of this.
It didn’t occur to me just how much of a privileged and simple life I lived, where I was 100% in control of my time.
(Apologies to all the parents and caregivers who read my 25-year old perspective!).
Now that I’m 40, and I can see the types of people we actually help with Nerd Fitness, I’ve changed my perspective on success and “living well” fairly dramatically.
Success happens not when we learn how to do everything perfectly, but instead when we get better at staying afloat even when things go poorly.
In other words, success is learning to be inconsistently consistent. Learning to be good enough for long enough.
And that means, when life seems chaotic, narrowing our focus down to “the next right thing.”
Do the Next Right Thing
A recent newsletter from author Oliver Burkeman talked about how he’s chosen to retain a tiny bit of sanity in an overwhelming world.
It led me to these sentences from author Eckert Tolle:
“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?
When we ruminate on what already happened, and we freak out about all the things that could happen or need to happen in the future…
It’s easy to feel out of control and overwhelmed.
Which brings us back to that cliché solution: “the next right thing.”
It’s a cliché only because it’s true.
We can zoom wayyyyyy in, and narrow our focus to something that is still in our control. In some situations, yes, there is a problem right now. And we can just focus on that one thing.
But in many other situations, it’s often us worrying about all the problems that might be, or the problems outside of our control, that keeps us from taking action on the actual things we can control.
Burkeman continues:
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.
It might involve a workout or a walk, focusing on the next meal, calling up our therapist, or finally saying no to a commitment.
If “now” is the only time that exists, then “the next right thing” is the only thing that we can really do.
I’m gonna go do the next right thing for me: take a walk.
-Steve
PS: Maria Popova has a great writeup about “the next right thing” as it pertains to her life as a writer that inspired this piece.
PPS: Nerd Fitness is hiring a few remote, part-time humans (especially with flexible nights and weekends) to take inbound, scheduled calls from potential clients interested about our 1-on-1 coaching. Click here to learn more.
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