Debbie Millman talks about her life with Jonathan Fields in this interview. It’s nice to find people who seem to have experienced the same feelings as we do. Even though Debbie is in her fifties, she felt like she was the same person when she was 14. But when she read through her diary, she realized she’s definitely not the same person. There are also parts of her that didn’t change. She is still insecure, still afraid of change, and still worried that it might be her last chance for happiness, for love, and for success, the same feelings that she had when she was young.
There are many takeaways from the interview, but one thing I think we all should do is to write a dream list of things we want to do, achieve, or experience. The key to a well-lived life seems to be to know what we want and do our best to make it happen, but the problem for most of us is that we don’t know what we want.
Some excerpts from Maria @ brain pickings. There are more on her site:
The one common denominator [that great thinkers and creators] have shared with me over the years is that they all feel like they have to get up every day and do it again. They all feel like they may very well be discovered as phonies, they very well may never, ever achieve what they had hoped.
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This is where we run into trouble in terms of being fulfilled… You have to make your own happiness, wherever you are. Your job isn’t going to make you happy, your spouse isn’t going to make you happy, the weather isn’t going to make you happy… You have to decide what you want, and you have to find that way of doing it, whether or not the outside circumstances are going to participate in your success… You have to be able to create your own happiness, period. And if you can’t, then you need to find a good shrink who can help you figure out what it’s going to take.
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I’m a big proponent of “busy is a decision.” You decide what you want to do and the things that are important to you. And you don’t find the time to do things — you make the time to do things. And if you aren’t doing them because you’re “too busy,” it’s likely not as much of a priority as what you’re actually doing
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