Simple Ways to Have a Good Life with James Scott Henson

Okay, time to wrap up the series on being the main character by talking about three ways we can chip away at the idea of our own importance:

1. Learn to meditate

2. Invest in other people

3. Understand that you will die

I know that a lot of this might seem disempowering or morbid, but there is freedom in recognizing that nothing revolves around you. I promise. 

This is an audio version of an old video that I created specifically for an issue of my newsletter.

It’s about 4 things we can always be grateful for:

1) There is something instead of nothing.

2) This something is stable.

3) We have a consciousness with which to experience this stable something.

4) We have a say in how this consciousness relates to the stable something.

I was sick when I recorded it, please excuse the difficulty breathing you hear from time to time.

If we pay attention, we can see that life is constantly giving us feedback about our behavior. We cannot hear this feedback if we are too busy being the main character, and this will bring us constant trouble.

Simple ways to tell if you are the main character. 

Quick spoiler: you're not. 

I used to think I was the main character. Now I know I’m not. 

There’s freedom in ordinariness.

Having a morning routine is one of the simplest ways we can improve our lives. I really found that how I start the morning is how my day goes. I wouldn't trade it for anything.

I’m doing a class called Surviving Social Media for ClassRT on Tuesday, June 28th at 7pm CST. You can check it out here.

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This episode is meant to be supplemented with the Simple Ways to Have a Good Life newsletter. It goes out every Tuesday morning and is full of things intended to help you live your best life, all for free. Sign up here, unsubscribe without any hassle. I don’t share names or email addresses with anyone.

People ask me often enough what kinds of things I'm working on personally and what kinds of things I struggle with that I figured I'd just do an episode about it.

The first two things I'm working on were pretty easy for me to identify: I'm always working on being more gentle and on being more social. I'm not really good at either of these things, but I know they are good for me so I'm doing my best.

I think we all have things we need to be working on. It's scary to me that there's this narrative in the world that you are fine the way you are.

I get it, a lot of the things we need to work on are not necessarily our fault. The things I like least about myself make a lot of sense when you look at my life, but that doesn't mean that I'm OK with them and that doesn't mean that I don’t have to sort them out.

A lot of the things that happen to you are probably not your fault, but what you do with them is your responsibility. It's not compassionate to tell somebody that behaviors and choices that are bringing them harm or are harming other people are OK. It’s not everyone else’s responsibility to get on board with your bullshit behavior.

So, in that spirit, this is a podcast talking about me and my bullshit behavior.

We all feel this strange obligation to watch the news so that we can be informed and know what's going on. The problem is that watching the news often leads to anxiety and worry, and we may not even be as informed as we think we are in the process. This episode explores the idea of turning off the news and what that might do for us.

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This episode is meant to be supplemented with the Simple Ways to Have a Good Life newsletter. It goes out every Tuesday morning and is full of things intended to help you live your best life, all for free. Sign up here, unsubscribe without any hassle. I don’t share names or email addresses with anyone.

Here's a more accurate title: 

“Care less about all the things that you don't have control over or that you aren’t really interested in so that you can put your time and energy into the things you can control and the things you do care about.”⁠ 

It's a little clunky.

Everybody expects us to care about what they care about. They expect their passions and interests to be our passions and interests. It's OK to say that you don't really care about something. It's OK not to put your time and energy into things that don't matter to you or where you cannot make a difference.⁠

This week’s simple way to have a good life is to say “thanks for sharing”. Our brains are amazing, but they are also weird as hell. We think negative things about ourselves, we get caught up in arguments and debates inside our own heads, and we get scared about future events that we made up. When we think about these things, we are giving them attention. When we argue with these things, we are giving them attention. Learning to thank them for sharing and moving on is almost magical in how well it works.

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This episode is meant to be supplemented with the Simple Ways to Have a Good Life newsletter. It goes out every Tuesday morning and is full of things intended to help you live your best life, all for free. Sign up here, unsubscribe without any hassle. I don’t share names or email addresses with anyone.