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In this installment, a raw reflection on developing resilience as a balancing act between being carefree but not careless.
Careless vs. Carefree
In last week’s dispatch, I wrote about the tension one feels when committing to self-improvement. The drive to improve can propel you forward, but if left unchecked, it can also make any progress feel irrelevant, making the whole journey pointless. “You need to be content without becoming complacent. Driven without becoming obsessed.”
Developing resilience presents a similar risk. Building resilience for yourself and your family requires long-term thinking and delayed gratification. But focus too much on that, and you’ll go through your life without actually living it.
To paraphrase Benjamin Franklin in Poor Richard’s Almanack: You could die tomorrow or live to be 100.
How can you set your 100-year-old self for success while at the same time being ready to face death, whenever it might come, without feeling like you wasted your time?
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