This week I wanted to share a concept from Oliver Burkeman’s Meditations for Mortals that I read a few weeks ago which really resonated. Here’s the quote from chapter 15:
The New Age author Julia Rogers Hamrick once wrote a book, Choosing Easy World, in which she argues it’s as simple as repeating a mantra: ‘I choose to live in Easy World, where everything is easy.’ When some daunting challenge barrels into view, just decide that you’re going to experience it as easy instead. I realise that sounds like the worst kind of denial of human limitation, as if you could get your way merely by commanding the universe to fall in line with your desires. In fact, though, it can be surprisingly effective – because it functions not as a mystical command to the universe but as a reminder to yourself not to fall into the old habit of adding complications or feelings of unpleasant exertion where neither need exist.
I haven’t read Hamrick’s Choosing Easy World yet – just bought it on Kindle. But that mantra that Burkeman quotes “I choose to live in Easy World, where everything is easy” has been living rent-free in my head for the past few weeks, in a surprisingly helpful way.
I choose to live in Easy World, where everything is easy.
Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve found myself noticing various instances where reminding myself of the mantra has helped. Some examples
- I’m working on a new YouTube video and the usual thoughts come up: “argh this content isn’t good enough, it needs more prep, it needs more science backing it up, argh it’s repetitive, I already made a video about this 4 years ago argh”. Instead of letting those make the process feel effortful and “hard”, I remind myself: “I choose to live in Easy World, where everything is easy”. Suddenly, the pressure eases a bit, and I can approach the video with a lighter heart.
- I wake up in the morning on a weekend, see that it’s 8:30am, and think “argh I’m still tired, I want to sleep for an extra hour, but if I do it’ll be 9:30am, and I won’t get started with getting stuff done until like 10am, and there’s so much to do and not enough time to do it…..”. In that moment (which has happened on a handful of days in the past few weeks), I remind myself: “I choose to live in Easy World where everything is easy.” In that world, would I feel bad about getting an extra hour of sleep? Nah probably not. Let’s go back to sleep, and maintain the 100% sleep score.
- I’m rushing from the gym back home, slightly panicking about being late, feeling the tension of the lift taking ages to come down. In that moment, I think: “oh yeah, I live in Easy World where everything is easy”. It helps me relax, and realise that I can’t do much about the lift being slow, and being a few minutes late to the meeting isn’t that big a deal, so I may as well take a breath, enjoy the scenery and chill out about it.
The phrase reminds me of Tim Ferriss’s journaling prompt: “What would this look like if it were easy?” which I’ve gotten a lot of value out of over the years. It’s somewhat similar to the idea I write about in Feel-Good Productivity too: “What would this look like if it were fun?”
There’s something about choosing to live in an easy world that feels particularly freeing. It’s a reminder that we don’t have to make things harder than they need to be, a theme that Burkeman talks about a lot in Meditations for Mortals and 4,000 Weeks too.
So, here’s a thought experiment for you: What would change about your life if, just for this week, you decided to adopt this mindset? Next time you’re struggling with something, try saying to yourself, I choose to live in easy world where everything is easy. How might that change your approach? Would it help you to let go of some of the stress and pressure?
It’s worth caveating, of course, that your problems are unlikely to magically disappear by just asking yourself this question. But like me, I wonder if you might find that it helps you let go, just a little bit, of the unnecessary extra angst, stress and suffering, we add on top of whatever “problem” we need to solve.
Have a great week!
Ali xx
