Sahil Bloom

For me, that one question of how much time do I really have left with the people that I care about most, that was a difficult question that would have been much easier to avoid that sparked this insight or this wisdom in my life.

But it wasn't the answer necessarily.

It was the fact that I was willing to uncover and then wrestle with the question that really led to it.

Yeah.

It's like the Benjamin Franklin school of thought that you are what you do.

And look, there is a lot of talk on social media that as long as you have good intentions, it's okay if you slip up here or there, whether it's as a parent or in your relationships or in your health or whatever it might be, and that you should give yourself grace because you had good intentions.

And I think there is a space for grace in our lives and in forgiving ourselves that leeway.

But I also think we need to be able to hold ourselves to the fire and to recognize that at the end of the day, you are the sum product of the actions that you take, not your intentions or not what you thought you should take or how you think you are as a human being.

You are the sum product of your actions.

And so being able to show up and convince yourself to just

Act in line with how your ideal self shows up in the world on a daily basis.

In the simplest way, a lot of good will come from that.

That's a fascinating thought exercise and thought experiment.

And it actually draws upon something that I've thought about recently, which is

To just consider and audit how much of your quote-unquote desires are being influenced and heavily formed by your environment, by the people around you.

I've often written or spoken about the fact that it is very difficult to play this game of creating your own scoreboard, of living differently, when you are surrounded by people who are trying to live one way.

The most classic example of this to me is if you were trying to live a simple life grounded in core, really what I would view as moral values, family and spirituality and religion, principled values, and you're living in New York City, a place that really glamorizes wealth and status and where you send your kids to private school and where you vacation in the Hamptons and that's how we measure self-worth.

It is going to be very difficult because the two are intention and humans are mimetic, right?

Scientifically, we assume a lot of the desires and wants of the people around us.

And so that in particular is sort of two things.