Reframe Your Inbox (Self-Improvement or Self-Indulgence? Edition)

Hey everyone—there are more important stories and voices to be shared and heard right now than mine. Michelle Alexander, Imani Bashir, Afua Hirsch, Corinne Shutack, Isabella Rosario, Ibram X. Kendi, Wesley Lowery, and Issac Bailey are a few of the writers whose work I’ve been reading recently; a few more are excerpted below. (On the book front, I’ve just started working my way through Danielle Sered’s Until We Reckon.)

If you’d like to keep reading this newsletter, here are three things this week: 1) some reflections on the tension between self-improvement and self-indulgence; 2) a few pieces of high-quality internet content; and 3) a couple brief book updates.

FIRST THING

As I’ve written countless times at this point, the practices in Reframe the Day are about what we, as individuals, can do to build more fulfilling days. No matter our circumstances, we can nudge our days in a more fulfilling direction by focusing on how we see and spend each day. Sometimes, though—particularly times like these—you might wonder: Is that enough? Is it sufficient to focus on improving our individual experience, and leave it at that?

A lot of self-improvement and personal development content seems to suggest it is. Sometimes implicitly, but often very explicitly, these books and articles and blogs and podcasts and platforms urge us to focus on our individual struggles at the expense of our collective ones. They tell us that because we can’t control what other people do, we should seal ourselves off from them. We know our successes are the result of our hard work and hustle; if other people don’t succeed, we can simply attribute it to their unwillingness to do the same.

The comforting illusion of meritocracy fits nicely in this self-satisfying, responsibility-absolving understanding of the world. If we spend enough time cultivating such a mindset, we can easily find ourselves immune to the pain and struggles of other people. Before we know it, what began as a quest for self-improvement has become an insular and self-righteous pursuit of self-indulgence.

First of all, let’s note what a privilege that is: to have the option, even if we choose not to exercise it, to tune out the world and focus exclusively on improving our own well-being. Having that option likely reflects some pretty fortunate circumstances, from a decent-paying job with stable hours and benefits to a lifestyle with disposable time and income. If one has these things, it’s likely one also has an even more foundational type of security that provides the opportunity to take risks, to try new things, to make mistakes, to screw up—to do all of these things and still be able to land on one’s feet.

Throughout my life, I have benefited enormously from having the resources, security, stability, and space to study and flail and fail and change plans—and to know that I would probably be just fine, no matter the outcome. Reframe the Day, like many aspects of my life, came into being in part because the structural forces of our society give financially secure straight white men like me the chance to make a lot of mistakes with little risk of consequence. As we’ve been reminded over and over and over again, and as the lived experience of so many Black Americans attests, too often in America what distinguishes a “learning opportunity” from a life-defining—or even a life-ending—misstep is not skill or hard work but skin color.

Pursuing self-improvement is indeed a privilege, and it can easily become a selfish endeavor. But it doesn’t have to end up this way. Consider a few chapters in Reframe the Day, like creating stillness, building awareness, consuming more meaningful content, and making time for what matters. Yes, these practices are tools for making our individual lives more fulfilling. But they’re also tools to equip us for our collective struggle. To give us the awareness, the perspective, the time, the attention, the focus, and the mental energy to step up when the moment calls for it. To know we have the time and emotional capacity to drop everything to take care of a family member. To show up for a friend who’s hurting. To knock on doors for a cause or candidate. To join and contribute to a mutual aid network. To protest, march, and stand in solidarity. To use that privilege for something other than our own pleasure or well-being.

Building and maintaining an awareness practice, for instance, isn’t just a means of being more aware of our own thoughts and emotions so we can feel calmer and find peace of mind and maybe be more productive at work. It’s also a tool for interrogating our own perspectives and biases, and for sitting with pain, discomfort, shame, anger, and all of the other difficult truths and complicated feelings that are too easy to ignore or bury or deny (for those whose circumstances, background, or skin color give them the option of ignoring or burying or denying them in the first place).

Carving out moments of stillness throughout the day isn’t important only for processing our own micro-dramas and mini-dilemmas. It’s just as important a practice for making space to process the world, for sitting with the uncomfortable realities of systemic racism and historic injustices in which we ourselves may be complicit, or at least have benefited from.

Consuming content more intentionally isn’t just a technique for tuning out anxiety-inducing news and using our downtime to read and watch things we enjoy. It’s also a technique for tuning out the noise of pundits and politicians and Facebook posts so that we can internalize the work of Carol Anderson and Bryan Stevenson and Isabel Wilkerson and so many more writers and creators and historians and storytellers.

Making more time for what matters isn’t only a tool for spending time doing things we enjoy and with people whose company we enjoy. It’s also a tool for cultivating intentional spontaneity, for having the clarity to see what matters and what does not, for being able to drop everything to go protest or volunteer or donate or campaign.

Let’s dig into that last point a bit. A few weeks ago, I planned to title this newsletter the “commitment reset” edition. For people around the world, Covid-19 and the resulting lockdown have forced the cancellation of countless plans, events, trips, engagements, and other commitments. In some cases, these cancellations have been tragic and heartbreaking. In other cases, though—often the more mundane ones—we’ve been given a rare opportunity to reset our commitments. All of those meetings, catch-ups, conferences, commutes, and other things that we didn’t need or want to do but said “yes” to anyway? Someone else, or in this case something else, went to the trouble of cancelling them for us.

That gives us an opportunity. As the “reopening” begins, we don’t have to resume the mindless, often FOMO-induced inclinations that lead us to say “yes” to whatever people ask of us. We can say “no.” We can preserve our limited time and energy for the people and activities we care most about—the things that really matter. Not all of the time, of course, but some of the time. Maybe a little more now than in the pre-coronavirus era.

Why do that? Why not let ourselves get sucked right back into the busyness- and productivity-obsessed striving of our pre-February lives? In part because a day filled with more meaningful activities and people is a more fulfilling one. That’s a significant outcome, but it’s not always a sufficient one.

More importantly, saying “no” to the things that don’t matter—the things that a few months ago we might have automatically added to our calendar or to-do list—gives us more time, strength, and space to say “yes” to the things that do. Things like marching. Self-educating. Protesting. Petitioning. Campaigning. Donating. Volunteering. Showing up. Standing up. Getting in the fight. Checking in with other people. We say “no” to the little fights and petty struggles so we can say “yes,” without hesitation, to the big fights and the meaningful struggles.

In his recent article, “This Is Why You Have to Care,” Ryan Holiday writes, “I understand that this might not be what you want to hear from me. I write about self-improvement. I write about philosophy. I write about history. That’s true. But what do you think the point of the study of those three things are? It’s not so you can make a little more money. It’s not so you can live in your own bubble or have interesting dinner conversations. It’s so you can be better. So you can do the right thing when it counts.”

It’s a privilege to be able to undertake a quest for self-improvement. It’s even more of a privilege to spend countless hours writing about that quest. It’s on me to take all of that privilege—that luxury, that fortune, that opportunity—and put it to work where it counts.

SECOND THING(S)

“The simplest answer to the question ‘Why don’t the American police forces act as if they are accountable to black Americans?’ is that they were never intended to be.” That’s Jamelle Bouie in the New York Times.

“I have this pet theory about book recommendations. They feel good to solicit, good to mete out, but someone at some point has to get down to the business of reading. And there, between giving and receiving, lies a great gulf. No one can quite account for what happens. Reading, hopefully, but you never can be sure.” That’s Lauren Michele Jackson in Vulture asking, “What Is an Anti-Racist Reading List For?” Ultimately, she concludes, “that’s the thing about the reading. It has to be done.”

“Mainstream journalists in the U.S. have a long-standing tendency to treat freedom of the press as something that must be jealously defended, but all other rights as chits up for grabs in the partisan fray.” That’s Crooked Media’s Brain Beutler in his weekly newsletter.

“In business we set targets on everything. Only in the area of diversity have I seen C.E.O.s chronically say, ‘We’re working on it.’” That’s Mellody Hobson, co-CEO and president of Ariel Investments, quoted in the New York Times.

THIRD THING

Last week, Erin and I had a fun conversation with Kathy Partridge, host of “Connections” on KGNU. You can stream or download the full interview on my website. Also, well-placed sources tell me that books pre-ordered many months ago are finally starting to arrive. If and when they do, and if and when you’re so inclined, I would be grateful if you could leave short a review on Amazon and Goodreads.

That’s all for now. Stay safe and stay in the fight. Thanks for reading.

—Adam