[Image Credit: Photo by Claudio Schwarz on Unsplash]
How embracing cosmic irrelevance can free you from the prison of other people’s expectations
Here’s something uncomfortable to consider: when you die, someone’s going to argue about what appetisers to serve at your funeral. The Queen of England died eighteen months agoâshe ruled an entire nation and accumulated more wealth than 99.9% of humans. Yet you haven’t thought about her except for right now.
No matter how grand your ambitions, you’re going to die. Everyone will move on. So you might as well do what you want.
The Funeral Reality Check
We build elaborate fantasies about our own importance. You imagine your funeral will be this profound, life-changing event for everyone who attends. People standing there forever changed by your death and the impact you had on their lives.
The reality? There’ll be a caterer. Some people will like the food, others will complain it was too cheap. Someone will mention the venue’s a bit warm. There’ll be a checklist of attendees. Some won’t make it last minute because things came up.
After it’s over, everyone will go to a restaurant, have dinner, and move on with their lives.
This isn’t meant to be depressingâit’s meant to be liberating. If someone who accomplished as much as the Queen barely registers in our daily thoughts, perhaps that project you’re procrastinating on doesn’t matter quite as much as you think it does.
The Resilience Toolkit
When you truly grasp your cosmic irrelevance, it becomes one of your most powerful tools for bouncing back from setbacks. Resilience isn’t about having a thick skinâit’s about how quickly you return to baseline behaviour after something goes wrong.
The Cosmic Perspective: You’re on a planet spinning around the sun, inside a galaxy, inside a universe expanding faster than the speed of light. That printing error in your presentation? That awkward conversation? The deal that fell through? None of it registers on any meaningful scale.
The Veteran Frame: If this inconvenience happened a thousand times in a row, what would you think about it on the thousandth time? You’d probably think, “Well, this is just how life is.” If you can feel that way on the thousandth time, you can choose to feel that way on the first time right now.
The circumstances are identicalâonly your response changes.
The Complaint Trap
The more you complain, the less accurate your model of reality becomes. Every complaint is essentially saying: “The world isn’t delivering what I expected or desired, which means I don’t understand how the world actually works.”
When someone criticises you, try this reframe: they’re simply saying they live their life in a way you wouldn’t prefer. And guess what? You live your life in a way they wouldn’t prefer. That’s why it’s their life and your life.
Most suffering boils down to three targets we blame: circumstances, other people, and ourselves. The first two don’t serve you. The third sometimes does, depending on what you do as a result.
Playing It Out
Fear exists in the vague, not in the specific. When you’re terrified of starting something new, actually play out the worst-case scenario step by step.
You start a podcast and no one listens? Okay, they didn’t listen. That’s not actually a problem.
Loads of people listen and hate it? What happens next? Does it change what you eat or where you sleep?
You lose all your money? You probably have people who’d let you sleep on their sofa. You wouldn’t be homeless. If you couldn’t afford food, there are places that provide meals.
Your actual worst-case scenario is often: you have shelter, food, and you’re still breathing. That’s the downside. Meanwhile, the upside is potentially everything you’ve wanted.
Even if you’re wrong about the odds, it’s still worth the shot.
The Single Greatest Skill
The single greatest skill you can develop is the ability to stay in a good mood in the absence of things to be in a good mood about.
Most people don’t question someone who says they’re in a bad mood. “I’m just in a bad mood,” and everyone accepts it. Well, if you can be in a bad mood for no reason, you might as well be in a good mood for no reasonâat least that one serves you.
This doesn’t mean forcing toxic positivity. It means recognising that your mood isn’t entirely contingent on external circumstances. You’ve certainly been in bad moods when nothing particularly bad was happening.
Small Moments, Big Years
When you think back on the last year, you probably don’t remember 95% of it. You remember a handful of momentsâusually very short ones. Often, what we call a “bad year” was actually five bad days or five bad moments that we thought about for the entire year.
If we can do that with negative moments, why not positive ones?
The solution isn’t necessarily being happy for no reasonâit’s becoming increasingly skilled at noticing things to be happy about. That conversation you enjoyed, the coffee that tasted particularly good, the satisfaction of completing a task. These moments pass by unnoticed unless you actively catch them.
The HEAL Method:
- Have a positive experience
- Enrich it by actually noticing it in the moment
- Absorb it by letting the feeling sink in for 30 seconds
- Link it (optional) to counterbalance negative experiences
Winning the Day
Sometimes, maintaining is winning. In difficult seasons, the goal isn’t dramatic transformationâit’s making small progress and stringing together good days.
When everything feels overwhelming, focus on winning just today. String a few good days together, and a bad season feels less oppressive. The difference between a happy life and an unhappy one often comes down to which days you think about repeatedly.
One good podcast conversation can make your day. One productive workout can carry your week. These aren’t consolation prizesâthey’re the actual building blocks of a life worth living.
The Bulgarian Method Problem
At the highest levels of achievement, you often have to sacrifice proportional amounts of the things you hoped those achievements would get you. The Bulgarian weightlifting system breaks everyone except the one person who can sustain itâand that person becomes champion.
Business often works similarly. But there comes a point where you have to ask: what’s enough?
The person who reaches a comfortable level and says “that’s it, I’ve made it” might have actually won. They finished their race. Everyone else is still running, sacrificing the very things that make success worthwhile.
Permission to Change Course
Success isn’t a straight line requiring identical strategies throughout. What got you here won’t necessarily get you there. The work ethic that built your foundation might not be what sustains your growth.
You’re allowed to change your mind. What was right for you at 25 might be wrong at 35. The person working 80-hour weeks to escape poverty needs different advice than the person working 80-hour weeks despite financial freedom.
There’s nothing wrong with reassessing what you’re willing to sacrifice and what you’re not. The game changes; your strategy can change too.
Your death doesn’t matter in the cosmic senseâand that’s the most liberating realisation you’ll ever have.
It means you’re free to stop optimising for other people’s approval and start optimising for your own definition of a life well-lived.
What will you choose to care about? What will you choose to let go? What will you choose to chase, and what will you choose to be content with?
The universe is undefeated, but for a brief time, you get to locally reverse entropy. Make it countânot for posterity, but for today.
