Better than yesterday

[00:00:00] **Aurooba Ahmed:** Well hello, this is The Daily Five with Aurooba. That's me. Where we reflect on creating our best lives a little bit every day. Here we go.

[00:00:15] Yesterday was a bit of a long one, so today is gonna be a bit of a short one. This podcast is about being a little bit better than yesterday, in some way or fashion that is important to you. Every day something else will stick out to you, perhaps more than one something else. You know, something that you could do better.

[00:00:40] Sometimes it's exhausting to see the litany of things you could do better at. We are imperfect beings with an imperfect understanding of basically everything, including ourselves. You can't really get better at everything all the time. Just like you can't do everything all the time. You have to choose.

[00:01:06] And choosing is difficult. I can attest to that. I can attest to that every day. But if you can't choose, then yes, you can still focus on being a little better than yesterday, but it's hard to measure and hard to assess and therefore hard to feel good about. It's much easier to keep track and feel good if you pick a thing to be better at, for at least a period of time.

[00:01:32] For example, there are a million things I could do to improve my house every day. I could change the appliances, get a new AC, get a quilt for the new countertops I've been wanting, change out the doorknobs, paint the cabinets, fix the random hole I noticed the other day in the hardwood floor in one place.

[00:01:51] So many things. A. But I focus on just one thing, trying to keep my home clean. It's a perpetual challenge, but it's measurable. I can clearly tell you if I've done better today than yesterday. For the record, I did do better today than yesterday. In other arenas of my life, it's not that simple. Or at least, it doesn't feel that simple.

[00:02:19] And yet, just like I could list a million things about my house, so, take my house for example, I know that it can be made simple. The ways I try to keep my house clean are different every day. Today I noticed a trash can way in the corner that was really full, so I took that out. I also straightened up my nightstand that had become a bit of a mess.

[00:02:42] Other days, it may be washing the dishes or organizing the foyer closet. More than ever, I think this is a note to myself. There are going to be things out of your control, and there are going to be things that are in your control. To be effective, you have to pick something within your control, even though it is hard.

[00:03:07] Just remember, it can't be everything that's in your control, because There's probably a lot more in your control when you really start listing it out than you think and It definitely is too much and you can't try to change everything So pick something small or maybe it doesn't have to be small, but pick a few things pick a limited amount of things and Let's try to get better at those you can switch it up after say, I don't know two months Let's say two months and then you get to pick something else But, for a little while, you have to pick, because scattering yourself and unfocusing yourself is maybe as big a disaster as not getting better at all, if not worse, and we do want to get a little bit better every day.

[00:04:08] So let's do the thing that actually lets us do that. Thanks for listening! Same time tomorrow?