I’m adding to this because I think it came out wrong.

I’m not using mediocre as a pejorative here. I’m saying that I used to be largely paralyzed by life, and my dreams were huge. For a while my goal was “help humanity expand into the stars”. Then it switched to “help humanity survive WW3”.

But lately it’s more like “Have enough cash on hand that I can handle two small crises back to back without losing momentum, and then get the emotional benefits from that sense of security” and “Be around people who make me feel valued and respected”.

What I’ve discovered is that those small dreams motivate me a lot more, because I can actually see how my day to day decisions can affect those things.

My favorite psychology professor always says that the path out of depression starts with “orienting yourself toward the highest good you can conceive of”. At first I thought that meant the loftiest goal I could think of.

But I realized that while I can say “Help humanity expadn into the stars” I don’t have a concrete, solid image of what exactly that means. It’s vague. It’s not an image; it’s just words.

But those smaller goals, I can actually conceive of them. I can visualize them, and see them concretely. If i try to look higher than that, to my later goals like “having a family” and “being a productive member of the community”, I can’t see them.

So this “that you can conceive of” I think it really works best when I think of it as “that I can actually visualize and feel”.