4000 nice moments for myself
I came across the book title 4000 Weeks by Oliver Berkman. The idea of the book is that you can't get on top of everything in life. You have roughly 4,000 hours before the curtain closes for you. That's all the time that you have to get everything done. That's all the potential there is. That's life.
That gave me an idea.
If I only have 4,000 weeks, what if I do one good thing for myself every week?
I know life will get in the way of many goals. I know things won't always go as planned. There will be times when I am stressed. There will be weeks and months where I'll be depressed and going through difficult situations. I will lose loved ones and face heartbreak. I will have health scares and difficult problems that need to be dealt with.
In these times, it will be easy to get deep into rumination over problems, an endless loop of solution creation. I will forget about myself. I will be too focused on creating solutions, normalizing my emotions, taking care of people around me, and getting out of it in general. In those moments, it will be hard to enjoy life.
The idea is to create a system where, regardless of what's happening in life, I can do one nice thing for myself every weekend. I'm thinking Sundays. Each Sunday I could treat myself to a nice, fancy restaurant. It could be delicious food. Or it could be the freedom to not do anything. It could be traveling to a different country, a different city, even a different neighborhood works. In short:, do something that I truly enjoy. Do something for myself regardless of the situation.
If I can somehow stick with this mental model, when life ends, and I run out of my 4,000 weeks, I may have done 4,000 nice things for myself. I may have lived 4,000 beautiful, consciously created moments for myself. I will have minimized the possibilities of coming towards the end with the realization that I never truly lived.