This simple, boring sentence has changed my life

Thomas Oppong
Personal Growth
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4 min readJan 20, 2025

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👋 Welcome to the Personal Growth Newsletter

Here are 3 pieces of wisdom, one great quote, latest PG post, what I’ve been reading on Medium, timeless wisdom and personal recommendations.

  1. The day I stopped identifying as my thoughts, emotions or my ever-changing ego and thought of life as flowing through my consciousness, not to me, how life changed. The secret to life is identifying as the consciousness, the observer, the witness of your life. Thoughts and even your ego will always go through stages. One minute you’re happy, the next you’re sad, then you’re angry, then you’re bored. But your consciousness, the part of you aware of all those thoughts and emotions, stays unaffected.
  2. I came across this quote by iconic psychologist Carl Jung, which took my transformation to a whole new level. He wrote, “Every transformation demands as its precondition ‘the ending of a world’ — the collapse of an old philosophy of life.” This post explains how you can rewire your first “philosophy on everything that makes you uncomfortable.
  3. Life won’t stop being absurd. But you can make peace with it. And still live your best life in a world that makes no sense. My reflections on the many absurdities of our short lives.

A quote I’m pondering

“Reality is what we take to be true. What we take to be true is what we believe. What we believe is based upon our perceptions. What we perceive depends upon what we look for. What we look for depends upon what we think. What we think depends upon what we perceive. What we perceive determines what we believe. What we believe determines what we take to be true. What we take to be true is our reality.” — Gary Zukav

I don’t need to label anything as good or bad — it just is.

Naked attention helps me notice when I’m holding onto beliefs not serving me. It stops me from reacting out of disappointment or anger to what is. It’s a mental model I want to keep practicing to feel less stress or stop fighting reality. Naked attention is my way of getting closer to what is.

Read the post: The one mental tool I apply to see reality as it is, not as I want it to be

Latest Personal Growth post

This Quick 10-Word Quote by Lao Tzu Can Clarify Your Life

In the Tao Te Ching, a short little book, Lao Tzu, the legendary Daoist philosopher, teaches how to live well. It’s one of those books you don’t finish but live with. You sit with it and reflect on it. And over time, it changes you. One of his wisdom that clarified my life is this ten-word sentence: “He who defines himself can’t really know who he is.”

Read how it can clarify your life.

A Medium post I recommend

24 lessons on life, love, and choosing what matters most by Michael Thompson

“14. The best decisions are those that create the most future options. I’ve had to navigate situations of late where there wasn’t a positive outcome. Choosing between two negatives sucks. But when it happens, train yourself to map out which one could potentially create the most future options. Then steal and line from my dad and remind yourself that decisions are defined by what you do after making them.”

Timeless wisdom

Author Annie Duke on the six steps to better decisions:

Step 1 — Identify the reasonable set of possible outcomes. Step 2 — Identify your preference using the payoff for each outcome — to what degree do you like or dislike each outcome, given your values? Step 3 — Estimate the likelihood of each outcome unfolding. Step 4 — Assess the relative likelihood of outcomes you like and dislike for the option under consideration. Step 5 — Repeat Steps 1–4 for other options under consideration. Step 6 — Compare the options to one another.”

Source: How to Decide: Simple Tools for Making Better Choices

Oliver Burkeman on choosing uncomfortable enlargement in life/career

“James Hollis recommends asking of every significant decision in life:Does this choice diminish me, or enlarge me? The question circumvents the urge to make decisions in the service of alleviating anxiety and instead helps you make contact with your deeper intentions for your time.

If you’re trying to decide whether to leave a given job or relationship, say, or to redouble your commitment to it, asking what would make you happiest is likely to lure you toward the most comfortable option, or else leave you paralyzed by indecision.”

Source: Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals

2 things I recommend

> My best free newsletter recommendations (outside Medium). I’m using selected newsletters to build my learning engine for personal growth. These are my favourite picks →

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Until Next Week,

Be Well.

Thomas Oppong

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Personal Growth
Personal Growth

Published in Personal Growth

Practical wisdom for life drawn from philosophy, psychology, spirituality and personal experiences.

Thomas Oppong
Thomas Oppong

Written by Thomas Oppong

Making the wisdom of great thinkers instantly accessible. As seen on Forbes, Inc. and Business Insider. For my popular essays, go here: https://thomasoppong.com

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