This is Optimal Living Daily, permission to be, and leaning into life, both by Angelina Lee of

Exploring Plan B.com, and I'm your narrator, Justin Mollick, reading you articles every single day of the year.

Sometimes two articles in one episode, that's the case today. So without further ado, let's get

right to it as we optimize your life.

Permission to be by Angelina Lee of Exploring Plan B.com.

Quote, a man who wants to lead the orchestra must turn his back on the crowd.

Max Licato Have you ever wondered what life could be like if you turned your must turn his back on the crowd. Max Lucado.

Have you ever wondered what life could be like if you turned your back on the expected?

As a society, we have created, accepted, and followed certain norms.

We have come up with the definition of success that entails so much more than being able to meet our own needs.

We have created badges of honor, and we call them busyness, exhaustion, and excess.

We say to ourselves that we must do all the things to reap all the rewards,

and that we must burn ourselves out in order to do it right.

A slow simmering of unfulfillment from within gradually leads to a tumultuous

and rapid boiling over of discontent, anxiety, and despair. I was unhappy with what my life looked like.

This led to anxious thoughts about what course my life should follow. This, in turn, led to complete and utter despair,

as my instinct was to believe that I was failing at keeping up. I was failing at being able to do it all.

I was failing at life. Mind you, if you asked me then to identify exactly what I thought I was

failing at, I likely would have explained some version of my life

that I was programmed into believing was the only mark of success. Over time, after much wrestling

with fear, I've come to realize that the life that I'm crafting looks a lot different to the life

that I had mapped out for myself so many years ago. The life that I thought would have been

...