When I first started saving reading highlights in Readwise, I thought of it as a personal library – a way of keeping track of sentences that moved me or might be useful in an essay. Four years and hundreds of highlights later, I decided to try the Readwise AI.
Recently, I asked the AI: what do my highlights say about living a worthwhile life?
Here’s the answer I found.
Challenges Give Energy
Problems aren’t just obstacles; they’re fuel. Each difficulty brings with it an opportunity for creativity, resilience, and growth. When I reframe challenges as sources of vitality, I can lean into them rather than shrink away.
👉 Practice: This week, notice one small challenge you’d usually avoid. Ask yourself: How can this energise me?
Do More of the “V”
Jonathan Haidt’s happiness formula is:
Happiness = Set Point + Conditions + Voluntary Activities.
The voluntary activities – learning, serving, creating – are where meaning really lives. They’re the choices I can make each day to enrich life.
👉 Practice: Schedule one voluntary activity this week that nourishes you, even if only for 20 minutes.
Use the Power of “Not Yet“
Growth often comes from goals that feel just slightly too hard. Carol Dweck’s “power of yet” reminds me that failure isn’t a verdict – it’s a stage. When I praise my own effort, strategies, and perseverance, resilience follows.
👉 Practice: Choose a goal that feels a step beyond your current ability. Praise the process, not just the outcome.
Fear Says “I Can’t Handle It”
At its core, fear often whispers one message: You can’t cope. The antidote is proving, in small ways, that I can. Micro-exposures, rehearsed steps, and binding my future self with commitments all help shift fear into forward motion.
👉 Practice: Pick one avoided task and break it into the tiniest next step. Do just that.
Start from the Body
Every feeling is a prescription for action. Rather than pushing emotions away, I’ve learned to sit with the “felt sense” until something shifts. Meaning often emerges through this patient presence.
👉 Practice: When stuck, take 10 minutes to sit quietly with the physical sense of the feeling. Notice what changes.
Collect Experiences
Novelty rewires us. New routes, unfamiliar foods, fresh perspectives – these aren’t trivial; they expand the repertoire of who we can become.
👉 Practice: Intentionally add one new experience this week. Small counts.
Authenticity + Responsibility
Knowing, owning, and being myself only matters if I also take responsibility for my patterns and choices. Authenticity without responsibility can become self-indulgence; together, they become transformation.
👉 Practice: Reflect on one current pattern. How am I contributing to it – and how can I shift?
Boundaries Protect Energy
Saying a clean No and adding an intentional Yes is the simplest way to preserve vitality. Boundaries aren’t rejection – they’re alignment.
👉 Practice: This week, decline one non-essential demand and replace it with something that replenishes you.
Stop Over-Asking “What’s the Meaning of Life?”
Meaning doesn’t usually appear before action. It emerges while immersed in the flow of life. The invitation is to stop waiting for clarity, and to step into engagement.
👉 Practice: Instead of asking what life means, ask: What can I immerse myself in today?
Always learning, always practising.