Lectio Letter #60 - The “Shoulds” and “Coulds” of 2023

“PART OF THE DOWNSIDE of abundant choice is that each new option adds to the list of trade-offs, and trade-offs have psychological consequences. The necessity of making trade-offs alters how we feel about the decisions we face; more important, it affects the level of satisfaction we experience from the decisions we ultimately make.”
― Barry Schwartz, The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less

Story is what brain does. It is a ‘story processor’, writes the psychologist Professor Jonathan Haidt, ‘not a logic processor’. Story emerges from human minds as naturally as breath emerges from between human lips.”
― Will Storr, The Science of Storytelling

“What am I to do?’ if I can answer the prior question ‘Of what story or stories do I find myself a part?”
― Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory

Welcome to Issue #56 of the Lectio Letter, the first of 2023!

This members-only newsletter is filled with music, film and food suggestions, links, and an article written by yours truly.

Whether you become a paid subscriber or not, I’m very grateful to each of you who read and respond to this newsletter.

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Introduction

Well, Welcome to 2023. The turning of the year gives us new opportunities to restart and re-frame how we move forward in life. This can be a great gift, but as I explore in the article below, an anxiety-producing burden. We become overwhelmed by choice and the associated feelings of not-being-enough. I hope the article helps you to start the year with a little less anxiety by focussing on relationships above tasks.

This is the second Lectio I’ve sent out using Substack and despite having lost more than half of the subscribers in the move, I’m really enjoying the new platform.

I’ve now (through great labour) moved all of the previous articles into a new archive, you can access here.

If you’ve moved over here with me and would consider supporting me afresh here, I’d be deeply grateful. There’s a 10% off coupon you can use below.

New features now include the ability to write comments as well as listen to the article on audio through the substack app.