Many of the recent Marvel movies feature Infinity Stones, which are six cosmic objects that each control a certain aspect of the universe (space, time, souls, minds, power, and reality). Each individual Stone is already incredibly powerful on its own and becomes even more powerful when it’s combined with one or more of the other Stones. Characters who possess multiple Infinity Stones can do things that nobody else can, including warping reality on a universal scale if they get all six Stones. I love the concept of the Infinity Stones and, sometime after I saw Avengers: Endgame, I started thinking about the similarities between the Stones and life hacks.
Like the Infinity Stones, life hacks allow me to control a lot of things in my life, including (but not limited to) my thoughts, my responses, and my time. Whenever I use life hacks, I have much greater control over my life than I don’t use them or choose something that doesn’t provide my desired outcome. Additionally, like the Stones, life hacks become more powerful when I use two or more of them together. For example, How to Win Friends and Influence People has a lot of good stuff about interacting with other people, but reading it by itself might make some people pushovers. I think it did that to me and it’s taken me a long time to figure out what stuff in there is worth practicing and what I can ignore. When I read Boundaries earlier this year, it helped me find my voice and stick up for myself, so reading both books gave me better results than reading just one. Other books that work well in combination are The Power of Now and The Four Agreements; being present and at peace mentally makes it easier for me to remember and live by the agreements. Whether I combine several life hacks to compensate for a weakness in one (or both in some cases) or to make their effects stronger, I find many of them work better together than they do separately.
I enjoy comparing life hacks to the Infinity Stones. Since I’m a big fan of the Marvel movies, it helps me remember to use life hacks and it makes them feel like superpowers to me. It also makes them more fun to use. Although, unlike the Infinity Stones, I have way more than six life hacks, I find new ones all the time, and I don’t need a big gauntlet to use any of them. I hope you’ve enjoyed this post and found it useful and I will see you in the next one.