You probably have heard about The Girl With The List…

If you haven’t, it’s a TikTok channel of someone collecting reasons for not becoming a parent.

The list exceeds over 500 reasons by now, which include everything from the pains of pregnancy, the inconvenience of having children, and things that deserve their own category, like “Baby = Parasite”.

In general, it’s a summary of downsides and dangers of becoming a parent.

Now you might say: this is fair! Becoming a parent is tough and knowing what you get yourself into is important before you decide to have kids…

And I agree with that 100%.

But I also believe that there is a more fundamental problem at play here.

An attitude towards responsibility that many if not most people in our society hold.

An attitude that makes you miserable…

Thinking Like The Girl With The List

The problem with this is that thinking like the girl with the list makes you feel horrible!

I’m not talking about parenting here… (only you can decide whether you want to have kids)

What I am talking about is a certain attitude towards life that makes you miserable if you fully lean into it.

It’s an attitude against…

• Meaning

• Responsibility

• Service to Others

• Self-Development (in the Service to Others)

Just think about it.

There is an entire TikTok channel with the sole purpose to argue against having kids. And most reasons for this argument are the difficulties and annoyances that come with becoming a parent.

But it is also an argument against something that most actual parents describe as the most meaningful thing that has ever happened to them…

That’s the attitude that I see expressed by people who think like the girl with the list. And not only towards parenting (again, this is not about parenting)… But life as such.

But there are some major problems with that approach to life…

We can break down the statement above into two parts to understand what’s wrong with this kind of thinking…

1. “Not worthwhile doing because it’s difficult…”

2. “…for me.”

Let’s start with the first…

1. Why You Need Voluntary Difficulty

We know from research that doing something difficult makes the outcomes more meaningful and rewarding. For example, if you let a rat work for a reward and then, before she gets the reward, you offer her a second identical reward, she will go for the reward she worked for. Despite both rewards being the same.

This pattern of behaviour is true for all sorts of animals, including humans.

But what’s going on here?

From an evolutionary perspective this makes sense.

Imagine you have to climb up a tree to get a coconut. It’s difficult (and dangerous). You have to climb up the tree, get a coconut, bring it down, and open it (try to open up a coconut to see how difficult just this step is)…

But in the end you are greeted with the reward: a delicious snack.

Now, in order to make you go up the tree again next time, the reward that you experience from getting the coconut has to outmatch the cost of getting the reward (climbing up the tree, etc.)…

It’s simple, really. If you have high costs (e.g., 100), you need to perceive an even greater reward (e.g., 150) to get a positive benefit (e.g., 50).

And that is exactly what evolution has done to our motivational system.

The only difference is that now, we are not living in our evolutionary environments anymore… We get our food easy, with the click of a button and have it delivered for us, ready to eat. Our baseline for difficulty is so low, that every bit of effort is perceived as a huge cost. But because food is so easily accessible, it is not much of a big reward. It doesn’t seem worthwhile to work for it anymore…

This is the absurd nature that we humans find ourselves in… We are so good at meeting our base biological needs, that we make it more difficult for us to live a meaningful life.

The thing is, you have to understand this mechanism…

…and apply it in your own life (we will talk about this later in detail).

For now, remember this: Things feel difficult because we have managed to make it super easy to meet our basic needs. So, by succeeding on the material plane we forced us into a position in which we have to take on the difficulties of life voluntarily… If we want to live a meaningful life…

Behind the greatest difficulties lie the greatest rewards.

Remember this for the next time you face something difficult…

2. Why You Need to Truly Serve Others

The other side of the coin is the “…for me.” in the attitude that the girls with the list expresses.

It’s the complete self-centeredness that has become so common today. Everything is about you. Even at the expense of others…

Here is a story that really struck me and that perfectly illustrates what I mean:

A student (not mine) at the university I am working at was looking for internships and wanted to do it in the city where our uni is located. She didn’t end up getting the place. There simply weren’t enough spots for everyone. So, they used a lottery system to decide who gets what spot…

The thing is: the student did not understand why she couldn’t have the place. She completely lacked the understanding that the other students had the same right to the desirable internship spots. But even after explaining this explicitly, the student just didn’t get it.

This is the other side of what is wrong with the list by the girl with the list:

PEOPLE THINK ABOUT THEMSELVES.

ALL.

THE.

TIME.

And here’s the kicker…

We know that thinking excessively about yourself – what is called rumination in the psychological literature – is one of the prime symptoms of depression…

If you think about how you feel, what you can get, and how difficult your life is, you are more likely to get depressed…

But is this really a surprise?

Let’s put one and two together:

People these days…

1. Are reluctant to do difficult things, robbing them from the greatest rewards that are only found behind great difficulties and…

2. Constantly think about themselves and how difficult their life is.

Take a second to let that sink in.

To what degree does this apply to you? The answer is not “Not at all” (also not in my case)…

And is it really surprising that your life sucks more than it has to in direct proportion to the degree to which you think like the girl with the list..?

To me, it’s really not surprising AT ALL!

But what can you do about it?

What is the opposite of the girl with the list?

Can we find a better life there..?

Become a Parent to the World…

When you…

1. take on voluntary difficulty…

2. in the service of others (not yourself)…

…you become a parent (to the world)!

You start doing something that is worthwhile doing. Despite it’s difficulty.

You act in service of others. You are forced out of your comfort zone. Because you see something that that is still immature – has unfulfilled potential – and take it onto you to nurture it to maturity.

You act with love!

This is what parents do:

1. They decide to take the responsibility of having a kid

2. They actually have a kid

3. They care for the kid and learn what it needs

4. They learn to see the potential in the kid

5. They work to create situations that nudge this potential into actuality.

Notice here, what parents are doing…

…parents decide to give their life to something bigger or other to themselves. They become heroes!

Now, the thing is, I WANT YOU TO BECOME A HERO!

That doesn’t mean that I want you to become a parent in the literal sense. (although if that is what you want to do, please do so – we need more kids).

It’s also not really that I want it.

It’s more that I am trying to invite you into something greater.

To make you see the upside that makes all the difficulty of life worthwhile. The things that you invite into your life and transcend it beyond the daily meaningless pursuit of ‘how can I make my life less shitty’.

What I am inviting you to is to become a parent to the world. To…

1. Decide that you want to take on a challenge to make the world a better place.

2. Actually decide on which challenge you want to tackle.

3. Educate yourself to get to know the challenge you are dealing with.

4. Learn to see how the world looks like with this particular challenge overcome.

5. Create something new that leads to the overcoming of this challenge.

This is what a parent is doing. Bringing forth a new thing and living to see that thing flourish. In that sense, (good) parents are the ultimate creators. Which means that we can learn from them…

But…

Objections.

Chances are those popped into your mind while reading this. Which makes sense. As the girl with the list perfectly illustrates: we live in an increasingly self-centered world.

So, when you sit down and genuinely reflect whether you want to become a parent to the world, your mind might throw up some hurdles:

• It will be so difficult

• It’s so unfair! Why should I deal with problems that others have caused?

• Or: I know myself. I’m probably going to bite off more than I can chew and burn out.

All of these have some validity.

The first one I have already dealt with…

No difficulty. No meaning. That’s the absurdity of human nature…

But what about the other ones?

It’s unfair!

Yes!

So?

Life is unfair. Claiming something different than that would be delusional. But if that is something that annoys you, maybe this unfairness is exactly what you could do something about. Not entirely of course – life will always be unfair. But in some specific sense.

What manifestation of unfairness really annoys you? Why? Why does it bug you so much? Couldn’t that thing become your kid. You see something that is unfair. You recognise that something in the world has potential. It could be better…

Why don’t you take it onto yourself to make a dent and foster that thing into its better potential?

Who else is going to do it if not you?

If you are already on board with this message, than the third objection might pop to mind…

How can you know that you won’t just overwork…

That’s a good point.

Its a genuine danger. (At least to me it is…)

But here we can learn something from parents: they rarely have more than one or two kids at a time…

Kids take up a lot of time, energy, and focus. They become the center of your world.

That’s not different when you become a parent to the world – when you decide to take it on you to make the world a better place. That’s what Joseph Campbell meant with giving your life to something greater. You really dedicate YOUR LIFE to it.

In part, this is even what the girl with the list is trying to warn young people about:

“Don’t become a parent because these horrible things might happen to you”.

Some of it is overstated but a lot of it is true. And to the degree that she informs people about the complications of parenthood, she might actually help people make informed decisions… and that’s definitely a good thing.

But her approach is fundamentally flawed…

She forcing the answer (don’t have kids) by only focusing on the negative.

We have dealt with the negative, so let’s have a look at why it might still be worthwhile to become a parent to the world…

Why You Should Do It Nevertheless!

With all the difficulty that comes with bringing something new into the world and nurturing it into flourishing, why would you do it?

There are several reasons. One we have already encountered:

When you take on the difficulty of life and creation voluntarily, you unlock the meaning behind this difficulty. The fruits of your work – and ultimately your work in itself – will become a central source of meaning in your life.

You’ll still have difficulty. But at least it’s not wasted or meaningless difficulty. What more can you wish for?

But even that is thought too narrowly… Too self-centered.

Another reason for becoming a parent to the world is entropy…

I asked Perplexity to describe entropy in a sentence that everyone can understand:

Isn’t that in itself a reason to become a parent to the world?

I am sitting here in a coffee, writing this on a mac that was designed and manufactured across the world, sending it out to the internet where it is transmitted via cables under the sea and satellites up in space.

Just let that sink in. Isn’t that sick?!

We (that is, the people who came before us) have created a whole lot of order for us to experience the life we do.

Why wouldn’t we return the favour to the people who come after us? Even if it’s just to maintain what we have (at least on the material plane).

Why wouldn’t you want to know that you are part of the force that maintains a good amount of order? What else do you want to do with your life? Contribute to chaos?

But it’s not even that. If you don’t take the responsibility on yourself – if you don’t decide to become a parent to the world – others might…

Others that are genuinely oriented towards chaos. Or their own personal gain.

Simply by not taking on the responsibility for the things that are going wrong in the world, you give power to the people who want to have it – and those are rarely the people who should have it…

Even worse, if you don’t become a parent to the world, you give away the innate power you have as a human being with free will. And you give it to the worst type of people...

The people who want to have power over you…

You allow yourself to be pushed around by the forces that others decide to impose on you. And by doing this, you make them more powerful.

All of this just because you didn’t contribute to a viable alternative.

Think about this next time you complain about a politician… If you are not willing to work on providing an alternative, you haven’t earned the right to complain.

This turned quite negative. Which makes sense, because we are talking about serious stuff.

We are talking about taking on your place in the world as a hero, by becoming a parent to it. By bringing forth something new that the world genuinely needs.

That’s not a joke.

But we desperately need it.

We need you!

We need the power for good that you have inside of you.

We need you to decide to use this power for good.

And we need you to act on this decision by becoming a parent to the world…

Will you..?

If the Answer is Yes…

If the answer to the previous question is “Yes!”, the next question becomes:

Well… for me it went this way:

When I came to uni, it was really a transformative experience for me. But I soon noticed that it wasn’t the case for many of my peers…

So I started investigating and got engaged with this topic. First by talking to a lot of people and learning a lot about self/personal development (especially Jordan Peterson’s lectures at Toronto where a big influence on me in the beginning). Later on, when I had learned a lot and synthesized my thoughts more (over the course of years) I started getting more engaged:

• I started teaching at uni.

• I started giving workshops on all topics self-development.

• And I started getting involved in how my university shapes the experience of their students…

All this lead me here…

I want to get as many people as possible to start asking “How Good Could Life Be?”… Because that’s what ultimately transformed my life… That’s where I still see a lot of potential. Too few people ask this question genuinely. And so, I’m trying to change that…

But this is just my story. And here it’s about you. So…

What can you do?

1. Start by Paying Attention

The first step is to start paying attention.

What are some things that naturally grab your attention?

In my story above it was the difference that university had on me vs my peers. That thing grabbed hold of me once and never really let go.

But it can be a lot of other things…

I have talked to someone because they saw a lot of mistreatment of genuine mental health issues in their community, wanted to do something about it, and decided to study psychology…

I have a friend who is obsessed with creating an overview of all the tactics you could use in self-development. Once centralised database. That’s (one of the ways) how he wants to be a parent to the world.

You see, it can come in different shapes. Pay attention to what really grabs your attention. Then, lean into it and explore…

2. Make the Decision

Once you notice that something continues to call out to you…

…decide to become a parent to it.

You have to really feel this. This is not a spur of the moment thing.

This is one of the “Fuck Yeah!” decisions that you will make in your life...

Not necessarily because it feels super exciting (although it can) but more because you just don’t see any other way around it. You just cannot imagine yourself not becoming a parent to whatever is calling out to you…

And so you decide to fully lean into it.

This might take time. It took me years of engaging with the question of “What makes uni different to me than to my peers” to find the answer in the question of “How Good Could Life Be”. So don’t worry. Stick with it and you’ll get there…

3. Learn. Learn. Learn!

Once you have your calling and you decided to act on it, it’s time to learn. A lot!

This might sound annoying, but in my experience it is not. By this point in time, you will be naturally drawn to learning about the things that contribute to the thing that you have decided to become a parent to…

The goal now is to really understand that thing.

To understand it deeply.

To understand it from different perspective.

To get an embodied or experiential understanding of that thing.

This means you have to read, write, listen, talk, and engage in life. You have to fill your mind with theory. But you also have to act on that theory. You have to try to synthesize what you learn. Fail. And try again.

This will take years. And its part of the journey that actually helps you drill down to what you really want to do (e.g., my spreading the “How Good Could Life Be” question).

Stick with it.

Follow your curiosity.

And you will find what you are looking for and what we need. You’ll learn how you can become a parent to the world. The hero that we need!

4. Do!

Finally, it becomes time to bring the thing you have decided to become a parent to into being…

This can take in many forms. It’s not necessarily working on producing something like a product or a service… It can also be the circumstances that allow this thing to flourish…

For example, I am writing here to share my thoughts and hope they fall on the ears who want to hear them and can learn from them… But I am also engaged, at my uni. I’m trying to start a discussion on how we communicate the role of our students to our students…

In this second instance, it’s less about building something. It’s rather about trying to create an environment in which our students can authentically follow their passions and see university as a place for self-development (which it still can be, despite what many people online say).

So, the thing here is that through your learning, you have learned to understand what the thing you have become parent to needs.

Now, you take the actions to nurture that thing into maturity.

One Last Thing…

What I have written about here is a lot. The first three stages took me approximately five years. I might be particularly slow… But still: don’t rush it…

You have plenty of time. Let things go their natural course.

This is your journey.

A hero’s journey…

The journey of someone who decided to give their life to something greater than themselves…

It’s the journey of someone who has decided to become a parent to the world.

It’s the journey of a lifetime…

It is your journey!

I have given you all I can at this point in time.

Now it’s on you.

Go and Do!

And let me know what you are becoming a parent to:

I wish you the greatest success with it!

All the best,
Niklas