Are You Living Someone Else's Life? A Recommendation to Stop Playing the 'Nice Person'

That drinking party you couldn't turn down. That gathering you didn't really want to go to.
The nights you spent drained and alone on the way home, while saying, "It's fine, I'm totally okay."
If you added up all that time, how many days would it actually be?

It is often said that time is given to everyone equally.

That is a lie.

To be precise, while it is true that "the same amount of time is given," who you spend that time for is not equal at all.
Before you know it, there are people who keep selling off their own time for the sake of other people's schedules, other people's moods, and other people's expectations.

Why does this happen?
It is not just the fear that "if I refuse, I will be disliked."
The cause lies in a much deeper place.

In social psychology, this is called "peer pressure," but in Japan, it operates as the "atmosphere."
There are no explicit rules. You just naturally learn to read the "atmosphere" of the situation and play the role that is expected of you.
For women, this acts even more strongly.
"Being attentive"
"Easing the mood"
"Not making waves"
—While these abilities are valued as virtues, they quietly erode your own time and emotions.

Thinking in economic terms, this is a problem of "opportunity cost."
The one hour you spent for someone else's life is also one hour you could not spend for your own life. Every time you say "reluctant yes" to someone's invitation, you are saying "unconscious no" to something of your own.
That accumulation creates the "somehow drained self" you become a few years later.

Of course, I do not mean to say that using time for others is bad.
The problem is whether you are "choosing" to do so.
Time offered by your own will and time offered because you couldn't refuse are completely different in quality, even if they are the same hour. The former becomes richness, and the latter becomes exhaustion.

A person who can say "no" is not cold.
They just know the value of their own time. Only those who cherish their own time can truly cherish the time of others.
A dry well cannot provide water.

When people become conscious of the time they have left in life, they realize for the first time the weight of "choosing for oneself" over "meeting someone else's expectations."
The sooner you realize that, the more time you can reclaim.

The man who changed the world in Silicon Valley only understood the true meaning of those words after he fell ill.
And with the time he had left, he left these words behind.

"Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life."

— Steve Jobs

About Steve Jobs

Apple co-founder (1955–2011). He brought the iMac, iPod, iPhone, and iPad into the world, fundamentally changing the concepts of technology and design. He spoke these words in his 2005 Stanford University commencement speech. The words about "time" that he spoke there, having already been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, are not just the maxims of a successful person, but continue to be quoted around the world today as the earnest declaration of a human facing death.

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