A Cosmic Perspective is Empowering, Not Depressing

Your planet is a tiny speck in a void of interplanetary space.  Your sun is one of a hundred billion other stars in your galaxy. Your galaxy is one of 50 or 100 billion other galaxies in the universe. Does this make you feel enlightened or depressed?

“I assert that if you were depressed after learning and being exposed to this perspective,” says the astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, “you started your day with an unjustifiably large ego.”

If that is the case, what should you do? Reject your ego, Tyson says, and “sit back and bask in your relevance to the cosmos.” This cosmic perspective is, after all, empowering. “When I look up in the universe I know I’m small but I’m also big,” he says. “I’m big because I’m connected to the universe and the universe is connected to me.”

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So how can you take this cosmic perspective and translate it into action in your own life? Neil deGrasse Tyson explains this in a new workshop called “Inventing Your Future” on Big Think Mentor. 

In this workshop, you will learn to:

-Recognize and seize big opportunities
-Set lofty goals that keep you challenged and growing
-Keep actively learning – knowledge unlocks creativity

Subscribe to Big Think Mentor Here.

As Tyson teaches, “Goal setting should be maybe a little beyond your reach…[and force] you to be innovative beyond your expectations of yourself.”

Think of a time when a lofty goal drove you to surprising achievements. In the comments below, share the story of how you set that goal and how it inspired your actions.

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