(This is the second part of the piece and continues from Part 1)
Pursuit of happiness and a life well spent
I want honesty, good humour, integrity and fairness. I want to focus on the things that matter most to me, that is 1. Maintaining good health and well-being, 2. My relationship with loved ones and 3. Flexibility. I must change my professional paradigm to enable this re-focus. As stated above, I’ve established that I’m just not suited to full-time work in my former industry on an ongoing basis. It’s simply not going to adapt in a time-frame that suits me (but I think it must and will). People and their role in the global economy is changing very fast. Work must adapt more quickly as peoples priorities will also shift – but that is a whole other piece (and one I hope to write – so stay tuned).
My new focus areas:
1. Maintain health, well-being and life-enjoyment
2. My relationship with loved ones
3. Flexibility
Health, Well-being and Life-Enjoyment
I feel like I may have cheated with this focus area as it nearly could capture everything that really matters to me. But I’m going to break down what these things mean to me.
Health
By health I refer to my personal physical bodily condition. I’ve made some decent progress in this area over the last couple of years. I’m six foot (180cm) and should have a healthy weight of about 85kg. At my worst on record I was at 105kg, this measured fact (and some unflattering photos) was a rude shock to me and it really made me sit up and take the issue seriously. I’m now down to an average of 93kg. So I have some room that it could swing either way but I need to ensure that it’s in the right direction.
I made the losses I did make through my own simple philosophy on fitness. For most people it should be kept simple, no fancy diets or exercise regimes necessary. Without any other inhibiting conditions, it comes down to energy in versus energy out. If I consume less energy than I expend, on average, my weight should come down. And it did for me. Anyone that cares for my opinion on the matter will hear about how simple amendments to one’s habit will make all the difference with the least amount of uncomfortable disruption to your life (unless that’s what you really want/need). Expensive gym memberships and wholesale, unsustainable dietary changes won’t work because, and I’m sure there are facts out there somewhere that demonstrate my point, at some point you will drop them (the business models of most gyms are built on this basis). These large changes aren’t you. They will probably make you less happy, which is contrary to a big chunk of the whole exercise. Simple adaptations to existing habits, ones that you don’t want to get rid of, are the most sustainable long term changes you can make that will fix your health. Life will get in the way sometimes, like holidays and christmas (destroyers of good habits), but that’s life. Enjoy the journey.
My plan is to get to 85kg’s, or as close to it as is healthy. Getting the energy balance for me looks like this – energy in: eat ok at lunch, don’t binge on chocolate at night, don’t drink alcohol during the week and don’t go too mad on the weekend. Versus energy out: walk for 1 hour per day (to-from work does this), exercise properly (like >30mins and get sweaty) 3 times per week and walk as much as possible instead of Uber. Boom. I lost over 10kg, 10% of my body mass, with these minor amendments to pre-existing habits. The challenge of course is sticking to them…
Wellbeing
Wellbeing is probably the most in-vogue and vague contemporary concept, but it is something that gets a lot of attention, and I think for good reason. I personally believe societal focus on the concept of one’s wellbeing is filling a void left by the shift away from traditional religions and concepts such as the soul. We have over time shifted away from these constructs as they failed to serve modern societies fairly and were full of self-serving, confusing contradictions. People are educated enough now to sensibly question what they are told (although this skill still needs some more work). Unfortunately this shift left a large hole in our purpose and reason for being.
As such, particularly in recent years, many people have found themselves wandering aimlessly and devoid of purpose in life. Purpose for many was given a patch-job via vainly pursuits of wealth and image. It hasn’t taken us long, just a generation or two, to work out that this is faux-purpose and we need to find other more meaningful solutions.
I think wellbeing is finding purpose in healthy productive pursuits that add value to your life and to others. The confounding thing is that this is so hard to do!
The first step in doing this is to draw a dotted line (not a hard, fixed line) between purpose/wellbeing and life-enjoyment. There will and should be some blurring of the boundaries here. More Euro border than Korean border.
The practical reality for most is that one cannot and will not thrive only on doing what one enjoys most.
Many lucky sods do manage this, or act like they do via social media, but generally I call BS. The reality I bet rarely matches the image. I’m simply just not that good a snowboarder that I could go professional… and the salary and types of roles working in the industry would not give me a suitable sense of purpose and this would ultimately impact on how much I continued to enjoy snowboarding in the first place. Therefore a line needs to be drawn. So I need to find a purpose in life that allows life-enjoyment but it is different from doing the things I enjoy most.
The thing that gives you purpose is not necessarily work, but will probably be related to work and income, or how you navigate work and income.
This comes back to the most cliche of wellbeing slogans “life balance”. The problem I have with this concept is that, by definition, it separates work (not good) and life (good) and aims to provide a healthy balance. While this is doable, it has proven very difficult for many including myself. It almost excuses the shittiest of work situations by assuming you can counter-balance it with lots of good. The good probably being money or other vanities addressed above as faux. Meaning that from a purpose perspective you’re really just left with a shitty job.
Many, including myself, try to address this with travel. Which is definitely something I and many others do enjoy. But for the most part it is purposeless and upon returning from a trip you find yourself facing a huge mountain of misery until the next trip, which you then start planning immediately to give yourself some hope.
Therefore rather than a concept of “life balance” we now look to wellbeing. This to me is about how we feel as we go about our day-to-day. We want to feel comfortable, healthy and happy – the definition of wellbeing. This means as we go about our purpose rather than feelings of stress, fear, guilt and worry we should feel comfortable and happy. And rather than unhealthy, tired, immobile and bad diets we should feel energised, active and eat well. How many typical modern jobs would fit the definition of well-being? Few to nil. To find wellbeing we need to find purposeful arrangements that allow oneself to be comfortable, healthy and happy.
Note that wellbeing is a part of my number 1 focus area. And it may not be a high priority for everybody but that’s part of the problem. If my focus is wellbeing and I’m dealing with someone whose focus is growing their wealth, with wellbeing of themselves and others a low priority, it’s going to be difficult seeing eye-to-eye. Therefore it helps tremendously to cooperate in your day-to-day with people of a like mind.
This takes dedicated effort and comes at a cost. But also with rewards. I know from my own personal experience that feelings of great happiness and purpose from a day’s work comes largely from a sense of accomplishment and the interactions I’ve had with others in achieving it. Achieving something and getting it done with a smile and laugh along the way. This feeling is human. It’s a natural sense of community pulling together and cooperating for mutual benefit. The feeling that meant humans went from individual hunter-gatherers to tribespeople to thriving societies. And I believe achieving this feeling in conducting business will bring rewards to both customers and clients.
There are limits to this of course, there is no room for greed, that great fracturing element of human society. Mutual benefit requires that everyone has a sense of reward and that it is fair and not necessarily always 100% equitable i.e. I may be willing to give up an equal share of spoils from some enterprise if I think someone else needs or deserves it more. And in turn I trust that when my turn comes this would be reciprocated. This is community. And it is the purpose that I want in my life. The job, the role, the salary are secondary to this.
Aside from this, looking within for comfort, health and happiness is also an important part of wellbeing. This is Meditation and can be in whatever form works and suits each person. It doesn’t only mean traditional meditation (although I do believe in the benefits of traditional meditation). For me personally it is kayaking or running. It’s turning the brain off and listening to the body and giving some moments of peace to the mind so that it is ready for new challenges and fresh ideas. It is certainly something I want to invest more time to and understand better.
In summary, work needs to return to a sense of community. Carrying out work with respect for others, seeking mutual benefit and requires actively seeking out business/trade/work partners that are like minded. Our purpose, whether that’s work or something else, should be a source of happiness, health and comfort to our lives, not something that we simply bear until the next escape.
Life-Enjoyment
Probably the easiest to write about but the part that requires the least amount said. Life-enjoyment simply means focusing as much time and effort possible doing things that I enjoy. Or equally importantly, enjoying as much as is possible things I may not necessarily enjoy but need to do. This for me means doing things with a smile on the face and good humour. An old saying that I always appreciated was ‘a day without laughter is a day wasted’. I’ve wasted far too many days already and must no more.
The things I would like to spend my time on are good food, good wine, good beer, snowboarding, spending time outdoors and all with great company and with loved ones. It’s also reading great books, watching great films and entertainment. Whatever it is, make a life where the maximum amount of time is dedicated to these things.
Sean Braid | Drink and Food Entrepreneur 