In an age when we’re living longer, having children later, and savoring on more healthy years, do you ever get the feeling that a lot of us, right now, are also more confused than any generation before us about what to do with all this time?
The rhetoric of staying in one job for decades has dissipated. Climbing the invisible corporate ladder has gone with the wind. Even the illusion of being forced into one city and one location has evaporated. The ideas of what life can be has had a major makeover in the last decade, especially post-Covid.
What more people have been asking out loud is: how do I build a life of meaning? How do I contribute something worthwhile? What do I want to spend my precious time creating?
This is where I find myself too; at the cusp of another transition, I think. Trusting my instincts has been the hardest part. Knowing which voice is mine, and which is the echo of everyone else’s expectations.
Sometimes the ‘right’ path is to fail fast and fail early, so you can move forward with fresh eyes. Sometimes the fear is so loud it talks you into the comfortable thing: the safer, more familiar path, over the thing that’s been glaring headlights at you, trying hard to blow your pupils wide open.
And some days the only thing left is to succumb to humility: to know you made the wrong move, and own it. Not to save face, neither for embarrassment, but maybe to realize that maybe that was the point. Maybe you have to try the ‘wrong’ thing to feel, in your body and soul, what off actually feels like.
So what do you do with the other thing—yes, that one—the idea that only gets louder after you’ve made the ‘sensible’ choice?
Here’s the hard truth: sometimes you have to try the wrong thing to realize the right one. Sometimes you have to notice the fear, and choose courage still, before you can clear the space to lean into what your soul has actually been calling you to. And often, it’s the thing that scares you most.
The trigger this week:
I write about the small things that compound into a life well-lived: brain, mind, body, and soul. Free to join. If it’s speaking to you, becoming a patron is the best way to keep what’s being built here going.
Indulge in “offline waking rest” for rest and recovery. It helps your brain improve memory and retention of new information. If you’re lucky enough to live near nature, walk into it, with open arms, as many days as you can; and let your senses take it all in. In this offline state of daydreaming, mind wandering, and mindless inattentive stillness, your default mode network has finally has a moment to recollect what it’s encountered. Sitting on a beach recently, I admired the shifting curvatures of the turquoise waves crashing onto the reef, and the thumping of the blue curls colliding and pulling in different directions. As I sat there, appreciating the undeniable power of nature and its hums, I felt an overwhelming sense of gratitude. Being able to take in moments of stillness like these: no thought beyond the observation of nature itself, like a live meditation, indulging on what the brain needs, from time to time: to be one with nature.
Train your mind on positive superstition to improve performance. Like adopting a growth mindset (thank you Carol Dweck!), research on positive superstition has shown a measurable improvement in performance “activating a superstition boosts participants’ confidence in mastering upcoming tasks, which in turn improves performance.” The study found that embracing your lucky charm, especially when paired with a familiar saying that acts as a trigger, activating the belief, will positively reinforce your success rate across diverse tasks such as golf, motor dexterity, memory, and anagrams. Instead of telling yourself you’ve not got it
Barefoot, skin-to-ground, grounding with the earth to stimulate the body and reset the nervous system. If you remember learning about the layers of Earth, there’s a movement around the daily practice of walking barefoot, especially on grass or sand to reset the nervous system. That’s what I’ve been trying to do more of too, walking barefoot on grass whenever I get the chance to; letting my body reconnect with the invisible emanating forces from the planet that keeps us afloat.
Contemplative nature sessions to nourish the soul. Doing nothing, in this modern world of ours, is shockingly difficult to do. Harder still in nature, alone, with no notification or distraction to disrupt your flow. But that’s exactly where the good stuff is: in the long, slow pauses, where you let your own thoughts catch up with you. To take the moment when it comes, is the practice. To sit with light through the trees, the particular hush of the rustling leaves, the crashing waves, or the swish of the breeze. Allowing yourself to slowly settle in. You simply have to welcome it and sit still. Because here’s the belief I keep returning to: what we’re here to do is to reconnect with nature, and with the nature within ourselves. I am still figuring out what this exactly means too.
“Courage is when you’re afraid and doing something about it anyways.” — unknown