Good Life Project - I’m Aware, and it’s Bumming Me Out. Now What?

Episode Date: January 19, 2017

In today’s GLP Riff, we’re sharing two powerful questions from one of our super-awesome podcast listeners. Turns out, we’ve received similar questions many times over the years, so we figured this’d be a great time to share a bit of a longer answer, along with a few stories and ideas. It’s all around the realization […]The post I’m Aware, and it’s Bumming Me Out. Now What? appeared first on Good LifeProject. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today's episode is brought to you by my new book. I know I'm our sponsor. So you guys have heard me talk about it in the past, I think towards the end of last year, my new book, my latest book, How to Live a Good Life came out and I've been blown away by the reception to it. It's very straightforward, surprising science, soulful stories and practical wisdom. It's very straightforward, surprising science, soulful stories, and practical wisdom. It's a blend of, you know, pretty much a lot of what this show is about, but really distilled into pure, actionable wisdom and insights designed to walk you through a process and introduce you to a model that I call the Good Life Buckets that I hope will really help you live a good life. It's a great time of

year to be exploring this and really using it as a tool to do the things you're here to do, to become what you're knowing you can become, and also to find the grace in being just as you are. So check it out. You can find it pretty much all over Amazon, Barnes & Noble, local bookstores, indies, how to live a good life. Okay, on to our show. Hey there, it's Jonathan with A Good Life Project Riff. So every once in a while, I love to read a question that I get often by email, forwarded to me from one of our awesome listeners and then share my thoughts and that becomes the riff. And that's what I'm going to do this week. So today's question is a little

bit of a longer setup, but I think it's something that so many people feel. So I want to actually read it, the entire thing, and then I'm going to share my thoughts on it. And it comes to us from our listener, Asha. So here we go. She says, Recently, I've been thinking about all the default inputs that unintentionally come into our lives, be it high fructose corn syrup, a never-ending Facebook feed, empty fear instilling news, and of course, overt cultural norms, which, more than we know, can determine our own beliefs

of what's acceptable or not acceptable. Fed up with feeling like a cattle being force fed grain, which I do not naturally prefer. I have been going on an input cleanse, which means everything from deleting Instagram, cutting back on sugar, only spending time with people I really can have an honest conversation with, and not reading, watching, listening, consuming things that don't seem authentic or true. I'm a big believer in meditation, movement, being outside and appreciating the small details and beauty that always exists around us. I write poems and dance freely in parks. I would say I'm pretty mindful. I can recognize when I'm taking actions out of fear versus acting out of a genuine place

in my heart. But I find myself saying, now what? I find the stage just past awareness is hard to get through. The now what is in two parts. One, overcoming depression. I do find myself taking a bit of a nihilistic attitude. I can see that a lot of the busyness doesn't matter. A lot of what people do in society in general is empty. It's a truth that's hard to shake and can honestly get me down. And two, practicality of living a life that you want. The things that feel most pure and rejuvenating are spending quality time with good friends and loved ones, movement and making art. Things that typically don't generate income. I'm finding it very hard to find meaningful work. Do you have advice for either of these, what I would call post-mindful predicaments?

So awesome question. And I've gotten some variation of this question in so many ways, shapes, forms over the years. So I figured I would set aside a little bit of time and share some ideas around them, and hopefully it helps. So first, what do you do once you start becoming aware and realizing how much of what you do is actually kind of emptying and mindless rather than feeling unintentional? Well, I guess first, what I would do is ask, what role was the busyness serving for me in the first place? So for many people, it's just a mindless pattern that we kind that we adopted either intentionally or by default in order to distract ourselves from dealing with something that's based in either pain or trauma or sadness or frustration or any other emotion we don't and haven't wanted to feel. And if that's you, then when you begin to become still and a bit more aware, the things that mindlessness and busyness have been potentially repressing, well, those may start to actually bubble back up to the surface a bit. And this can be kind of hard

to deal with, which is why you got mindless and busy in the first place. So awareness doesn't actually solve these problems. It just allows you to see them more clearly. Awareness is a conduit, not a resolution. It's then up to us to decide how we want to process these things. And if we're ready to do the work, it can be a transformative moment of passage. And we're also probably going to want to bring others into this journey. And we can start, and I would definitely recommend

starting with trusted friends or loved ones. Invite them in and say, hey, this bubbled up. And I haven't dealt with this and I've kind of been okay, or at least I thought I was okay, but I'm realizing it's always been underneath the surface for probably a really long time now. And the work that I'm doing to create some stillness and to slow down more intentionality and some awareness, well, it's got a lot of goodness, but at the same time, it's bringing a level of openness where these things are reemerging. They're coming back up. And I'm not entirely sure how to deal with it. And I need

help. So it requires us to move into a place of vulnerability. And it's not so easy very often for us to move through that space alone. So reach out to trusted friends, loved ones. If it calls for it, absolutely. Reach out to people who are genuinely qualified to help navigate the experience in a way that leaves us better off and not worse off. So that's one thing that can sometimes happen. But what if the busyness and the mindlessness, what if they weren't actually masking something else? What if they were actually just that life devouring pattern that we never realized we fell into in the first place? And then we open our eyes months, days, years down the road realizing, oh, where did my life go? So when we begin to develop practices that make us more aware of this, well, sure, we may default to negativity and judgment and lament the time that we've lost and how so many just while away, you know, their lives without purpose or intention. And it's not just us, it's the world and the human capital and the human intention and

the potential for love and care and meaning and purpose on a societal level that is just washed away in the sea of autopilot reactivity and mindlessness, it can be a lot to take in. It can lead to some really big existential questions. But here's the thing. Awareness also brings the gift of choice. So the same awareness that brings the truth of so many people's lives into the four of you now, including potentially our lives, including the state of everything that we've done and what we have and haven't done, the way we've lived or haven't lived up until this moment, well, that same awareness, it also gives us the opportunity to choose, to either wallow in this awakening or to make a difference first in our own lives, or to choose to let go of what got us here and be deliberate

and purposeful about what lies ahead in our own lives. To craft rather than default to the life we want to live from this moment forward. To bring ourselves to the world in a way that lights us up, that fills us with meaning and connection and vitality. Instead of choosing to focus on the emptiness that so many choose, leave them be for the moment and focus on what is within our control. And that's us. So we begin by taking baby steps to get more intentional. And if we know what delivers meaning into our lives, then we take the smallest little action to begin to add a bit more of it to our days. Not tomorrow. Now. Today. Start now. And if we don't, then maybe commit to beginning to run experiments. Not with the expectation that we'll instantly find that direction that we're meant to follow on the planet and find immediate success, because that rarely happens.

But that this process of experimentation, well, it'll reveal a little something about us. Our core metric as we do this, it's learning, not success along a focused path. It's just, have I learned a little bit more about what may bring me meaning, what may spark me, what may give me that sense of purpose and passion? Think of all those glimmers of sparks and try them on for size until we get a hit of validation, and then another, and then another. And if we commit to this process of intentional experimentation over time, this will begin to form a purposeful trajectory. And then, that's when we begin to double down and build momentum. When we've already determined a particular path is guided by intention and meaning.

And that's the thing that becomes the really big difference maker. Now what about all those other people out there and the mass loss of intentionality and potential? Maybe part of what's going to light you up is being in service of those people, is becoming a beacon, becoming an engine of awakening for them. But maybe also, maybe also, it's not our job, at least at this moment in time, to take on the creation of purpose, the creation of intentionality for all those others in the world. So you get to choose. You get to choose. So now what about Asha's second question? And here she asks, the things that feel most pure and rejuvenating are spending quality time with

good friends and loved ones, movement and making art, things that typically don't generate income. I'm finding it very hard to find meaningful work. Asha, you're so not alone in this. This was essentially the core question in my earlier book, Career Renegade, which is really, what if the things that light me up don't seem to have some clear predefined path to enough money for me to call it my living? So I've got a couple of thoughts here for you. One, if there's no conventional path, before you walk away, or before you just lament the fact that you're never going to be able to do this, think unconventionally. So many times we just assume that because, quote, nobody else makes money doing this, well, neither can I. And sometimes, truth is,

that's actually the reality. Other times, though, it is a complete and utter fiction, a limitation that we've bought into because either someone we trust has told us it's not possible, or there's a societal ethos that guides our thoughts and says it's not possible. Or honestly, more times than not, we're terrified of trying something unproven, and then failing, and then facing judgment and loss loss if and when that happens. So it's more of a protective mechanism for us. We avoid actually trying the unconventional because we would rather continue to walk a path of non-satisfaction and non-fulfillment than endure the fear of loss and judgment, of trying and failing. And that is not the reason not to try. So before any of us walk away and just assume that, well, those things can never become a real source of income, test your assumptions. They may be right, but they also may be really, really wrong.

So a really kind of a fun example of this from Career Renegade is a story that I shared in that book about Liv Hansen from the famed Riviera Bakehouse. And Liz was a classically trained artist, went to school, was a painter, went into New York City and spent a couple years trying to make it in the art scene, traditionally, you know, trying to get into galleries and stuff like this. And she was really gifted and she worked fiercely hard, but nothing happened. She couldn't make it work. So she decided to go back to her hometown and her folks, when she was growing up, owned a bakery. And so she spent a lot of time in the bakery. And she also pretty much swore that she would never go back into a bakery. But they had actually just bought a new little local bakery in the town. And they said, why don't you just come back?

You know, like spend a bit of time just kind of behind the counter, helping out and decorating cupcakes. Just get yourself back on your feet. She started doing that. And what she realized in short order as she was decorating cupcakes and then cakes is that she was having fun and she was starting to create designs and she was literally starting to use cupcakes and cakes and baked goods kind of the way that um an artist would use a canvas and from there she started to then actually

literally developing her own technologies to be able to paint with colored chocolate and make these incredible masterpieces. And then her artistic love and lens and eye that was not honored and was not compensated in any meaningful way in the traditional art world stood out profoundly in the world of baking. And she was starting to create these whimsical cakes and incredible designs that gathered a huge attention, a celebrity following, led the bakery over a period of years to explode, be featured in the media all over the world, led to a series of hugely selling books. And it's all because, you know, she found a completely different venue to take the exact same skill set and apply it in an

unconventional way to earn a really good living and build something super cool along the way. So that's one way to sort of handle this question. But there's another possibility here, and that is, well, what if you're right? What if after thinking and experimenting and really trying the unconventional path, you come to a place where you truly do believe that those things that light you up will not ever actually generate a full-time living.

Do them anyway. Do them anyway. Keep your day job or find one that lets you be financially comfortable, makes you okay, but also gives you as much space as you can find to live outside of it. And then build your life in a way that allows these other activities and relationships to be as present as possible in all other parts of your life. They may be woven in as just other activities or relationships that fill you up, or you may also find a way to do them as, quote, side hustles, that you never intend on stepping into full-time, that you know would never actually, or at least you assume in the beginning, would actually never give you the opportunity to do them full-time. So you know that they make you happy, though. And regardless of whether they ever turn into a full-time living or

not, you do them because they're the things that light you up. So you create a blended path where you've got your mainstream gig. I call it sort of the innocuous mainstream gig, right? And one that allows you to be financially fine. You're not worried. And at the same time, it also doesn't tax you cognitively and emotionally and energetically on a level that would not give you the energy or the attention to be able to then do all those other things you love around it. So when you do these together, I call that the blended path. And here's something kind of fascinating about the blended path. Many of the world's greatest artists, makers, scientists, writers, creators that we talk about,

write about, are featured in books, movies, magazines. They actually had full-time jobs. They did this thing that we've come to see them as legendary at on the side. You know, this was their five to nine and weekends. And here's the even more interesting thing to me. If you ask them, some of them will say, yeah, you know, I want to do this as my mainstream thing if I can. And some of them do. But a whole bunch of them also answer, no, I have no desire to ever make this my mainstream thing. And here's why. The reason is that when you get to do the things that light you up without regard in any way,

shape, or form to whether it is going to contribute to your ability to be financially okay in the world, you are no longer constrained in your creative process, in your engagement process, in your connection and vitality bucket-filling endeavors. You're no longer constrained by having to think about whether other people are going to buy it from you, which means that you will very often bring a part of you into what you're doing that would never actually see the light of day had you your gifts that allows people to express themselves and engage in a way and on a level that creates genius. So there's a certain amount of freedom, actually, that comes from the blended path that many people will not feel had they tried to make

it their main gig. So something to think about as we kind of all move forward. I know this is a question that's been in a lot of different ways on a lot of people's minds. And I'm so glad that Asha asked it because it gave me a chance to kind of share some updated thoughts on it. I hope you found this useful as always. Love spending time with you. And if you have questions that you would love to have me rotate into the mix on a future riff, please do send them to support at goodlifeproject.com. That's it until next week. I'm Jonathan Fields, signing off for Good Life Project.