For many of us 2022 was a challenging year — dealing with a “post-pandemic” world where the previous rules of engagement don’t apply anymore, but where nothing has formally replaced them yet. On one hand bringing huge uncertainty, and on the other hand the opportunity for us to rewrite the playbook on how to navigate our daily lives.
One might choose to go back to past routines and habits in a world that doesn’t vibe at the same beat anymore. Feeling lost and confused as to why things don’t work the way they used to, why they don’t have the same sense of control over situations, why everything seems like a drag. Many people around me are in this dire state of affairs; feeling drained, depressed, lost and stuck. Trying to revive a way of life that is not there anymore. Even if, in all honesty, the prior ways of being, doing and thinking were not serving them all that well, at least they knew how to behave. It is a bit like playing a game that is definitely not the best game for us, but where we understand how to play. One becomes skilled at contorsioning themselves in order to be part of a play that has no role for them. This when the confusion arises; how does one let go of playing well the wrong part in the wrong story?
Others might decide to use the opportunity to write their own part, to invent their own game that will be aligned (or at least better aligned) with who they are and what they want. Using the disruption of the pandemic to push back on the nonsense, reinvent themselves and their own personal rules of engagement. During the pandemic, we have seen (and experienced) this redesigning of our lives to some degree, more or less intentionally, and it is still unfolding. WFH is an obvious one; embraced by many despite corporations now pushing hard to have their employees back at their workstations, such as obedient soldiers, regardless of the costs (money, time, energy) for their “valued partners” — corporate cultures are so great, we would not want them to go to waste by not spending all our productive time in the office. 😆
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Of course, I will encourage you (and myself at the same time) to opt for an intentional redesign of our lives in order to be more aligned with our own authentic selves. That doesn’t mean ditching careers, spouses, and tutti quanti. The goal is to be more purposeful with our resources, aligning them as much as possible with what we love. We want to spend more time and energy on what brings us joy and reenergize us. Inversely, we want to minimize what drains us.
When I started to be more intentional with my life I put together a super quick map of where I was allocating my time and energy (see below). It had been an eye opener for me. I realized how much I was prioritizing people, activities, and places that were sucking the energy out of me, under the pretext of politeness, habits, and surrender. On the other hand, I was putting last what was making me feel joyful and energized.
I recommend you to put together your own cheat sheet over the course of a normal week or so, to assess what are these people, activities and places that are accretive (or not) to your life. You can also roughly allocate the time spent to get an even clearer picture of where you stand. Be precise enough, otherwise it will not bring great insights. Putting large categories such as “work”, or “ my relatives” is to broad. Rather opt for “emails”, “meetings”, “projects”, etc.
You can even go crazy and add additional layers of precision, such as sublevels of energy and joy (high — medium — low), to assess where are your best returns and largest losses for the time and energy invested. For example, grocery-shopping might only take 2h/week, but create a high energy loss. While cooking could be taking up to 7h/week for “a wash” in terms of joy and energetic value add. So the loss by unit of time related to grocery shopping is way higher than for cooking. If you really want to have a super detailed picture, you can also take into consideration the energy input and not just the time input. Grocery shopping might be a low energy input while cooking a high energy input, rebalancing the previous equation.
This is an easy way to grasp where too much time and energy are allocated to “losing” situations and where not enough time and energy are allocated to “winning” situations. Obviously the goal is to redesign your life to minimize the energy-suck, as much as possible and maximize the energy boosts.
You can build the same type of map for your other resources such as money. Are you allocating too much money to activities or things that don’t really bring high returns at the expenses of more fulfilling activities? For example, too much money spent on shopping or restaurants (low, short-term energy boosts), which crowds out the vacation budget (high, long-term energy boosts).
One important thing is missing from the map…the people, activities, places that would bring you loads of energy and joy, but had been cut out due to a lack of resources, limiting beliefs, habits or that had even never been there in the first place.
When I was young I used to love reading novels, I was always with a book and my biggest pleasure was to curl up with one for hours. As a student though I stopped reading (more interested in partying I have to admit 😆) and when I started working I thought it was a “waste of time” to read fiction. For a couple of decades I only engaged in reading fiction very rarely and with a lot of guilt — I could be reading something more valuable (aka useful for my career). However, this was not taking into consideration the very important fact that, for me, reading a good novel was very uplifting. So, what was bringing you a lot of joy that you cut out for efficiency reasons? What did you love doing as a kid that made you feel safe and fun?
Additionally, trying out new things is a great way to find out if activities, people, places not yet on your radar could be bringing you joy and energy. You don’t have to stick with them forever if you don’t like them (or if there are things you like more). In 2023, I will try something new every month. In January it will be cross-country’s skiing, I have always wanted to try it, but never made the effort to. A new activity is a great way to also meet new people, and discover new places. You can even rope in some family members and friends to make it a fun outing.
Several of my friends have also decided to participate in the “One new thing a month challenge”, if you want to benefit from the group accountability, write your name in the comment section below. Every month I will share my New Thing and what I learnt from it.
Ideally, pick activities that will bring you closer to your Authentic Self. For example, when I was a kid I loved playing sports, being outside, reading, writing, animals, so in 2022 I added and increased activities such as playing tennis, volunteering at an animal shelter, reading, writing. I also went out of my comfort zone by picking books I would not normally read, watching shows I would never have watched (reality TV 😱), and listening to podcasts that were out of my wheelhouse. The biggest change I made was obviously starting microdosing psychedelics.
If you want to read more on the topic of changes, check out “🚀How to unstuck yourself — Do less & different, Think less & different!”
We also tend to have rigid ideas of who we are and what we like, but what if these ideas were not absolutely and utterly true? What if some activities that were “absolutely not you” would actually bring you tons of positive energy and joy? It is worth the try! Usually it only requires a very small change in our decision-making to forgo the usual default choice.
Some changes will require to rock the boat — not spending The Holidays with your family for example (that is why vacations abroad exist!). However, if you feel miserable what is the point to put habits and convenances first? None who loves you would want that for you.
All these changes, big and small, will bring you closer to your Authentic Self. That part of you that is still untouched by outside conditioning, limiting beliefs and conventions. You want that part of you to grow bigger and ultimately be your all Self. Being your Authentic Self is the only way to feel safe, secure, worthy, happy, at peace, regardless of the external circumstances. This is your North Star.
For me, making all these changes; writing a book (please reserve your copy of Paris, Mushrooms, and Me 😄), reading more, playing more sports, spending more time outside, but also spending less time on people, activities, places that were at best timesuck at worst toxic, gave me more energy, more joy and more “lightness of being”. Being back in control of how I want to spent my time and energy versus blindly following my auto-pilot has ultimately given me a lot of freedom and personal power.
It can be the same for you!
There is a great book I recommend if you want to spend more time on this topic — The Passion Test.
😎Key Takeaways:
The current uncertainty in the rules of engagement is an opportunity for us to rewrite the playbook on how to navigate our daily lives;
It is time to redesign our lives and be purposeful with our resources, aligning them as much as possible with what we love;
Map out where you are allocating your time and energy;
What are these people, activities and places that are accretive (or not) to your life? How much time and energy are you allocating to those?
Redesign your life to minimize the energy-suck, as much as possible and maximize the energy boosts;
What are the people, activities, places that would bring you loads of energy and joy, but had been cut out for efficiency reasons?
Trying out new things is a great way to find out if activities, people, places not yet on your radar could be bringing you more joy and energy;
In 2023, try something new every month; Ideally, pick activities that will bring you closer to your Authentic Self;
What if some activities that were “absolutely not you” would actually bring you tons of positive energy and joy?
Some changes will require to rock the boat; but all these changes, big and small, will bring you closer to your Authentic Self.
Being your Authentic Self is the only way to feel safe, secure, worthy, happy, at peace, regardless of the external circumstances. This is your North Star.
Being back in control of how you want to spent your time and energy versus blindly following your auto-pilot will ultimately give you a lot of freedom and personal power.
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Thank you for reading 🙏