3 Painful Truths About Your Best Self
I’m obsessed with death. Not in a Thanos murder half the universe way, but in a ‘my greatest fear is to die full of regrets’ way.
I know I’m not alone in this existential dilemma. If the title/topic of this blog post led you here, then I believe it’s safe to assume you’re in the same boat.
I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me. -Bronnie Ware
Bronnie Ware spent years caring for individuals who were in the last weeks of their life. If you’ve not read her blog post, “ Regrets of the Dying”, or checked out her full-length work, you should take the time, especially if this topic of ‘your best life’ is important to you.
Ultimately, this idea of living a life with no regrets runs parallel to the concept of becoming one’s best self. For many, though, the answers that would set them off on a successful journey are not the ones they wish to hear — or are even willing to accept.
But the process of building an extraordinary life requires extraordinary effort and sacrifice.
1. YOU DON’T HAVE A PLAN
I’ve written before on this concept in the micro-sense, in terms of building a daily purpose statement. But in terms of living life as your best self, we need to discuss what it means to have a plan at the macro level.
Being your best self is not about some form of goal attainment, it’s about the process of living an intentional life. About having a future self that you’re actively trying to live into, which in turn leads to a set of behaviors where you’re going to bed each evening a better person than you woke up that morning.
In reality, you’re living one of two lives.
1) You’re living a life that other people have outlined for you. You’re constantly in reaction mode. Your purpose is focused on pleasing others, with your internal drivers focused on predicting what would make others happy.
2) You’ve defined a future for yourself that you’re actively attempting to live into. Once defined, you’ve taken that future state of being and have created some process around it with special focus given to key areas of life, such as work, relationships, health, and play. This process is your path forward and offers daily, weekly, and monthly guidance. Note: There is no universal agreement on ‘key areas of life’, those are just the four I use in my coaching practice.
You can run a test on this principle if you’re skeptical about buying into the whole future self concept.
Each morning, take those four key areas of life and run the following question by each of them, “How am I going to improve this area of my life today?”
Think simple. We’re talking about a single day, after all.
“How am I going to improve my health today?” It could be a session at the gym, or 30 minutes of research on healthy meal prep for the week. Would a 20 minute brisk walk at lunch be a huge improvement over your typical daily behavior?
“How am I going to improve my relationships today?” Is there something small you could do for your partner and/or children today, such as having 30 minutes of focused time just having fun? Maybe you could call your best friend you don’t regularly engage with. Identify some key relationship in your life that you could move forward with a single action.
2. YOU’RE NOT FEEDING YOUR SOUL
Another way I explain this to clients is “you’re not feeding your future”. Or, I’ll have them keep a diary of their actions and ask them what kind of future their daily behavior is creating.
Whatever method, the end result is typically a humbling one.
Here’s a question that captures this concept well. “What did you do during your morning and afternoon commutes?”
As crazy as it sounds, many times I’ve asked this question of clients and they couldn’t restate with any sense of clarity what they did. They will usually offer a general “I listened to music”, at best. If you consider the average American commutes for 52 minutes per day, this is five hours each week of wasted time.
What if you focused on “feeding your soul” in this window of time?
If you know you’re going to be spending approximately an hour each day of the coming week in your commute, then do it with purpose. What skills do you need to develop to succeed in some area of life? Answer that question, and I can guarantee you there’s a podcast or audiobook for that topic. Are there people you should be more intentional about spending time with? Schedule calls with them for your commuting time.
For other people, the commute time should be about a shift in roles. But, still, this should be done in a way that feeds both your inner self and your future self. Find a podcast that tells stories about what it means to be human. Research has shown what happens when we listen to podcasts that focus on storytelling, and the impact on our sense of empathy is nothing short of incredible. If you want to be more engaged with your family and be a better listener, then reconnect with your emotions on the way home.
I’ve focused specifically on the idea of your commute because it’s relatable to most. However, you can transfer this exercise to any other area of life.
Never, ever underestimate the impact what you read and listen to has on your overall sense of self. Be purposeful.
3. YOUR INBOX/NOTIFICATIONS ARE KILLING YOU
23 minutes and 15 seconds.
That’s how long it takes your attention to recover from a distraction that is unrelated and requires some form of task switching from what you’re attempting to focus on.
So if you’re attempting to write a report and you get a notification about what you believe to be an important email…? You’re toast.
How many times does the average worker check their email everyday? That would be 74 times, to review approximately 200 emails.
How many times do you check the notifications on your phone each day? Research varies a bit, but the most recent studies have determined it’s around 80 times each day. This means the average adult checks their phone approximately every 10 minutes, regardless of context. In the last 24 hours, it’s likely you’ve checked your phone while in an important meeting, or that you were checking your phone while you should have been focused on your partner or children.
It’s likely that a majority of you reading this would experience significant anxiety if you were prevented from checking your email or having access to your phone for the next hour.
But, seriously, what would be the costs? What would you actually miss? When I dig into this reality with my clients, I’m inevitably met with resistance. Yet, when we dig deeper and actually put pen to paper, we find the answer is invariably “nothing”. Other people have worked very hard to control your attachment to your inbox, because when this occurs they can control your sense of priorities. Social media companies have designed their platforms to create a fear within you of missing out, because your attention is their revenue.
And these realities are killing your future. Each morning, if you’re opening your inbox before you’ve established your priorities for the day, you’ve lost. If you’re being bombarded by social media notifications throughout the day, and keeping up on everyone else’s life and passing up on living into your own, then you’ve lost.
SUMMARY
You have to own the journey that is your best self. You cannot count on that sense of clarity and purpose coming from an external source.
Begin each day with a plan for your best self. If you need a framework to get going, ask yourself “How will I be better today in __ than I was yesterday”, with the blanks being work, health, love, and play.
When thinking about growing each day as a person, you should always be conscious of how you’re feeding your inner self. What are you learning? What types of content are you feeding your brain? Be intentional about periods of the day such as breaks and commutes, and know ahead of time what you’re going to consume.
Ditch the notifications, or at least set boundaries with them. The second you get distracted in a way where you switch cognitive tasks, you’ve lost. Stop allowing other peoples’ perceived urgency to control your performance — and, honestly, your life.
Originally published at https://www.retri.consulting.
