Be alive. Not passive.

The beginning of my ascent from grey to ok.

Each day there are over five million journeys taken across the entire London Underground, transporting passengers to their places of work between the hours of 9am and 6pm. An average London commute is now seventy four minutes long and a London lunch break is now thirty one minutes per day.

This creates a window of time where people are actively traveling and working between the hours of 7:46am and 7:44pm.

That’s roughly twelve hours, with little to no breaks.

Now picture five million Sunflowers contained in this same environment. Do you imagine a meadow of well nourished plant life? or do we envisage flowers that are lifeless, cowed and merely surviving?

You would be correct to guess that a lot of us resemble the former burned foliage and I was one of them for far too long.

I would wake up every morning at 6:00am to exercise and meditate. Following up with breakfast and a commute working from my laptop before arriving at the office and working solidly until 6:30pm. At which point I would commute home and work from my laptop on the way.

Upon arrival at 7:40pm I would cook a nutritious meal for an hour before going to bed at 9:30pm. All in a desperate attempt to claw on to the remnants of my shattered mental health.

I tried every mindfulness practise under the sun, for months, and whilst this helped address my physical and emotional condition. It didn’t fix it. I worked incredibly hard to maintain my mind and body but life was still unbearable.

Something had to change.

Naively, I blamed myself for my mental decline before identifying and tackling the actual underlaying problem. Work-life balance. My exhaustion clearly came from the three week headaches, twelve hour work days, eating at my desk, zero breaks, working on holiday and emailing on the toilet.

It felt great to be able to tell people that I worked for x company but inside I was falling apart, and the signs where becoming clearer and clearer.

Eventually, I realised that I was sacrificing myself to maintain a vision. An identity that’s value was external and not internal. An ego that found reward in being fed compliments and an image that needed other people to know that it was “successful”.

Finally, I came to the decision that I will not merely survive for outward approval. I will not be trapped like a bird in a cage, and I refuse to see my years confined to a desk away from sunlight, as if I have been sentenced to after-school detention, infinitely.

I was terrified when the intense force and weight of this experience came to a climactic end. I had been living an out of body experience, watching a grey man get out of bed, go to work and come home. Emotionless, dull and in my place.

Your time, health, relationships, ambitions and dreams are far too important to compromise. Ignore “Get after it” Instagram culture, it may be good for Dwayne Johnson and David Goggins but it doesn’t work for everybody.

We are meant to be a live, not passive.

Pursue your dreams. Pursue a mission. Even if it means working a job that doesn’t impress your friends. Your time outside of work is far more valuable than any salary and false sense of social status.

It’s taken me a long time to realise that the most self assured, confident and free people do not care about my perception of their standing in our cultures social hierarchy and your shouldn’t either.

Make sure that you find meaning in your mission. With meaning you find drive and with drive you find flow.

Don’t be afraid of change, it’ll be difficult but a snake shedding its skin is growing. If you’re not challenging yourself or feeling confused then you’re standing still, static.

Most importantly, do not lie. I learned this very recently, I’ve been a master manipulator in regard to what I want out of life. Convincing myself of one thing or another, the wiser choice, the easier option. Listen to your gut feeling and be entirely honest with yourself, write it down or say it out loud.

It’s better to acknowledge your desires now than in five or ten years time when you’re a little older and little more resentful. Especially if the truth is intimidating.