The Secret Of Life, According to Alan Watts and Achieving It, According to Me.
It’s an occasional habit of mine to fall into an Alan Watts wormhole (what I like to call an Alan Watt-the hell happened to half my day?). His soothing voice, his sharp wisdom, his amusing explanations. He teases, teaches and tests his audience in a way I’ve never seen anyone else do. I always finish his talks feeling a little bit lighter about life.
Anyway… In this particular talk, Watts revealed his secret to life.
“This is the real secret of life — to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now. And instead of calling it work, realise it is play.”
He says life is about curiosity and experimentation, it is not necessarily about reaching the right answers. If you focus solely on the destination, you’ll find yourself in a cycle of working, barely noticing your achievements and getting right back into working again.
How to use the secret of life to achieve your goals
As Watts so eloquently phrased it, the secret of life comes in two distinct steps.
- Be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now
- Instead of calling it work, realise it is play
Be completely engaged in the here and now
Ever driven somewhere, arrived and realised you have no recollection of the journey? Or finished a meal, realizing you don’t really remember how it tasted? This is what we’re talking about. The world, currently, is suffering from pandemic unconsciousness. It’s easy to float through the day without really giving your full attention to the world, but it makes a huge difference when you do.
1. Identify your unconscious habits
Unconscious habits are one of the biggest distractors in everyday life. Going through everyday on autopilot is a simple and easy way to remain completely out of touch.
It’s a tricky question to ask yourself: what do I do unconsciously? And it takes a lot of concentration to learn to question yourself. Try to question yourself as often as possible: am I truly feeling what I’m doing right now?
If you struggle to remember, set frequent reminders on your phone or place visual reminders around you — coat your house in post-it notes or change your lockscreen to something that will trigger the thought.
2. Know what you truly want to do
This one can be tricky, and I’m certainly not telling you to plan your entire life out (that would be, if anything, a distraction from the here and now). What I am saying is, that once you’ve identified your unconscious habits, and any other habits for that matter, you’ll need to know which you’d like to keep and any new ones you’d like to create.
Having a list of intentions and principles will help you steer your time and effort towards those things you really care for, helping you dismiss other distractions. Whenever you become conscious of what you’re doing, check with yourself that it’s something you’d really like to be spending your time on and whether it’s helping or hindering your goals.
3. Exercise your attention span
The place we frequent most often, when we’re forgetting to be in the room, is our mind. Thought spiral staircases, mind trap doors. It’s a maze. And whether your thoughts are good or bad, they’re distracting from the here and now.
Now, I’m going to give some advice that will earn a sharp nod from half of you and a strong eye roll from the rest. Meditate.
I, for the longest time, never truly understood meditation. It works in different ways for different people and achieves slightly different effects. For me, it took someone explaining it as an exercise to strengthen your brain against distractions, for me to get it. It’s training to become more conscious of how you use your brain.
Sit, concentrate on your breathing. Every time you notice a thought pops up, return to concentrating on your breathing. If you’re anything like me, at first, you’ll get led away very easily and you’ll be five minutes down a thought path before you catch yourself. But that’s okay, you’ll get quicker over time. It’s about strengthening the muscle that brings your brain back to where you’re consciously trying to concentrate. And it works.
How to turn work into play
1. Tackle life with curiosity
I know, for me at least, that if I need to start doing something, I will try every devious trick in the book to avoid starting (I usually referred to this as ‘preparation’). It’s a procrastination technique. And the way I’ve learnt to tackle it, is by taking on a mindset that was curiosity focussed, not results based.
When I start writing, I encourage myself by asking ‘I wonder what I can create from these thoughts’ or ‘it would be interesting to see what comes of this topic’ and then I start writing, no pressure, and see what happens. When you drop expectations and enter a situation with only curiosity, you’re allowing yourself to be more creative. There’s no pressure it it fails, because that’s not the point.
Recently someone gave me a piece of advice that, despite its simplicity, shook my brain. They said “Pride yourself with being a learner, not as someone who is good at things.” Because the point isn’t really whether you can do it or not, the point is whether or not you’re trying to. You are not a person who runs 5k three times a week. You are simply someone who runs. See the freedom in that?
2. Get excited
If you have a goal, you should also have a reason as to why you want to achieve that goal. Whatever that may be, my simplest advice is to get excited about it! If you’re not looking forward to journeying towards your goal, it might not be the right goal for you or you might not have chosen a strong enough reason to serve as your why-power. And trust me, that why-power is going to keep you in check.
Write about why you’re excited, tell people about your goal, create reminders for yourself — put up some visual reminders around your house, change your lockscreen, create a playlist dedicated to your goal. Whatever helps you get (and stay!) excited, will help you stick to the plan and keep your enthusiasm going.
3. Stay balanced
It’s an important thing to say regardless of where you’re headed. Remember, mistakes, set-backs and the occasional lack of attendance isn’t a problem. This is play afterall. Going in with a light-hearted attitude will help you go so much further. And learning to be conscious (as we discussed above) of how you feel, eg. the difference between laziness/procrastination and a need for a break, will help you achieve your goals even sooner.
