Underrated as an anti-depressant, and understandably so, this is nonetheless an absolute prerequisite for long term mental health, as well as a very powerful tonic for getting out of ruts.
A passion for purpose
Motivational speaker Wayne Dyer used to say:
“Every child comes to Earth with secret orders…”
This might not be literally true.
Pretty sure it is not.
But it helps to think in terms of what we are good at.
Wealth, purpose, enjoyment, and satisfaction can all be found at the sweet-spot where competency meets passion.
In management philosophy books this is referred to as Ikigai, but it has been known by many names, and the way to find it is baked into our very physiology.
We all know that idleness is not the key to success, and most of us, by the time we reach adulthood, have ceased to think of it as a viable lifestyle as well.
Briefly enjoyable, like chocolate or a glass of wine, it quickly turns sour and makes us miserable.
It is good for us in small doses, but we need something more nourishing too.
The balanced path, of effort and relief, is actually far better for our bodies & minds than either of the two extremes – constant effort or putting our feet up all the time.
Odd as it sounds, rest is not usually the answer to low mood.
We humans love to be busy, we yearn for goals, achievements and progress.
Often when you look back on your recent past the most rewarding, fulfilling, satisfying times were crammed with hectic activity
- Childcare
- Travel
- A new job
- New experiences
- Big work projects
- Home moves
- New car
- An extension
A year spent on a beach would seem somehow flat and empty by comparison. An inadequate allocation of our time, an unjustified use of our one life.
Hercules at the crossroads
This is like the parable of Kakia and Arete. Hercules had to choose between two women, Arete and Kakia. Kakia offered a pleasant and easy life, devoid of hardship, work or effort. Arete offered him struggle, but also glory, virtue, and a fully realized life. According to the parable he decided upon virtue…
(…eventually. But it took even Hercules some time to make up his mind!)
The choice is between hedonism (short-lived pleasure, endorsed by Aristippus in the 4th Century BC) and eudemonia (pleasure underpinned by virtuous satisfaction, championed by Aristotle).
In western society we speak less about eudemonia than hedonism.
Advertisements offer pleasure, not reaching your potential, not finding purpose, not meaning.
However in recent years eudemonia has been examined by psychologists, who have linked it to improved physical health as well as to greater psychological wellbeing. With improved cardiovascular function, lower levels of inflammation, and better anti-viral immune responses.
Better for body and soul
Implementation
You already know this.
So do I. But that does not mean I act each day like someone who knows this.
We are biologically averse to discomfort, and few of us have both the self-awareness to recognise low mood in ourselves, and the discipline to choose work as the remedy.
Nobody welcomes the friend who says:
“…here, chum, I can tell that you have been down in the dumps lately, how about, to cheer you up, we find some work for you to do…?”
But even though we don’t want to hear it, it might be the best mood-enhancer out there.
Unfortunately the satisfaction that comes from performing a task with excellence, a challenge overcome, too often comes disguised as something unpleasant. In sterquiliniis invenitur indeed.
(Where there is brass, there is – alas – muck).
Earthly riches: A poisoned chalice?
If taking the comfy road led to long term satisfaction, then all millionaires would be happy and there would be a direct correspondence between wealth & happiness. There isn’t one. Once our basic needs are met, and we become moderately affluent, the wealth-satisfaction correlation ends. Those with ‘enough’ money are by and large just as happy as those with fabulous wealth. Kurt Vonnegut conveys this in his poem Joe Heller.
Joe Heller
by Kurt Vonnegut
True story, Word of Honor:
Joseph Heller, an important and funny writer
now dead,
and I were at a party given by a billionaire
on Shelter Island.
I said, “Joe, how does it make you feel
to know that our host only yesterday
may have made more money
than your novel ‘Catch-22’
has earned in its entire history?”
And Joe said, “I’ve got something he can never have.”
And I said, “What on earth could that be, Joe?”
And Joe said, “The knowledge that I’ve got enough.”
Not bad! Rest in peace!
The number of incredibly successful, wealthy but miserable people who took their own lives is too long to get into, and certainly long enough to dismiss the idea that we can buy ourselves happiness with leisure. How much is enough…?
How much might actually be too much…?
Might it be more difficult to find lasting happiness once your financial needs are met & the imperative to work is gone? Most millionaires don’t give up working when they have more money than they can spend; why are they not treating themselves to rewards like shopping, sex, drinking, and all of their favourite foods 24-7?
Because they need something else.
Why are they setting up charitable foundations? Because once you stop worrying about money, you really do need to concern yourself with something else. Once you have conquered one game there must be bigger games to play, or we find ourselves adrift. Without the structure we lose track of ourselves.
Most rich people got rich doing work they enjoyed – why stop?
Work keeps us busy, keeps us grounded, keeps us social – of course, we’d rather have the money to be able to retire, but without the distraction of daily work many of us would struggle to remain as happy as we are already. It would be a big adjustment. We’d suddenly have enough time on our hands for too much ruminating on the nature of things. Too much torpor, of body and of mind, makes us miserable & it takes determination and strength of character to keep getting out of bed regularly, keeping sensible hours, getting out of the house & socialising.
This is a problem we didn’t have when we needed the money and there was an employer insisting that our livelihood depended on our doing these things.
We have no choice but to embrace discomfort when we have an employer, but when we have independent means it becomes a choice. We must ‘get comfortable with discomfort’.
Self-mastery
Our brains are pre-programmed to steer us away from discomforts.
Our biology kicks in to steer us away from cold, pain, and hunger, just like it responds automatically to danger, pain, and fear.
We find our power, though, when we stop running from discomfort and instead face it, endure it, and find out just how strong we actually are.
We ALWAYS surprise ourselves, once we get past the fear of discomfort, the discomfort itself is more manageable than we had expected.
Stanford professor Jim Doty writes about this in his book Mind Magic.
Not only a neuroscientist but a neurosurgeon as well, he wrote a book about goal-setting and identified the comfort trap as perilous for our prospects:
“We must learn to resist the highly natural urge to escape or deny our discomfort, and instead develop the capacity to stay with it long enough for it to transform & dissolve. This is the key to our liberation…”
Self-sculpting: Write your own programming
Bodybuilding is a very literal form of self-growth, and correlates directly with optional discomfort.
It is physically what happens to a body when you make it do things it does not want to.
But we can grow figuratively, as well.
A strict diet is also a form of optional discomfort, we do not literally grow physically
(we often shrink!)
but we become greater nonetheless when we master our own sweet tooth & greedy-guts tendencies.
When we eat sensibly for energy and health we achieve more, and we receive far greater rewards than any tasty snacks could provide.
Often we feel powerless to resist our own programming, like passengers, rather than pilots of our own lives.
We respond physiologically to challenges:
- Public speaking
- Cold plunge pools
- Biscuit munchies
As if we were short-circuited, operated like puppets, victims of something existential, but we are far from powerless.
There are habitual actions, patterns of behaviour, but they are no more than we can handle. By cultivating self-mastery, leveraging the gap between impulse & response, we break the pattern and change our trajectories
Choosing purposeful work does the same for us.
It is rarely the most appealing option, but we unlock power within ourselves and the great outpouring of potential when we self-direct towards something we find profound.
The 2% Club
Michael Easter coined the name ‘2% Club’, after the percentage of the population who willingly eschew the escalator for the stairs, who have a mindset which welcomes mild hardship.
“being a 2-Percenter who takes the stairs and every other opportunity to do the slightly harder thing is one of the ultimate health hacks… is a metaphor for living longer and better.”
- Walking an extra bus stop
- Choosing the stairs
- Parking further from your destination & walking…
The mentality that embraces uncomfortable challenges yields disproportionate rewards.
There are obvious health benefits, grounded in the anthropology of ancestral lifestyles
(we are far more in harmony with our biology when we undertake the additional exertion)
but it also has benefits for our character and self-efficacy.
We re-train the brain
Neuroscience & flow states
- Doing our taxes
- Getting to grips with our incomings & outgoings
- Fixing a DIY job that has been neglected
- Having a major clear-out
- Finally tidying up the spare room, attic, or garage
We find that problems are “#lighter at hand than at heart#”.
As soon as we engage with these problems, rather than avoid them, they are not as challenging as we had built them up to be, and we immediately feel better.
We receive a boost in wellbeing that far exceeds the short term fix we could have got from a beer and some TV, and we dissipate the long-term-low-level anxiety that the task was causing.
When the work is purposeful enough and the focus we dedicate is intense enough we may even achieve a flow state, even if the task itself is mundane.
Flow states are among the most rewarding experiences we can encounter.
All 6 of the big reward chemicals are released at once, what we experience is like wonder, curiosity, and virtue rolled together.
We are simultaneously intensely interested in what we are doing, and enjoying it so much that we would do it for its own sake, but we also get the self-congratulatory pat on the back of a job well done, a self-satisfied sense that we have tacked a particularly unpleasant chore – which was actually not unpleasant at all once we grasped the nettle.
To everything there is a season.
When time spent philosophising on our problems is not helping, only action will do.
Working out of a rut
Sometimes taking it easy is not the answer, sometimes it is actually the problem.
For millionaires who never leave the house and do nothing but watch YouTube videos & eat ice-cream, a conventional treat like a lie-in or a slice of cake will not help.
At times purposeful action may in fact prove to be the BEST sustainable route back to normal.
If that which is bothering us is a listless sense of wheel-spinning, of dissatisfaction, getting nowhere, making no progress, then rewards and treats will probably be ineffective.
What we need instead is a worthy task that sets us on course for a brighter future, no matter how mundane it is at face value.
Countless studies have reinforced the message that working towards something great can bestow a sense of meaning beyond one’s own life.
- A contribution to society
- To science
- To one’s own legacy
- To the local community.
If you have been delaying a project for a long time due to unforeseen complications, or because one of the stages of getting it off the ground has been an over-full garage, or spare room, or a chaotic filing system, then even doing the mundane sweeping, decluttering can be a flow trigger.
Every journey starts with a single step, they say, and every enterprise, commercial venture, hobby project, or lifestyle change is similar; they are characterised by consistent daily simple steps with the occasional headline-grabbing landmarks along the way.
- Starting your own business
- Converting your garage onto a pottery studio
- Training for a marathon…
Much of the time your work doesn’t look like anything much, until before you know it time has passed, and you can compare the before and after pics.
It might not feel like any progress at all is happening, but all of the small building blocks constitute purposeful work that your brain will recognise as edging you one step closer to completion, and you’ll get the feel-good chemicals and self-satisfaction that flows from knowing that we are better off today than we were yesterday.
Closer to the future successes that we envisage.
Great achievements can result from a thousand mundane tasks completed with excellence.
A great novel is built one small word at a time, a marathon is one step at a time, weight loss is one rep at a time.
After a hard week at work a glass of wine & a takeaway is a treat, a well-deserved harmless mood enhancer, but it will not work by itself, it is the ying to the yang of achievement.
You need to deserve it as well, or it just doesn’t hit right.
Dharma…
The concept of dharma is central to both Buddhism & Hinduism & its definition when translated into English is various, often understood as “right direction” or “rightful duty”.
One aspect of dharma is that of holy work, a divine purpose, greater than oneself, alignment to cosmic forces, without ego.
The sacred Sanskrit scripture known as the Bhagavad Gita is dated to a few centuries before Christ.
In it, the deity Krishna instructs Arjuna to perform his own dharma, by taking up arms and fighting in the Kurukshetra War.
Further, Krishna informs Arjuna that it is a sin not to do this.
Krishna tells us:
“It is better to do one’s own dharma imperfectly than another’s perfectly…”
…but leaves frustratingly few clues to tell us what our own dharma actually is.
(Arjuna himself has doubts that he should even be warring at all!)
Most yoga practitioners advise acting selflessly on something bigger than yourself, utilising your skills and natural talents, and pursuing your bliss.
Following your bliss is pursuing activities that move you..
…flow… telos…ikigai
Flow states, passions, and fascinations can be interpreted as clues.
Bodily, somatic, biological markers that you are on the right track.
If your days are filled with flow then your life is being lived well
Find something you love – you will spend long hours doing it. Passion is key.
According to neuroscience writer Steven Kotler flow states are what we experience when we dim the conscious mind, when we get out of our own way, our ego switches off and is muted.
Flow states feel divine, like a sacred experience, even. Like we are doing ‘God’s work’. They can appear in the strangest of places.
The writer Dr Deepak Chopra has done a lot to popularise eastern concepts in the west.
He writes of ‘Synchro-destiny’, a neologism, that if you are pursuing your own correct path you start to experience two things:
- Hilarity (lightness, enlightenment, you lighten up) and
- Synchronicities (meaningful coincidences appear to occur more in your life).
Give up trying to control everything and gain it all.
So the saying goes, Chasing goals is like chasing butterflies.
Give up chasing butterflies.
Be still, and butterflies will settle on you.
If you find your best self and apply yourself to that, then the goals gravitate towards you.
You become magnetic, charismatic, what you want to achieve comes more naturally.
Flow states are the term Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi created in the 1970s.
Self-Actualization is another 20th century term from Abraham Maslow and Kurt Goldstein that speaks to the same ideas, the desire for self-fulfillment, to actualize what you are in potential.
But the concept of Ikigai goes back centuries – the sweet spot between competency & joy (as well as monetization, and what helps the world at large).
The concepts of dharma, and telos, of which Aristotle spoke, are likewise, ancient but just as resonant with our new coinages.
We have always had words for the state of immersion, dimming of self-awareness in service to the task, and self-transcendence through self-mortification.
Leo Tolstoy wrote the character of Konstantin Dmitrich Levin, a wealthy landowner who found happiness by opting willingly to work alongside the serfs who harvested his crops:
“He thought of nothing, wished for nothing, but not to be left behind the peasants, and to do his work as well as possible. He heard nothing but the swish of scythes, the crescent-shaped curve of the cut grass, the grass and flower heads slowly and rhythmically falling before the blade of his scythe, and ahead of him the end of the row… Another row, and yet another row, followed–long rows and short rows, with good grass and with poor grass. Levin lost all sense of time, and could not have told whether it was late or early now. A change began to come over his work, which gave him immense satisfaction. In the midst of his toil there were moments during which he forgot what he was doing, and it came all easy to him, and at those same moments his row was …smooth and well cut … But so soon as he recollected what he was doing, and began trying to do better, he was at once conscious of all the difficulty of his task, and the row was badly mown.”
– Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina,1878
The dimly conscious ant or bee will unthinkingly pursue a small goal and in so doing will unwittingly do a great service for the colony, community, and the species, bees and ants also serve the wider world in terms of pollination & propagation of seeds & plant species. Without bees the ecosystem would collapse, we are told. Maybe in focussing on our own task doing what we do really well really well we can also have a wider positive impact.
Our best work
What about half-working? We have written about distraction elsewhere on the site so what follows will not surprise you…
“When reading, only read. When eating, only eat. When thinking, only think.“
Seung Sahn
Concentration is a prerequisite for flow states, and for purposeful work.
Without focus there is no flow.
Don’t get distracted, don’t let your mind wander. Do what you are doing whole – heartedly.
This is backed by countless scientific studies.
“A human mind is a wandering mind, and a wandering mind is an unhappy mind,”
(Killingsworth and Gilbert write in Scientific American)
“The ability to think about what is not happening is a cognitive achievement that comes at an emotional cost.”
Researchers found that distraction causes unhappiness, but not that unhappiness leads to distraction, so it is not a coincidence. It is causal.
The statistics relating to how much time at work is wasted might not be reliable – it is a difficult thing to measure – but some of the data is staggering.
Clockwise AI estimates that an hour a day is wasted on distractions by most employees, 56 interruptions per day, and mostly for trivial reasons.
We get, on average, just 8½ minutes between interruptions, and that it is often (44%) our own fault, distracting ourselves, rather than some outside force.
On the plus side, at least the intention and awareness is there that concentration and uninterrupted focus is desirable & effective. The article quotes:
- 78.9% of staff want 1-3 hours unbroken work, with
- 82.7% believing that real work only gets done in blocks like these.
- Almost everyone (89.4%) believes that interruptions inhibit productivity and say they are more productive when they have blocks of uninterrupted time at work.
Meaningful Engagement
The pursuit of purposeful work is not just about professional fulfilment; it is a fundamental pillar of mental well-being and personal satisfaction. The ancient concepts like Ikigai, dharma, telos, and the physiological truths of our nature all converge on a singular idea: meaningful engagement is essential for a rich, fulfilling life.
Avoiding idleness and embracing challenges not only improves our mental health but also propels us towards growth and accomplishment. The myth of wealth equating to happiness is debunked by the myriad miserable millionaires who lack purpose. True contentment does not boil down to financial success.
Incorporating discomfort into our lives, working intentionally, and achieving flow states can provide a sense of meaning and fulfilment that passive leisure cannot offer. Ultimately aligning us with our true selves, fostering a sense of accomplishment and well-being.
Whether through grand projects or mundane tasks, engaging fully and mindfully in our endeavours leads to a more balanced and satisfying life. As we navigate the complexities of modern existence, let us remember that the path to happiness is often paved with hard work, dedication, and the pursuit of our passions.