Ok, so let’s talk about fear. Fear is one of the most misunderstood sentiments that we have. Fear has a bad reputation. People have historically thought of fear as a negative emotion and something we would be better off not having in our lives. I want to defend fear in this article and make a case for it. So let’s go.

The science of fear

Our brain has evolved over millions of years and there are different parts in the brain responsible for the fear mechanism. The amygdala, the brain’s alarm system, along with other parts of the brain are key to our fight-or-flight reactions.
Amygdala: scans for threats and signals body to respond
Brain Stem: triggers the freeze response
Hippocampus: turns on the fight-or-flight response
Hypothalamus: signals the adrenal glands to pump hormones
Pre-Frontal Cortex: interprets the event and compares it to past experiences
Thalamus: receives input from the senses and “decides” to send information to either the sensory cortex (conscious fear) or the amygdala (defence mechanism).

When we are in a state of fear, our heart rate and blood pressure increase, pupils dilate to take in as much light as possible, nonessential systems such as the immune system and digestion turn themselves off to allow more energy to go towards emergency function, and veins in the skin constrict which keeps blood in the major muscle groups. A whole heap of things happen — very very quickly in our brains and our bodies. Fear is one of the oldest responses we have in our evolutionary process.
And to think that people put themselves through this on purpose, via horror movies, rollercoasters, haunted houses and so on. Why?
Dopamine, aka the feel-good hormone — that’s why. The same dopamine that keeps us coming back to our smartphone after posting something on Instagram or Facebook to see how many likes/comments we have. The same dopamine that turns social media or food into an addiction. The same dopamine that makes sex feel amazing.
In addition to cortisol and adrenaline, dopamine is also released during frightening situations. Some people, however, react strongly to the dopamine in the moment and get a natural rush or a high in a fearful situation — and become addicted to it. The fear becomes an adventure. A thrill.

Fear and evolution

According to the dictionary; “Fear arises with the threat of harm, either physical, emotional, or psychological, real or imagined. Fear serves an important role in keeping us safe as it mobilises us to cope with potential danger.” I want to focus on the second half of that statement, how fear serves an important role.

Fear is a survival mechanism. Throughout history and the evolutionary process — fear has kept us alive and kept us evolving. It is an inherent part of our evolution and we are the product of the ancestors who were fearful not the ones who were courageous. Those that were brave and ventured forth, didn’t return. Those that cowered in the caves reproduced. We are the product of that fear, the cowardice of our ancestors. Our very existence is due to this fear. It is an inherent part of our biology that has kept us alive and kept us procreating. If we are not afraid, we wouldn’t survive for long.

A word about bravery, valour and courage

If you look for a synonym for bravery, fearlessness is one of them. People misunderstand that bravery and courage is not having any fear, a state of fearlessness — no, not having any fear is foolishness. It is perhaps a pathological illness. Bravery and courage mean having the fear, feeling the fear but taking action in spite of the fear. I, for instance, don’t want to be the fool that does not fear things and makes stupid rash decisions and dies. Instead, I want to be the brave person who, having known and felt the fear, still decided to act in the most sensible and calculated way. There is a huge difference in these approaches.

Fear in the modern world

Although we now live in a very different world, the process of millions of years of evolution can not be undone in a few generations. We don’t face the same threats our ancestors did but we attach the same fear response to most problems of today. Although being embarrassed and perhaps losing your job is not life-threatening but our system treats them like they are in fact life-threatening.
Fear’s job is to keep us alive — it has evolved to do that one thing. So our system often goes into fight or flight mode even when not required. We have taken our fears from the savannah of lions, tigers and other predators and transferred them to all kinds of situations of the modern world — where we obviously are not in any immediate danger of lions and tigers.

Consider some of these fears we face on a daily basis in the modern world:

• Fear of public speaking (one of the biggest, strongest fear people have in the modern world)
• Fear of consequence (of our actions/inactions)
• Fear of losing the alternative (when we make a choice — we let go of all the alternatives)
• Fear of missing out (#YOLO)
• Fear of embarrassment/humiliation (social status and recognition)
• Fear of failure and loss
• Fear of not measuring up/lagging behind

How many of these do you think are life-threatening? Perhaps one or two in the right circumstances could be life-threatening depending on your situation — but most of them, not so. However, our reaction to most of them is similar to those of our ancestor’s hundreds and thousands of years ago.

How fear continues to serve us

Anticipating a fearful stimulus can provoke the same response as actually experiencing the situation hence fear is one of the greatest motivators known to us. Most of the modern world is created, at least in part, due to some fear — including most accomplishments. Passion, love, and craftsmanship have their place in this equation but there is fear, in some shape or form, that is a driving force. Fear of losing, fear of being forgotten, fear of humiliation, fear of not being good enough — deep down somewhere, behind most motivations are some of these fears.

Imagine that we remove death from the equation of life. We have unlimited time, to achieve all our goals, realise all our dreams and do all the things we wanted to do. What are we most likely going to do? Not much, to be honest. It is the fear of death, the fear of mortality, of perishing away and being forgotten, the fear of wasting our time, fear of retribution, of letting someone down (dressed mostly as love) that motivates us to do most things. Without this fear, we would probably not do much in our lives.

Not all fear is created equal

Some fears are good, like the ones we talked about, healthy fears — that motivate us to do things but there are also unhealthy fears. Fear can be energising or draining. When people talk about stress, worry, panic — it is actually fear, just dressed differently. A healthy fear essentially makes your life better, motivates you to do things. An unhealthy fear would make your life worse or in some way restrict your freedoms and a simple fact is that everyone experiences fear differently. It is important to know what fears work for you and what doesn’t. Does fear motivate you to do more, or does it shut you down and freeze you? Learn to use your fears as motivators and not a hindrance.
In spite of what all the ‘gurus’ in the self-help world say, you cannot and should not, shut off of your fears. It is an inherent part of your biology and your evolution — it helps you survive. However, what you can do is tune your fear response as some fears do in fact paralyse us when not required.

In one of the upcoming articles, I will list some of these unhealthy fears and ways to tackle them. Until then, stay awesome.

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Ever driven a known route, say from your house to your workplace (or vice versa) and you arrive at your destination and think to yourself – wow, I didn’t have to consciously think about the driving and was mostly lost in thought/music/podcast/conversation and now I am here. How cool and dangerous!

The reason why you don’t have to consciously think about every turn and every aspect of that commute is a simple fact that you have done this particular drive so many times that the familiarity has made it almost like muscle memory. It has become a routine in your mind. You know what you are doing, you’ve got this! This is doing a task on autopilot mode. It can apply to not just driving but other areas of life too like cooking, or cleaning, or exercising and so on.

Ultimately what living on autopilot is that you can do various tasks, physical and mental, without putting too much cognitive processing into them. Whether it is driving or making commitments, cooking or making a judgement – you do all this without much conscious effort and thought because you have done it so many times before.

Why do we do it and are there any benefits?

We don’t actually consciously choose to zone out while doing a mundane or repetitive task, our brain just does it for us. At any given time, the brain is receiving and processing so many varied forms of raw data – vision, sound, emotion, touch, memory associations and so on – and with its limited processing power, it is filtering out a whole heap of this information (without asking us) to prevent a system overload. The brain is making routine, repetitive tasks easy to do by automating the process to free up mental bandwidth for tasks requiring more cognitive processing and pretty much anything we do repeatedly has the potential of turning into an automated task.

While the brain represents just 2% of a person’s total body weight, it accounts for 20% of the body’s energy use. It is very effective in using and saving its energy and processing reserves and is always looking to automate things. Essentially it is always looking for the path of least resistance to save energy.

How do we know it is happening and what are the cons?

The good thing is doing repetitive tasks becomes easy, however, the bad thing is it is not just limited to driving to work – it happens in far greater aspects of our lives than we realise, oftentimes without our consent and knowledge!

I personally have spent a great many years operating on this autopilot mode. Unknowingly and after realisation, unwillingly. Whether it was consumption of food, media, dealing with people in a social situation, thinking through problems – I did most of it in an automated, habituated way – just the way I have been doing in the past without much conscious thought or reflection. Essentially there isn’t anything wrong with that but when we make the same choices over and over again without much consideration, we are exposed to making the same errors over and over again. Now, that is a problem.

“Autopilot has gone from being an evolutionary protection mechanism that stopped our brains overloading, to our default mode of operating whereby we sleepwalk into our choices,” Dr. Mark Williamson

Some of the cons of living life like this are listed below but here is the juxtaposition of this problem, most of these cons are not obvious while you are living like this – you don’t see these problems while creating the problems but here are a few things to look out for:

• You waste time procrastinating and avoid taking action or making a decision
• You overcommit to things in your personal and professional life – you take too much on, sometimes knowing you will not be able to fit it all in and deliver
• You feel frustrated often and become moody
• You feel you have a mundane or a boring existence
• You lack clarity of purpose in personal and professional life
• You feel life just happens to you rather than through you
• You try to please people
• You say yes more often than no
• You struggle to remember things

And here are some of the cons of living this way (not an exhaustive list by any means):

• You live a life that is less than the one you are capable of
• You limit your own beliefs and actions
• You try to do things by brute force at the last minute
• You neglect your own self-care and happiness
• You let your relationships slip and suffer – you drive people away
• You do not consciously choose and create your destiny
• You give up sovereignty and control of your life
• You can’t help but feel helpless in different situations
• You are constantly resisting change
• You are not improving or growing
• You are not making any meaningful contribution to the world

Ok, lots of cons – what’s the opposite of autopilot?

Yes, lots of cons indeed and honestly, it is fine if you want to keep doing the same thing and don’t want to make any real progress in your personal or professional life or make any contribution to the lives of others or the world. BUT… (of course, there is a but after a paragraph like that)

For any meaningful progress in life, to do something of substance, to attain goals and dreams you need to make genuine conscious efforts. Not automated ones. You need to do things differently and quit doing them the way they have been done.

This is known as living life with intention. Where life doesn’t just happen to you but happens through you. This is where you take control of your feelings, emotions, decisions and actions. Where you take control and design your own optimal life.

Our repeated behaviours become habitual patterns and these patterns, in turn, become so ingrained in our personality that they end up defining our character – which shapes our lives and destiny.

So it is important to first and foremost realise that we are living on autopilot, that we are living habitually and unconsciously and then to take active steps to change that and live more intentionally.

So, how do I live with intention?

Here is a list of things you can do to live life more consciously and with more intention.

1. Define what is important to you.
   This is about knowing your priority (singular – not plural). Your deepest most important desire, aspiration and goal. Ask yourself; If there is one thing/area of my life where I could be truly amazing, what would it be? What will be my highest contribution to the world and to the lives of those around me?
   • Once you have the answer, ask yourself why. Why do I want this?
   • Once you get that answer, ask yourself why again. And then do it 3 more times (the 5 levels of why) Now you know exactly why!
     
     
2. Start with the end in mind.
   Where is it that you are trying to go? What is the ultimate destination of your life? If you don’t know where you are going, it is easy to get lost, and more importantly, how do you know you have arrived?
   
   
3. Write a mission statement for your life.
   Based on the above, write a mission statement for your life – the sort that companies have. The idea of the mission statement is to let you and everyone around you know what your life stands for. What the objective is and what will be your guiding principles and morals? Don’t use ambiguous terms and sentences like most companies do (example: be a leader in innovation – what kind of innovation? what does a leader mean in this context?) Be very specific.
   • Make a list of all the habits, skills and attributes you need in order to live a life that is in alignment with the mission statement. Are you close? Do you currently have most of these skills and attributes? How about the habits? How far off are you?
     
     
4. Don’t build good habits – just eliminate bad ones. I am not suggesting you do more work and make new habits, just make a list of all the bad habits you currently have (sleeping late, drinking too much, eating junk food etc) and work to eliminate those – the good habits will take care of themselves.
   • Some habits are foundation habits – they have the most impact on your life, that one good/bad habit causes a domino effect on a whole range of other habits. Look to eliminate cornerstone bad habits or cultivate cornerstone good ones first. An example is a regular exercise habit; once you start doing that you naturally start eating better, providing proper nutrition, rest and sleep to your body and so on.
     
     
5. Declutter your life.
   Mentally, physically and emotionally. Get rid of all the junk you don’t need. Get rid of all the people that don’t add value to your life. Get rid of all the dreams, hopes and aspirations that have expired. I have written a whole series of Letting Go. Check it out.
   Clearing Out The Old — Letting Go of Things
   Clearing Out The Old — Letting Go of Dreams
   Clearing Out The Old — Letting Go of People
   Clearing Out The Old — Letting Go of Opinions
   
   
6. Have goals.
   Daily goals, weekly goals, monthly goals, yearly goals and big grand life goals. Start with the big grand life goals first based on the Mission Statement and work backwards to daily goals. Make every goal about the bigger picture. To move towards your grand life vision.
   
   
7. Take action.
   Now you have goals, great, but you need to take action to achieve these goals. I follow 2 very simple rules for taking instant action:
   • Mel Robbins’ 5-second rule – “If you have an instinct to act on a goal, you must physically move within 5 seconds or your brain will kill it. Hesitation is the kiss of death. You might hesitate for a just nanosecond, but that’s all it takes.”
   • David Allen’s 2-minute rule – If a task will take less than 2 minutes to complete, do it now. Don’t schedule it, don’t delegate it, don’t overthink it. Just do it NOW.
     
     
8. Create solitude in your life.
   Some of your best work will be done when you are in solitude in a distraction-free zone. Collaboration and teamwork have their own place but deep focused work is king. Find time to be by yourself. Protect that space and time ferociously. This is when you will be at your best. Use it to your advantage.
   
   
9. Meditate. Meditate. Meditate. And then meditate some more.
   I cannot stress this one enough. I recommend this in almost every one of my articles and videos. Build a meditation practice. This will positively change your life in more ways than you can imagine. If you have never meditated before a good place to start is here. If you have given meditation a try in the past but couldn’t make a habit then start (again) here.
   
   
10. Build time for reflection by having a journaling practice.
    Journal every day. Twice a day if you can, morning and night. Some of the most successful and high performing people in the world attribute a big portion of their success to their journaling habits. Again, this will positively change your life in more ways than you can imagine. To find out how to journal, start here.
    
    
11. Unplug.
    Take time to unplug, disconnect and go off the grid every once in a while. Believe it or not, this will recharge you and give you new insights into your own self and the world. I have been to several multi-day silent meditation retreats where I was completely cut off from the world – no phone, no TV, no internet, no talking to even your fellow meditators. In this age of hyper-connectivity, it is unlike anything you will experience. You do not need to go to that extreme but once or twice a week, turn your phone off in the evening and spend time being fully present in whatever you are doing with whoever is there. Leave your phone behind when you go for a walk. Put it in another room while you are spending time with your kids. Find ways to immerse yourself in the present moment by unplugging.
    “Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you.”― Anne Lamott
    

A great expression I once heard was; if you hammer a nail into a piece of wood, the nail goes everywhere the wood goes, whether it likes it or not.

Don’t be a nail in the wood, or a tree or rock for that matter. Live your life with intention and consciously choose your destiny. You control and influence it more than you realise.

I am not regurgitating what others have written. I am recommending these things based on my personal practice and from my personal experience. I have found tremendous benefits in doing all these things and I hope you do too. Feel free to reach out if you have any questions.

Now go and be awesome!

In my previous article, I talked about the process with which we acquire our self-worth. In this one, I want to delve into the details of the process of undoing some of that past conditioning to improve and raise our self-worth. 

Know thyself

1. This advice is as old as time itself. The most fundamental of all self-improvement journeys. Knowing your own self. 
   What this does is tells you who you are — intrinsically and what value you can create in the world for yourself and for others. This creates the base of all your efforts in life.
2. One of the key aspects of knowing yourself is to recognise and listen to the patterns of your inner voice. The little voice in your head that is constantly narrating your day (and your life), constantly telling you what you can and can’t do, telling you how you are going to fail, how you shouldn’t do anything bold and risky and encouraging you to always take the known path — that little voice — which is not so little after all.
3. In order to (truly) know yourself, you must be willing to question yourself and everything you carry as truth. You must be willing to let go and reassess every idea and notion you hold about yourself and how the world operates. In the words of Apple’s marketing team, that we hear every year; “building from the ground up”.
4. For me, this didn’t happen until perhaps I was 30 years old. It is a bit late in life but some folks never have the realisation. It wasn’t until then that I truly started to understand my motivations, fears, aspirations, true likes and dislikes — and that is when my life started to transform — an inner transformation — in the true sense of the word. 

Actions — DO:

• Start spending more time with yourself and less with everyone else.
• Start observing your thoughts — either in the form of silent meditation or journalising — ideally both (meditation followed by journaling).
• Start noticing all the things you take for granted — keep a daily list — you will be surprised.
• Start questioning all your assumptions and beliefs about the world and yourself — including your religion, all your biases, your privileges, your patriotism, your (perceived) superiorities and your inferiorities. Question everything and ask yourself why do you believe it? What is the source of this truth? Is it internal to you or external?

Accept yourself — stop resisting your nature

1. Once you get a better understanding of who you are and what you truly desire the next step is to start working with your true nature.
2. Don’t try to be everything to everyone. If you are naturally inclined towards something then do that. Stop trying to push too hard in the opposite direction. If you are just learning to swim then don’t try to do it upstream. Set your own expectations for yourself and don’t follow societal constraints of wealth, status and life. 
   This is hard to do and even harder to realise that you are following societal expectations and not following our own true desires. Fish do not know they are in the water — only when they are out of it do they realise it.
3. Once you accept yourself, only then you can start to transform yourself and make a real effort towards your true goals.

Actions — DO:

• Stop complaining — about everything — out loud obviously but even in your thoughts. Complaining is a way of feeling superior where you are not. It is also a way of reinforcing a sense of helplessness. One of them is an underlying reason for your complaints.
• I use a simple counter app for this. Every time I complain in speech or thought, I add +1. At the end of the day, I tally the score. The goal is always to be less than yesterday and the ultimate goal is to be at zero.
• Stop judging yourself and others and stop comparing yourself. Just be.

Take care of yourself

1. One of the most underrated aspects of living a good life and raising your self-worth is taking care of yourself.
2. You and only you are responsible for your happiness and wellbeing. Not your family, not your community, not your government, not your employer, not your teachers or preachers. You are responsible for yourself and your growth, wellbeing and prosperity. Start taking ownership of your life and stop blaming everything that is out of your control. Until you realise this, you cannot move on and make progress. Yes sometimes we are in situations that impact us greatly that we cannot control (war, natural disasters, a global pandemic etc) but how we choose our response to these events is totally within our control. (Watch this video I made that addresses choice and control. You can also read this previous article on this topic).
3. Another way of taking care of yourself is by changing your environment and taking care of your energy and mental health. As mentioned in the previous article, if you are surrounded by negative people who do not appreciate your efforts, you may find it hard to do so yourself which can often lead to a compromised self-wroth. 
   If possible and within your control — change your environment. Change the circle of friends who are not supportive. Change the people you spend time with. And remember it’s better to be in solitude than being with the wrong people. Read books instead, listen to podcasts, audiobooks — make some of the best authors in the world your friends and spend time ‘listening’ to them.

Actions — DO:

• Self-care is vital to living a meaningful life. Taking care of yourself is not selfish. I have written and spoken in great detail about this.
• Watch this video
• Read this article
• Read good quality books on psychology, philosophy and self-help to learn more about the world. Visit this link to find top book recommendations.
• Put your own mask first before helping others.

Change your inner voice

1. Once you have done all the above-mentioned steps, it is now time to change that inner voice by actively choosing a more proactive and positive language with yourself.
2. People often undersell themselves. Make fun of themselves before anyone else does to deal with the potential anxiety. Set limitations and expectations around themselves in front of others — these are coping mechanisms. They are protecting themselves from (potential, imagined) criticism. Stop it. Instead, step into your greatness. Make a social contract. Let the pressure build and compel you to do more.
3. Imagine talking to your friends, or spouse or even your mum the way you talk to yourself — you will soon find, to your surprise, you will be left with no friends, looking for a divorce lawyer and rudely written out of mum’s will.
4. Catch yourself in dialogue with yourself as often as possible, set a reminder on your phone multiple times a day if you have to.
5. The goal here is to catch the negative self-talk and turn it into positive self-talk — the voice of encouragement as opposed to the voice of reason and fear.

Identify your competencies and develop them

1. Make a list of all the things you are good at, it doesn’t matter how small or inconsequential they may be. Everyone is good at something. Do you know how to make a killer peanut butter and jam sandwich? Chuck it on the list. If you are being supercritical and find it super hard to come up with much then go to a trusted confidant (spouse, sibling, friend, teacher) and ask them to tell you what they think you are good at. The goal of this exercise is:

• To tell you that in spite of all your negative self-talk and lowered self-worth you are still good at many many things.
• To make you realise, if you are good at these, you can be good at other things too  — with practice and some guidance you can perhaps be great at many things.
• Develop a baseline from which you propel yourself to feel good about existing competencies and inspire motivation and action to become better at others. Ultimately valuing yourself higher. All in effect, to raise your self-worth.

2. Even if you have been rejected or failed at something in the past (getting a job, getting a date, a business) list out all the skills you have and can acquire to be successful at it in the future were you to try again.

Own the praise that comes your way

1. When you view yourself as not worthy then dealing with praise is hard — you question the honesty and intention of the person offering you the praise.
2. But if you have identified yourself as being competent at things (hopefully many things), that should make this step slightly easier.
3. If someone praises you for something then verify it internally and give yourself the benefit of the doubt. Don’t reject it straight away. And add this quality to your (growing) list of competencies from the previous point.
4. Accepting praise and feeling worthy of it will help you shine and step into your greatness.
5. It will encourage you to do better and further improve yourself. It will create a snowball effect.

Let Action Define Self-Worth

Self-wroth is mostly about reflections. What the world reflects back at you. So, what you put out there in the world is what will be reflected back. You may feel insecure, unworthy and devalued but it is important to push through these and make the efforts and contributions that you want — consistently. It feeds the loop and reinforces the positive feedback.

Often people misunderstand that action is the result of motivation. It’s not. Motivation is fleeting. It’s not consistent. It comes on its whims and leaves when it wants. Action on the other hand can be consistent. Action precedes motivation and can summon motivation at will. Through consistency, action can inspire motivation. Similarly, action can precede self-wroth. Your positive actions can make you value yourself higher.

In the end

Do all the above-mentioned steps consistently for 60 days and on the other side of the 60 days will be a brand new version of you. A much better version with a completely new understanding of the world and of yourself.

Imagine a world where everyone lives to their fullest potential. Can you imagine the possibilities of health, happiness, wealth and innovation where everyone realises their wildest dreams? 
Raise your self-wroth and become worthy of the success you seek and live to your fullest potential.

Now go and be awesome.

What is a balanced life in the modern age? We hear work-life balance all the time. What does it actually mean? To me, this indicates that on one side you have work — and on the other you have life. This statement in essence creates a divide between your life and work.

In today’s world, we are always connected, we are always available. There is no healthy balance in life. Nor should you aim for it (this is obviously dependent on what you want from life). So what does work-life balance mean anyway? Let us explore each in a bit more detail.

Work

Taking the usual societal explanation, work is regarded as anything you do to earn a living — emphasis on the word living. The thing you do to make money, so you can pay for a life. You get paid to do this thing. Whether you love your job or profession, or you hate it, it is something you do to earn money to support your life. We often tell ourselves, our families and colleagues that we always had a passion to pursue this career, profession and job that we happen to find ourselves in (accountant, an office administrator or a project manager etc). We say it over and over again until we start believing it.

Life

In this context, life is anything that you do outside of work — to not earn money but to enjoy and relax and get away from work. Things like; Playing sports, socialising with friends and family, going to the gym, or yoga or a walk, watching movies, reading books and taking holidays. All the things that are not ‘work’ — that you perhaps are not getting paid to do. The real fun stuff in life, for which we endure the ‘work’. Don’t forget this also includes all the maintenance stuff, making meals, cleaning your house, cutting your nails, cleaning the litter tray, washing your laundry — it’s a package, to have the fun you need to do the work and the maintenance.

The Balance

Now that we have an understanding of work and life in the context of work-life balance. Let us take a closer look at this balance. But I want to start by not telling you something, but by asking a question. Outside of gender, religion, ethnicity and perhaps even a language group, what is the most important identity that people carry? What is your most important identity after all the aforementioned ‘groupings? Most often it is your profession, the thing(s) you do for a living. Whether you are a professional musician, a hairdresser, a financial advisor or a stay at home parent — it doesn’t matter. That is an identity that you have formed, accepted and perhaps are even proud of. This is one of the most common small talk questions at parties (and a way for people to assess how much importance or respect to give you); So, what do you do? Professions and the work we do for our livelihoods becomes a very strong and important identity in our lives.

I am going to expand the explanation of work and profession now to include things you do not necessarily get paid to do but instead, you do them because they bring you joy — like volunteering, helping your community, writing a blog, making YouTube videos, gardening — things, for which your intrinsic motivation is not money but the joy you get from doing the activity — it is not a means to an end, it is in fact the end.

Now, based on this understanding, let me ask you another question. If work is such a strong and important identity, then isn’t work something we should be embracing (much like we embrace and flaunt our religion, patriotism, and language groups) and not seeking a break and a balance from?
I have yet to encounter people who take a break from their religious or national identities and seek religion-life balance or patriotism-life balance.

Work literally dictates what we study, what we pay attention to, what kinds of people we spend the most time with, where we live, and what we spend most of our waking hours on. If you are a musician or a painter or a car salesperson — you probably want to live in a city or a locale that can get you the most exposure and provide for the best ‘scope’ for your work. Then why do we seek a work-life balance?
In this context, where does (should) work finish and life begins?
You say you are a professional but outside that profession, you have a separate life? In pursuit of what? Happiness? Shouldn’t your work bring you that?

Look At The Pros

Let me draw your attention to some names. Think of Picasso, Mozart, Michael Jordan, Stephen King, Gordon Ramsey, Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, Michael Phelps, Usain Bolt, and I am sure you can think of thousands of others.
Where do you think their work ends and their life begins? Or is it all the same? Do you think these folks seek/sought a work-life balance when they are/were creating their masterpieces and changing the world? Or is/was their work their life?

Perhaps at this point, you want to draw a hard line and say .. ‘oh well they are all pros and I am nowhere near their level’. Is it because you are seeking a work-life balance and are being led to believe that your work and life should be two separate things?

By no means am I promoting workaholic values and a culture where you work non-stop and kill yourself. There should be dedicated time to look after your health (mental and physical), your family, your needs, your community and your overall wellbeing. But if you want to make any meaningful contribution to your work, life, the life of others and the world — then there should be no such divide between work and life. Your work is your life, and your life’s work is the work you do.

Modern life has become increasingly mediocre where we try to be everything to everyone, try to do everything and in the end, we end up not excelling at anything. At best, we are average at almost everything in life.

There is an alternative.

Define what is important to YOU and pursue that. Your definition would be and perhaps should be different to the next guy — you are unique based on your experiences, upbringing and opportunities hence, what is important to you should not look like the usual cookie-cutter advice for the rest of the vanilla world. However, be aware that the compromise with this approach is that excelling at one thing means sacrificing something else. Example — If you want your child to be a great football player, then perhaps you should stop the piano lessons you enrolled her into. Or, if you really want to be the best pastry chef, then start prioritising and follow this calling. And if anyone (particularly fake gurus on the internet) tells you that you can in fact have everything in life that you desire, you just have to close your eyes, visualise and believe in yourself — stop listening to them and unfollow them. Now. Stop believing this crap. Life is a matter of deciding your priority and making the decision of subtraction. You can actually have anything you want, but you need to focus on one thing at a time, one desire at a time — this is how the universe works.

In the end

I want you to ask yourself, where does your work end and your life begins? Or is it one and the same? All tied together in your identity?

Stop believing in the glass wall which separates your life and work, reminding you that your work is not your life, and it should not be.

I have always heard that life is all about finding balance — actually, it’s not — perhaps only if you want to be average at everything. Life should be about excelling and pursuing greatness. Having extreme success in any field in life and having a balanced life is just not possible. It’s a myth.

If you want to be the best at anything, then life is about finding all the things that you are willing to sacrifice for it — finding the non-essential, lower priority activities and letting them go in pursuit of being the best at something. That’s how life works. Share this with someone who needs to read this. Now go and be awesome and pursue greatness.

Now, what do I mean by that?

Well, the things is we treat happiness as a destination. Something to arrive to. Something to work towards. Something to struggle towards. 
‘When I get this new job and I will be happy’ .. actually, that is only half the sentence, the complete sentence is ‘When I get this new job, I will be happy, for a short period of time.’ 
Because that will become the new normal. The same principle applies to everything else.

“When I get this bigger house/car/salary/‘fill in the blank’ I will be happy”

Part of the human condition is that we adjust to any situation (negative or positive) fairly quickly and make that our base condition, our new normal, to base all comparison against. This is in essence what a hedonic treadmill is.

You essentially have a set level of happiness where you consistently remain. When good things happen (winning a lottery, getting a new job, a new house etc), that level of happiness can spike up and similarly when bad things happen, that level of happiness can dip down. After good and bad events in your life, you eventually return to your set level of happiness over a period of time — the amount of time is different for everyone and relevant to the event itself but everyone almost always returns to their base level sooner or later.

Think of alcohol or substance addiction, over time the body gets used to it and you need more and more to get the same hit or high. Same is the case with happiness — you require more and more over time to feel ‘happy’. However, understanding how the hedonic treadmill operates in your life can make you experience the world more positively.

We can’t always keep on increasing our levels of happiness, so, what do you do about it?

Do not strive for happiness.

As Jordan Peterson has pointed out over and over — Do not strive for happiness.

Happiness is usually a consequence or an unintended outcome of certain events. In some of the best moments of your life, you were not actively pursuing happiness but rather a goal, target, or an intention. Happiness was a (positive) side effect of completing the said goal. 
Happiness is not something to chase or something out there to find. It is instead, a state of mind and a state of being. 
Ultimately, happiness is a choice.

More often than not, we don’t know what will make us happy in the long run and what we think will give us lasting happiness usually doesn’t. Needless to say, that is pretty ironic for us to not know what will make us happy while happiness is the one thing we claim to pursue. We are very bad at predicting our own future happiness. Therefore, bad at making decisions based on such predictions in pursuit of that happiness.

I will give you a minute (or two) to re-read that paragraph.

Why do we constantly want more?

There is, almost always, a base layer of emotion and need underneath all the surface level, ‘superficial’ desires; a bigger house, bigger salary, fame, status etc. This is in part the reason why the hedonic treadmill works because we don’t actually know what we truly want as we are not always in tune with our true desires and nature. Often the base desire is a need for security or wanting to grasp at permanence or creating certainty in our lives. 
Yes, we indeed need a base layer of security and comfort, but the root cause for this insatiable desire of wanting more and more is nothing more than insecurity and uncertainty. (Read my post on letting go of stuff for better insight into this)

So, it is important to understand the base layer emotions and then understand what will actually make you happy — not the things culture and society says will make you happy eg: a bigger house, faster car, bigger salary etc.

1. So, the first step is to get in touch with your true nature and desires so you can know what will truly make you happy. Happiness is personalised and not one size fits all.
2. And, in order to get in touch with your true nature and desires, you need to spend time with yourself, introspect and find what your own core values and priority.
3. Once you know what it is that promises to make you happy — chase it. If you don’t go after what you want — it will not come to you. If you don’t ask, the answer will always be no. Go out and make it happen.
4. Repeat this process as often as needed. Remember, with time your priority and your needs change and so does your personality. So, whatever it is that is making you happy today might not do so in three years from now.

Getting off the hedonic treadmill

Some of the best ways to get off the hedonic treadmill and stoping the obsessive, insatiable need for more:

Ground yourself in the present

We plan for the future and often regret or reminisce the past. The present, however, is the only real moment that we ever have — Naimat Ahmed

(quoting myself in my own post — how meta)

This seems meaningful on a theoretical level, however, if you manage to internalise this and make it practical — it is life-altering. Learn to ground yourself in the present moment by training your awareness via meditation and spending time with yourself in solitude. The strategy to help ground you in the present moment involves the following:

• Notice when you are getting caught up in thoughts about the future or the past
• Stop what you’re doing and in your head name 3 things you can hear.
• Take a look at the space around you and name 3 things you can see.
• Name 3 things you can feel or touch. It might be your feet on the floor or the clothing against your skin, etc.

Be grateful for what you have

“Gratitude turns what we have into enough.” Need I say more? 
The more grateful you are for the things you already have in your life, over time, the less you will need. Gratitude is one of the best practices you can build for yourself. I advise you get a gratitude journal and start writing in it every day/night.

Make time for high-quality leisure

As Cal Newport has pointed out in his book Digital Minimalism– Make time for high-quality leisure. Intentional hobbies

Intentional activities like writing, playing music, creating art, or practising a sport have been known to prolong feelings of emotional satisfaction. Many people also derive satisfaction from endeavours like volunteering and charity work.

Find meaning & purpose in your life

If there is one thing that I would classify as the most important thing to identify and know in life is — the purpose or meaning of your life (Read my detailed post about this subject here). Again, there is no one size fit all and this is a highly personalised thing.

And again I echo Jordan Peterson’s words, don’t strive for happiness. Strive to be of value by finding a purpose and a meaning in your life. Create value not only for others but also for yourself.