How Searching Flow Helped Me Decide What to Do With My Life
For most of my life, I’ve just drifted. For some time I worked with enthusiasm on one thing, and then I burned out from it and moved on to something else. I felt like I was well versed in what I needed to do today, but in terms of thinking about the big picture of my life, I just had no idea.
This post was originally published on The Simple Dollar .
I often hear people ask questions like “What do you want to do with your life?” and I would come to the conclusion that it was some kind of scam. I never understood what I wanted to do in my life.
This general lack of direction largely fueled my cost overruns that day. I was worried about the general lack of any direction in life, so I often covered it up with short-term pleasures. I spent money and did something, at least in part, so that I didn’t have to think about my lack of direction in life.
I think that this feeling is typical for many people. If you have no idea what you want to do in your life to guide you, it becomes really easy to just drift through life, living paycheck to paycheck and just trying to get the most momentary pleasure you can. hands to you.
Even when I started my financial coup, my idea of saving for the future was entirely based on the idea that although I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life right now , I would probably figure it out in the future. and I wanted to give my “future self” a lot of resources for the moment when everything becomes clear.
In fact, my friends had a very similar life experience. Most of them pale when asked what they want to do in their life. And judging from the emails I’ve read from many, many readers, it’s a shared feeling.
I think that, in the end, the question “what should I do with my life” and the fact that for many it remains unanswered, is at the heart of many financial problems. People have no idea what they want to do with their lives, so they stumble in random directions. They spend money on short-term solutions and pleasure and try not to think too much about it.
So how do you answer this question?
Rather than talking about my own answer, I’m going to instead talk about what I went through in order to figure it out in my own life, so maybe you can use the same steps to figure it out for yourself.
It all starts with you
Here’s the truth: you are the only person who lives in your skin. At the end of your life, you really only have one person to answer: you (and your god, depending on your theological beliefs, but not really a person).
So the number one question that really matters most is what do you want? What do you want from life?
It’s not about what your wife, or your husband, or your children, or your parents, or your friends wants. This is about what you want. What do you want from life?
Looking for the flow
At first glance, this seems like a difficult question, so I’m going to break it down into several parts.
First, at what points in your recent adult life did you feel truly satisfied and happy? There is no right or wrong answer here. For some people, this can happen while they are working. For others, it can happen when they are spending time with people. For others, this can happen when they are engaged in a hobby.
I have found that the greatest moments of realization in life tend to go very well with the moments when I have lost all connection with time and space , and I have found that in conversations with other people, many people feel this way too. When I do something that I am so passionate about, I accidentally look at my watch and become completely confused by what it is telling me. Where did the watch go?
This, in my eyes, is the peak state of life – when you are so busy with something physically and / or mentally that the limitations of your life – the big hours – just kind of disappear. You are lost in the experience of the moment. This is incredibly joyful for me; for me, that’s why people came here on this earth.
For me it happens sometimes when I write. Sometimes it happens when I walk. Sometimes this happens when I am doing something with my children or my wife. Sometimes it happens when I read. Sometimes this happens when I play a game that makes me think in some way. Sometimes this happens in the midst of an interesting conversation with thoughtful friends. This sometimes happens when I pray or meditate. This sometimes happens when I am cooking, when I work in the garden, when I play sports, or when I fix or fix something.
These moments are truly the best of my life. I am so lost in something that life’s stresses disappear for a while, and I feel “whole” in a way I never feel outside of these moments. I feel incredibly satisfied and happy when this happens. I call these periods my “state of flow” because time and other aspects of life just flow around me – I don’t even notice them.
So the next question I ask myself is, what do I need to do in my life to maximize the amount of time I spend in this flowing state? What do I need to do to create a life that has as many flow state moments as possible?
As you read on, remember that I am simply using “flow state” to describe what happens at the best moments for all of us: when we are so busy mentally, physically, and emotionally with something in our lives that we lose. all time and space for a while. That’s all there is to flow, and I’m pretty sure we all experience it sometimes.
For me, this is really the answer to the question of what I want to do in my life. I want to create a life in which I have as many moments of flow state as possible, where my mind, heart and soul are so busy with something that I lose track of time, distractions, physical pain and emotional pain, and I just get lost. in what was in front of me, because of my deep love for it.
Here’s the thing: the elements of your life that bring you into this state of flow will be different from the ones I like. I have a close friend who goes there when he goes fishing; he even jokingly calls it his “fishing trance”. I have another friend who can get there doing laboratory work, as he is an incredibly passionate researcher. My wife says that sometimes she gets there while giving a lesson to her students, where she feels so enthralled by them that she is completely overwhelmed by the bell to signal the end of the lesson.
So what is causing this state of flow in your life? Keep this in mind for the rest of this article.
Preservation, maximization and improvement
We have established the basic premise that doing anything that puts you in a state of flow is what you should be doing in life, and that the best life is a life that puts you in that state of flow as much as possible.
Let’s take a look at some of the elements you need to piece together to make this a reality in your life.
First, you need several significant chunks of time. It is difficult to enter a thread state without allocating a few blocks of time to do so. Obviously, this means that time management has a role to play.
Second, you need sufficient financial security not to live on the edge. If you are in a situation where you are constantly worried about money, it will be difficult for you to focus on other things for any significant period (and even when you manage to do it, you will find yourself in a difficult position. “). You are also in a position where you cannot stand up for yourself at work, because if you lose your job, there will be serious problems.
Finally, you need sufficient financial security to afford all the tools you need to achieve this state of flow. Of course, this is achieved through budgeting.
How do you get it? Here are some strategies for doing this.
Strategy # 1 – save money with everything else, as they are relatively unimportant anyway
Anything in your life that is not related to this sense of “flow” should be extremely secondary to you. You should strive in every possible way to minimize the time and money you invest in these businesses.
The first and most obvious way to do this is simply to find ways to minimize your costs in all of these areas. If food doesn’t put you in a flow, look for ways to minimize the costs needed to adequately meet your nutritional needs, and don’t overspend. If your laundry doesn’t make you feel fluid, look for ways to minimize the cost of dressing clean and presentable, and don’t overspend. The same applies to all the things in your life that you spend time or money on – if they don’t bring you a good experience, minimize the money and time you spend on them.
There are countless economical strategies you can apply along the way. You can cut everything from housing (live in a smaller, cheaper place – remember if that helps to get you joyful?) To transportation and utilities, household items and entertainment (why spend money on things that don’t bring real solid joy in your life, especially when there are so many free things to do?). Just start cutting back on anything that doesn’t lead you to this joyful state of flow – if it doesn’t, why are you wasting money on it?
Strategy # 2 – Have “tight” days and “uncompressed” days
I find this strategy incredibly useful in terms of finding chunks of time to get lost in the stream of things I really care about. Without that, I don’t know how I would find, say, noon to get lost in a great book, or an evening to go to an evening at a public board game, or a day to go camping with my family.
To put it simply, I have “tight” days in which I fill almost every second of my waking hours with what I call “life management” – tasks that are not really fun, but necessary for professional work and everyday life. … Laundry. Plates. Job. Pay the bills. Cleaning. On behalf of. All these endless things.
Instead of spending some time each day “relaxing” – that is, the time spent doing nothing – I try to pack up a few days so filled with small things that I don’t really “stop.” ” all day. I go to bed feeling completely worn out, which is good because it means that I will have a day (or part of a day) in the very near future where I can devote real blocks of time to meaningful things in my life.
These “uncompressed” days serve as an incredible motivator for me to help me get through my “tight” days. I might be tempted to relax a bit and do nothing in the evening on a “tight” day, but if I do, I am directly sacrificing the time I would have set aside for a big hike this weekend or Sunday afternoon, curled up and lost in a book. …
Strategy # 3 – Slowly Ditch the Less Important Things in Your Life
Most of us have life commitments, relationships, and other things in our lives that we’ve taken on over the years, only to later realize that they’re not really something that brings lasting value to our lives. They just take up time and energy, but we still continue to deal with them.
The truth is, most of the time, if you’ve gotten to the point where you’re just chugging and don’t feel any real commitment to something, you’re probably doing pretty poorly at the job. and that someone else is likely to bring in much more than you.
Instead, make a commitment to backtracking on your commitments. Do your best to prepare this commitment for transferring to someone else, and then find someone to whom he can transfer this commitment.
Naturally, this does not apply to all responsibilities and obligations in your life, but only to those that you can reasonably transfer to others. What about the ones you need to complete?
Strategy # 4 – Treat your responsibilities not as “depressing”, but as important things you need to do to get more “time to flow”
Many people view their life responsibilities in a negative light, as things to be done without joy. However, the truth is that the vast majority of your responsibilities in life are only responsibilities because they directly support what you want in life.
For example, I really hate doing laundry. If I look at it in isolation, it’s just … tedious work for me. Sorting clothes, putting them in the washing machine, moving them to the dryer or stacking them on the racks, then folding and folding … that’s just not what I like. Generally.
However, putting it in a different context is not a bad thing. It is this wash that allows me to wear clean clothes. Washing dishes allows me (and my family) to have clean dishes to eat and drink from.
In other words, I focus on the results of hard work and how it helps me do what I most want to do in life. I don’t think about how frustrating the task itself is; instead, I am totally looking at the result. The end result of washing is clean clothes in my drawer, which means I can just grab my shirt for an “uncompressed” day and do something meaningful right away, so doing laundry really supports that task.
What about things like parenting? Many people have children, but do not see the deep meaning in being parents. What if you have a real responsibility in life that doesn’t lead to something very meaningful?
In such situations, you need to remember that you yourself and before the other people involved take care of your responsibility to the best of your ability. This translates into the best long-term outcome for you and the other people involved. For example (and this is just one aspect of the bigger picture), it is quite difficult to ever have a healthy family relationship with your adult child, or relationships with any grandchildren, if you are not doing your best to be a good parent. This is not only good for you in the long term, but also good for your baby.
Strategy # 5 – Treat Your Physical and Mental Health as Primary Responsibility
Almost everything you want out of life is built on a solid foundation of physical and mental health. Without them, it is often much more difficult – even impossible – to achieve this joyous state of flow.
I believe four things go a long way in maintaining and improving my physical and mental health.
First, I get enough sleep – not too much and not too little. I prefer to wake up on my own every morning, but I try to get out of bed as soon as I wake up. To do this, I try to go to bed regularly and minimize the light in the bedroom so that I can fall asleep as quickly as possible. The time I have to wake up is at the farthest end of how long I usually sleep, so I usually usually wake up long before I need to wake up in the morning.
Secondly, I (try) to eat a balanced diet with lots of fruits and vegetables. It’s pretty straightforward. When I eat, I try to have more vegetables on my plate than anything else, and I usually add fruit to my snacks. I don’t go to extremes, but I think these principles form a pretty good basis for a diet. (My only downsides are portion sizes, craft beers and cheeses, and I deliberately try to minimize them.)
Third, I (try) to exercise every day, even if it’s just a walk. I usually try to practice for at least half an hour every day. It is often just a two to three mile walk. I use this time to relax my mind and think about ideas. I believe exercise is good for both my mental and physical health.
Finally, I am meditating. I try to practice mindfulness meditation every day and I find this to be pure gold for my state of mind. I use guided mindfulness meditation routines like those found on quiet.com ; sometimes I do them while walking.
Strategy # 6 – Determine what your ideal week looks like and make it your goal
Imagine for a moment that you are in good enough financial shape to do whatever you want to do during a given week, and that your goal is to be in a “state of flux” as often as possible. How would you arrange this week? How would you open the door to as many deep and joyful pursuits as possible?
I would fill my watch with large blocks of time for things that put me in a flow state. I would go for a great half day or full day walk / hike twice a week or so. I would spend at least a couple of hours a day reading. I spent three or four hours early in the morning composing. I spent a lot of time alone with my kids after school and on weekends. I would cook a lot of homemade meals from scratch. I would have made a much more formal daily routine. I spent some time each week working with a local volunteer gardening group and distributing the proceeds. I would participate in several community board game nights. Plus we had a bunch of dinner parties.
This life seems incredible to me. This life will bring me deep satisfaction from day to day. I want this life.
So how do I get there? The key for me is to blend some of the strong patterns of that life – in my “uncompressed” days – with a concerted effort to live a humble life and do whatever it takes to earn a good income in my “tight” days. It’s simple – spend less than you earn and maximize that gap. This way I can achieve this dream as soon as I can, which will give me many years to enjoy this life.
Final thoughts
It may seem strange to some people that I associate “state of flow” with a better life, but if you think about it a little, it makes sense. The happiest moments in life are when we lose track of time because we are so thoroughly busy with what we do. There is no clearer sign that we are unhappy or unhappy with a moment than if we are looking at a clock or wall clock, fidgeting with our smartphone, or browsing a website. All of these things are signs that we are not mentally busy with what we are supposed to be doing at that moment, which, I believe, is at the root of a lot of dissatisfaction in life. Satisfaction and joy come from the opposite – being completely involved in what you are doing at the moment.
If you make it your goal in life to find moments of “flow” – full involvement in the moment – you will find a much better life. The problem, of course, is that life’s realities sometimes get in the way. Financial independence is one great tool for overcoming this problem.
For me personally, this is as close as I came to the meaning of life – to be so fully occupied with something that the rest of the world flows around you. This means that you are using at least some of the possibilities at your disposal to the fullest, and this is not only pleasant , but also gives amazing results.
All that I most want to achieve in life comes down to achieving this state in one form or another. Personal finance, time management and many other things work to make my life as open as possible to these moments.
I hope that you too can find this central meaning in your life. I encourage you to seek out these natural flowing moments and see how meaningful they are to you. You may be surprised at how powerful they really are and how they tie together large parts of your life, and if you can find this central principle, it can be a really powerful foundation on which to build your plans for financial independence.
Good luck.
What should I do with my life? The Fundamental Personal Finance Question – And An Unexpected Answer | Simple dollar