The 5 questions I am asking myself this holiday season

About 8 years ago, when I passed out of B-school, I jotted down 5 questions on a piece of paper with gaps between them meant to be filled with answers. I still have this sheet of paper safe. These questions will never be fully answered. The responses at any one time lay somewhere in an infinite continuum of time and space. Every single year, around this time, I reflect on those 5 questions to remind myself of what is important in my life and how I should plan ahead for the year to come.

Here are those questions and here is why I ask them to myself.

1. How good is my health?

Massive progress in medical sciences has added decades to our life expectancies. An average person in the UK in the year 1543 had a life expectancy of just 33.9 years. That same figure today is a ripe 80.7 years! Now while we have added years to our lives, we haven't added life to our years. The share of our lives we spend in poor health has not diminished. Research suggests that on average, people spend an astonishing 50 percent of their lives in less-than-good health including 12 percent in poor health - No different to how things were 60 years ago. More concerning still is that this trend is only worsening due to chronic conditions affecting a growing majority of the population. Incidences of cardiovascular diseases and cancers have gone up by over 50% in the last 3 decades.

Statistics aside, the cost of a less-than-good health is a significant drop in our quality of lives. And this doesn't even have to be about physical well-being. Chronic stress, anxiety, fear or trauma can cause our amygdala to completely take over leaving us prone to rather worrying after effects. If you are not convinced, I invite you to watch Anthony Hopkins starrer The Father - The movie is about a man with dementia. I can assure you the movie will disorient you with its time slips and perhaps even make you queasy. A man with healthy limbs, bones and yet struggling to cope!

Nothing, absolutely nothing else, is more important to me than my health. As we get into the holiday season, I am asking myself - 'How good is my health, really?'

2. How invested am I in my relationships?

Cultural anthropology reduces the function of a family to fulfilling basic human needs such as providing for children, defining parental roles, regulating sexuality, and passing property and knowledge between generations. From an evolutionary stand point, this is all family, marriage or kinship are really about - Fulfilling basic human needs. But this point of view ignores the fundamental need for human connections and its consequent strong link with happiness. Study after study has revealed that close personal relationships help build a long and fulfilling life.

The odd date night with the missus with far too many blurry photographs on the phone, the lazy Sunday morning bed routine with the kids with the amusement of singing while one of them holds my mouth closed, the "it-doesn't-matter-how-old-you-are, I-am-still-your-mum" call with the parents, the rather nasty drink reminiscing the good old days with a friend - These are the relationships I cherish. I wouldn't trade them for a billion dollars.

They however take work, a much needed investment of time & energy so they can turn out to be rewarding. As we get into the holiday season, I am asking myself - 'How invested am I in my relationships, really?'

3. How engaged am I in my work?

Let's clarify this at the outset - Work is not what I do for a living. It is a big part of it. But work is more than that. Work is what I do that truly gives me a sense of purpose. There is a story that comes to mind that I have shared before and it is worth repeating here.

There is a?soy?sauce?brewer in Japan by the name of Yasuo Yamamoto, who is a fifth generation master builder - one of the last few remaining traditional wooden barrel?soy?sauce?brewers in Japan. Less than 1% of?soy?sauce?in the world today is made this way. While it takes an industrial company 6 months to brew a batch of?soy?sauce, it takes Yamamoto 2-3 years to brew one using the 150 year old fermentation process. In a conversation describing his process, Yamamoto says, "I dont make the?soy?sauce, the micro-organisms make it. I just create an environment where they can thrive. I go to the brewery everyday to greet them and speak to them. In turn they know that someone is there. And when they know that someone is with them, they work harder."

Someone with a job as simple as brewing?soy sauce?has found much profoundness and such great spirituality in doing what he does. And to me this is the key to unlocking happiness - Finding spirituality not just at places of worship, but also at our desks, in our meeting rooms and during our conference calls. This is what Mihaly C. describes in his book as Flow, the reason why a Janitor can be happier than an investment banker. When we find this spirituality at work, our output isn't one of a white collared employee - but it is one of a true artist. And it is those works of art that we will be remembered for.

As we get into the holiday season, I am asking myself, 'How engaged am I in my work, really?'

4. How comfortable is my financial situation?

I have spent a lot of time in the last 3 years deeply contemplating about my relationship with money. And for me, this boils down to two things - Balance and Resilience.

1. If tomorrow were the last day of my life, how would I spend money today? On the contrary, if I were destined to live to a ripe age of 80 years, how would I spend money today? This is the element of balance - planning for the future, while living in the present.
2. If difficult times were to befall upon me, do I have the wherewithal to trudge through the crisis? This is the element of resilience - ensuring continuity of a minimum standard of living.

And this is it. I am committed to living the best life possible within means. And as we get into the holiday season, I am asking myself, 'How comfortable is my financial situation, really?'

5. How much memories have I made?

I was watching a Netflix documentary on farmers a few years ago. The footage showed a tomato farmer growing his crop and when interviewed, he says, "I have only got 40 or 45 harvests in my life. I can't go wrong with even one of them". When he puts it like that, you realise what an incredibly short life we live! His life is measured in harvests and he has only got 40 or 45 more to go.

I have often wondered how my life should be measured! An article I read over a decade ago had a profound impact on me. It is titled "How will you measure your life?" and was written by late Harvard professor Clayton Christensen. I highly recommend reading it. Clay wraps up the article by saying, "I’ve concluded that the metric by which God will assess my life isn’t dollars but the individual people whose lives I’ve touched". Now Clay was a very religious man and was diagnosed with cancer at the time this article was written. I, on the other hand, I am ambivalent about god and have a much more simplistic vision.

I am convinced that the metric by which I will assess my life is the number of memories I have made. And as we get into the holiday season, I am asking myself, 'How much memories have I made, really?'

Enjoy the holidays, Merry Christmas and Happy 2023!