How to get off the hamster wheel (and live a rich life)
Manuê at ACL
Teachings that facilitate healing, transformation and personal evolution within individuals and groups. #criticalthinking #consciousness #philosophy
If you feel on a constant treadmill or like a hamster on a wheel, be sure you’re not alone. It’s hard not to feel that way to be honest. The lives we liveare flooded with tasks, so many things and people demanding out attention, a constant 24/7 news stream, happenings and information bombarding us from every possible direction. It’s madness.
No wonder depression is on the rise and so many feel disconnected. We’re not designed to process to that many stimuli. That’s why it’s so important to do your best to design your lifestyle, down to your daily routine, making sure your human, emotional needs are met.
This means setting boundaries sometimes. It means compromising with things you may’ve been brought up to consider a priority - i.e. making money or catering to others’ needs. It means setting time aside just for yourself – and no, it’s not selfish. It’ll help stop the sense of madness from all going on around you. But also – the simple fact is, you can’t be good and useful to anybody unless you’ve taken care for yourself first. And we should all really start taking this seriously and making it a priority because it is.
Here’s what you should consider when thinking about how you spend your days & consciously designing your routine / to-do list.
Give yourself space
The first title I gave to this section was practice mindfulness but it’s become such a cliché I didn’t want you to not give this point the attention it deserves. After all, clichés are clichés for a reason – it’s because they’re true.
I’m also listing this first for a reason, it’s because I know it’s the single most important pre-requisite to living a rich life. Whether you want to meditate, or if that’s not your thing, call it visualisation or just sit quietly with yourself for 15 minutes every morning – it doesn’t matter, just start doing this regularly.
We spend so much time running around...Including many of us purposefully doing so keeping ourselves busy only to run from ourselves and some personal truths which are hard to swallow. But the truth is, in that quiet is the healing we sometimes desperately need or solutions to problems we don’t allow ourselves to see being so busy. Don’t be afraid to be with just yourself, I promise you, you are your best friend. The only one who can understand yourself better than anybody else ever could.
You can’t figure yourself out unless you build the muscle and that’s how you do it. Give yourself some space and time – 15 min a day is a small price to pay considering what it will do for you.
Study yourself & honour your needs
You know, you would think that as somebody who’s been living with yourself since you were born you would know yourself fairly well. But the truth is, it takes an effort to start noticing. It’s like being so up close facing something that you can’t see it in its entirety. Not to mention that we are work in progress and even if each at different speed, we all change. We grow (hopefully), our tastes change, sometimes our views change. So do our needs.
To give you a simple example – I’m not myself when I haven’t had enough sleep. I’m super sensitive, I find it hard to concentrate or be motivated about anything and my mind is so airy. I know many people struggle when they haven’t slept much but the question is to what extent is that an issue for you...
It took me quite a while to realise I simply can’t afford to not sleep well – it’s my mental health, it’s my work, it’s my relationships that are affected.
So take time to notice what’s affecting you how (mindfulness helps tremendously with that) – I’m talking basic needs, people, situations, everything. Make sure you give yourself what you need and avoid what’s detrimental to you. These things are important even if we fail to equate them to something like making money or cleaning the house.
Allow yourself time for relationships
It’s not unusual for some of us, myself included, to be so busy with what’s important or urgent or simply with our routine that finding time for the people we love (family and friends) is somewhere way down on our never ending to-do lists. If you’re like that yourself, you should really re-think your priorities.
We spend so much time making money and trying to build our lives so we have some stability but the truth is that what we’re really after is joy and happiness. Sure, having money and stability are pre-requisites that allow us to be happy (or that’s what we believe) but if you look back on the happiest moments in your life, you’ll surely discover that all of them involve people. People you love or people who gave you something emotionally.
So drop that important job you just absolutely must finish today and give somebody you love a call, go out see your friend and family, play with your kids – tasks will be here tomorrow too. People on the other hand – who knows.
If I’ve learned one thing in life so far, and it took me quite a while to learn, is that life is about human connection and the magic that stems from that – in all senses, personal and professional alike.
Everything else is bs, not that important.
Be a creator
So I don’t know if you’ve ever given any thought to this and realised it, but all of us are huge consumers. We consume food and clothes and other material things, we consume news and experiences, we consume attention – to name but a few. All day, every day.
It seems to me the more we progress as societies, the more we consume and that hardly leaves us any time for the other side of the equation.
I believe we’re meant to be creators at least as much as consumers. That’s what makes us feel alive ultimately.
There’s a lovely metaphor about breathing in and breathing out. If you try to do just one and ignore the other – you’ll die. It’s the same with consuming and creating – doing just one for an extended period of time and ignoring your need for the other will kill you.
So find your way to be creative – whether that’s cooking, writing, painting, making videos, taking pictures, surfing, making wooden furniture, designing jewellery or whatever – just find your own avenue to express yourself and do so.
Being creative is also healing mentally and emotionally and that’s not to be underestimated.
More at Me&Emma - Stay tuned in for the second part of the article for a few more tips on how to live a rich, fulfilled life.
Infopreneur, Encourager, Influencer, Coach, Life-Long Learner, Known as the Queen of Extreme Surgeon...because I like opening hearts and minds to new possibilities
3 年Good advice. Dr Carolyn Leaf, renowned specialist on the brain, says the brain was never met to do multitasking and refers to it is milkshake multitasking. She's done some very interesting research on the subject of multitasking.