Is Life Only as Hard As We Make It?

On a recent month-long trip to Bali, I decided to immerse myself in two things: nature and culture. For me, observing nature, and listening to people’s stories, cultural/religious beliefs, attitudes, approaches to life and values are two of the most powerful ways to learn and grow as a human.

While out exploring, I met a group of women shovelling lava sand into large shallow buckets.

After they filled their buckets, they placed them on their heads before walking down 200+ steps to the river, where they deposited the stone onto a boat before walking back up the 200+ steps to start all over again. They did this in sweltering 30°C heat, with 80% humidity, to earn the equivalent of half an hour's pay on UK minimum wage (￡5). Once the job is finished, they go and search for more work. Because, like in many other countries in the world, in Bali, if you don't work, you starve.

DESAK PUTU PUSPAWATI

My scooter driver's sister, Puspsawati, runs a small laundrette to help her provide for her, her son and her father (who recently suffered a stroke). Sudi, my scooter driver, said she'd appreciate more business so I took my laundry over there. The laundrette is a shack: three grey brick walls with a shutter and corrugated tin roof, divided into a front room and a back room. The front room is full of laundry and a small makeshift service counter. In the back, there’s a table and bench. Shelves with more laundry on the left. A sideboard with a small gas stove and a couple of small glasses on the right, two large washing machines and a sink in the corner.

Sudi tells me she works all hours to make ends meet, often working so late and starting again so early she sleeps at the laundrette. Where? On the table. The table at which I'm currently drinking the hot goat's milk she so kindly made me. With no AC or fan, the intense road noise and a huge hole in the roof where snakes, insects and rodents climb in every night, she doesn’t get much sleep. Even though she'd only be left with a few crackers, she insisted I leave with her last remaining papaya.

SCOOTERS, EDUCATION AND HEALTHCARE

Walking around it's also common to see men and/or women riding a scooter with 3 or 4 children in the front, more often than not, without helmets. With no provision of school buses, for their children to get an education, it’s either risk life or limb to get them to school or educate them at home. But with many parents uneducated themselves, taking them to school on a scooter is the only way to make sure their kids have a better start in life than they did.

There's also no free education or healthcare. Getting a corporate job is a pipe dream if you don't have the money to access the resources and education you need to learn the skills required for that job. If someone gets sick or injured and can't afford medical care, they will either rely on plant medicine or donations from the local community to help them get the treatment they need.

HOW MUCH DOES ATTITUDE DETERMINE OUR LIFE EXPERIENCE?

Prior to COVID, Indonesia's future was starting to look promising. According to the World Bank, Indonesia's poverty rate based on the national poverty line reached a record-low of 9.2 percent in 2019. But the global pandemic tore through and devastated Bali's tourism-based economy like a tornado, leaving poverty to surge across the island in its wake.

People have been desperate, taking any work they can, often working outdoors doing manual labour all day for a single bag of rice. Sudi did this regularly when the need for his driving services disappeared overnight. It's why the ladies were collecting the lava sand.

What was incredible is that no matter whom I met, what they were doing for a living, what they had or didn't have or what they’d been through (or still going through), they welcomed me with open arms, were kind and generous and always had a smile on their face.

Let's be clear. This isn't because they’re ignorant of their hardships or believe they have an incredible life. They KNOW how hard their life is. Especially when tourists, with their top-of-the-range iPhones and designer label clothing, haggle over $3 for a full-day Bali tour. $3 that would buy that tourist a Starbucks back home but would help the local taxi driver feed their family for another few days.

While they know their life is hard, they still show up every day smiling, kind, generous, doing their best to enjoy their life as much as possible.

When I asked Sudi (pictured below) about how they do this, he said that when they pray, they don't pray for more luck or fortune. They don't pray to be saved from the life they've been born into.

Instead, they say "thank you" for everything they have and everyone in their lives. For their good health and all their blessings.

The only thing they pray for is God's continued love, peace and strength in their hearts to help them when times are tough.

How Society Sets Us Up to Never Be Happy

As a coach, my job is to help people to create change in their professional or personal life.

What's interesting is what drives the need for change. Quite often a belief that, based on what their e.g. culture, society, Instagram feed tells them, who they are and what they have isn't enough. Only when they have e.g. the 5 bedroom mansion, perfect abs, spouse, kids, "Partner" job title, first-class travel, will they experience true happiness, the epitome of success and self-worth. Creating dissatisfaction with what they have right now and a fear-based, egocentric, psychological NEED for more.

What's interesting is that research has shown that once our basic human survival, social and spiritual needs are met e.g. air, food, water, shelter, human contact, connection, the only remaining things we need to thrive are a nourishing and growth-encouraging environment and tribe, good sleep, sunlight, movement and experiential play. Everything else we're told we need is just a story concocted by marketing teams worldwide, cleverly woven to convince us that we need their product or service to be happy, successful and loved. Don't buy it and you will be miserable and left behind.

Don't get me wrong - I'm not demonising money or material wealth here. Obviously, we need money to survive and enjoy many of life’s experiences. What I'm saying is that it's the belief we NEED those things to be happy, successful, loved and accepted that is dangerous to buy into, and proposing it's this belief that feeds into many of our mental health issues today.

It's this society-driven belief that drives us to work in jobs that can afford us “more”, but leave us deprived of the things we actually need to thrive. Jobs that require long hours, limiting our time for human connection, nature, play, building and nurturing a supportive community or tribe. Jobs and environments that stress us out so much all we want to do is escape and hide behind our screens, self-medicate through drink, food, an obsessive focus on body image and exercise, drugs etc. Jobs and environments that worst case scenario will put us in our graves, or a mental hospital, before we even have the time to enjoy the money we earn.

It's this belief that destroys our sense of self-worth and psychological security, and feeds into our experiences of anxiety, loneliness, stress and depression that are continuously on the rise.

IS LIFE ONLY AS HARD AS WE MAKE IT?

Spending a month with Balinese people and observing their daily lives made me wonder:

What makes life hard?

Who defines what "hard" is and to whose benefit?

When people who have very little can live in peace yet people who have more find life at times depressing, stressful and sometimes even unbearable - one has to question: how much of our pain and suffering are we creating for ourselves? As a society and as individuals?

Is life really hard or is life only as hard as we make it?

Because let's be honest. Nobody is forcing us to buy into the marketing-driven message that we must have more or be more, to be happy and successful.

Nobody is forcing us to work in stressful jobs to live in expensive cities, to pay for things we don't really need, to impress and get validation from people we don't even like.

Nobody is forcing us to believe the BS society-created beliefs in our heads telling us when we're not "measuring up" to its baseless benchmarks, we're failing and falling behind. Or the ones telling us that we as we are and what we have right now isn't enough. That something is wrong with us or something is missing.

But we do it anyway. Why? Because the mind is geared toward one thing: survival. It's programmed to look for and establish threats of scarcity and lack to keep us motivated to stay alive. Feeling gratitude and listening to our own personal truth requires conscious effort, and means going against social norms. When the world has told us going against social norms means being left behind, translated by our reptilian brain as certain death - it's no surprise our minds don't want to entertain that.

Let's be clear. The hardships of one do NOT negate the pain of another. The mind will convince you your survival/reputation/sanity is under threat, even when it isn't. This threat creates fear and once fear is at the steering wheel, all logic and reasoning go out the window. You might be financially and physically secure but your mind will convince you that you're only one step or decision away from destitution. While the threat (e.g. of starvation) might not be real, the fear is real. The pain is real. Nobody should ever be told their pain isn't valid. What spending time with those less fortunate can do is help us to see how much of our pain is based on genuine threats to our survival and wellbeing versus how much is based on BS societal beliefs telling us who we are and what we have right now isn't enough.

WHAT DO YOU NEED TO BE HAPPY?

I originally wrote this newsletter series to discuss what it means to live life on our terms. But before we even do that we need to strip away all the BS stories society has told us about what we need to be happy and figure out what WE really need to be happy.

I've realised that there are only a few things in life which fulfil me to the depths of my soul. Love and connection/friends and family. Contributing, helping others, doing something "good" for the planet. Nature, new horizons and awe. Overlooking a ricefield only to look up and see a mountain protruding from the clouds, as though it was floating mid-air, was such a beautiful, spiritual experience for me it moved me to tears. All of my decisions around work, career and money are geared towards experiencing these things. It's when either my basic human needs or my experiences of these things are under threat, I can feel my fear-mind kick in.

CLOSING THOUGHTS

Many of us are unhappy because our survival and well-being are genuinely under threat. But many of us are unhappy because we believe that who we are and what we have isn't enough, based on the stories society/social media feeds us.

Millions of people in Indonesia would love to have the jobs we in the 1st world have, the money we earn, the houses we live in, the access to education/healthcare and opportunities we have. What's one person's "nightmare" is another person's dream.

I can't help but wonder what life would be like if after our basic human needs are met, instead of focusing on, "How can I have more?", we focused on, "How can I:

Love more

Grow more

Contribute more

Spend more time in the sunlight, with my tribe, being a human being, not a human doing?

The biggest lesson for me from my time in Bali was to appreciate that all the annoying and difficult things I tell myself I have to do are a privilege. And from now on instead of saying, "I have to," I will do my best to remind myself I don't have to, I get to.

Thoughts?

Zeta xxx

If you're a senior-level professional who would like help in leading and living more authentically, reach out at?www.zetayarwood.com

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Zeta Yarwood is a leading, award-winning international Executive Coach, Career Coach and Life Coach, helping leaders worldwide achieve success in all areas of their lives. With a degree in Psychology and over 15 years of experience in coaching, management and recruitment – working for multinational companies and award-winning recruitment firms – Zeta is an expert in unlocking human potential. Passionate about helping people discover their strengths, talents and motivation, Zeta lives to inspire others to dream big and create the life and career they really want. A "LinkedIn Top Voice" and voted one of the "Top 50 Most Impactful People On LinkedIn" two years in a row, Zeta has a LinkedIn community of over 250,000 people, and is dedicated to sharing her knowledge, experience and insights to anyone who might benefit from it. You can gain access to those insights by following her here:?Zeta Yarwood, LinkedIn.

For further information on coaching and general career/life inspiration, please visit?www.zetayarwood.com

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