Some Unsolicited Advice #8

Some weeks ago we started a series in which I share some completely unsolicited advice… if you’re looking to pick up from the beginning, you can do so here (which I recommend doing, if you haven’t done so, since there’s a lot of semi-important context in there, as well point #2 here, #3 here, #4 here, #5 here, #6 here, and #7 here).

Long story short (since the initial post was some nine-thousand words): I wrote a book that you can read here; however, instead of leaving it as an e-book that very few people will ever read (it is titled “Some Unsolicited Advice” after all), I figured it’s worth sharing the points and lessons learned in a more consumable format, as a rolling blog series where I add one or two new items every week (or every other week, depending on how much time I end up having), making for quicker and easier reading than dumping an e-book and calling it a day. And in this way, over the course of a year (or less, depending on the cadence), all the points will get shared in bite-size, more easily readable chunks. Today, we continue with the next point of this series…

8. Listen to your body and mind.

In covering the above points where we’ve talked about pausing and evaluating fears for what they truly are, as well as our discussion on mindfulness, it’s abundantly clear that it behooves us immensely to know how to listen to both our mind and body – so as to understand what’s going on under the hood, instead of being dragged along by our emotions, unaware of what’s underneath. Fortunately, all the tools we need to be able to introspect ourselves come built in, but as we touched on in the segment on mindfulness meditation, most of us aren’t even aware of what our body is feeling when it’s sitting, breathing, or doing whatever we do for the vast majority of the time we’re alive – let alone what it’s doing in the more intense and dynamic moments in life. Plodding along on autopilot, we often have no idea around what’s actually going on and why we’re doing what we do. Perhaps we feel a desire to eat; that’s all well and good, but are we hungry? Do we really need the food? Why is it that we want to eat? What kind of food is the body saying it needs? Is it a craving, or true hunger? If we’re being honest, half the time we’re hungry it’s simply because we’re bored. But if we never stop to ask ourselves what’s really going on underneath the feeling(s), we’ll often end up consuming or doing something we didn’t otherwise need to consume or do. And this holds true in many areas beyond just food.

Extending the exercise we touched on while talking about mindfulness where we played with the idea of being mindful around what the body was feeling physically or emotionally, the next layer is being able to pause and ask ourselves, “why do I feel this way?” The answers to this question can often be revealing and insightful… sometimes it’s beyond simple, we’re tired because we’ve been up for 23 hours in a row; but other times, we may not realize that we’re carrying a weight or being beaten down by a force that we didn’t realize was there the whole time. Or, if we’re frustrated, why is it that we’re frustrated? And not just at a surface level, work to ask yourself honestly, “is there more to it?” Were we already frustrated, and this just gave us an excuse to show it? Or is there a fresh stressor that’s creating the frustrations, and if so, what needs to be done to help alleviate the pressure? Emotions and feelings are complex items, and what we’re feeling can often get in the way of understanding why we’re feeling the way we are, which is the key to getting to a resolution.

So much of our life tends to be dominated by our brain and body operating on autopilot, dictated and driven by emotions and feelings that we’re barely even aware of. And we, blind to the fact that it’s even happening, end up as helpless riders on a runaway train going downhill with the brakes out. But by taking a moment to listen and understand our bodies and minds, we can at least start to ask some of the questions that will give us a better understanding of ourselves, what’s going on, and why. ?

A good example of doing this introspection in a more physical setting is that of physical pain: for instance, pushing through burning muscles while exercising is often the stimulus that’s required for growth, and so we press through the familiar yet painful muscular burn, but if the pain isn’t a healthy pain, and instead is maybe a symptom of a neurological or skeletal issue, then it’s imperative that we stop immediately, so as not to further damage things. You usually don’t need a physical trainer or doctor to tell you the difference in the moment. You know when something is getting damaged in a potentially irreparable way. The exact same concept applies to the greater whole of our bodies and minds. In order to not cause harm to ourselves (mentally, emotionally, or physically), we need to be able to determine the source of the discomfort and then be able to discern what is healthy and what is not. Sometimes we may be legitimately mentally or emotionally exhausted to the point that pushing harder or farther will do more harm than good; at which point, just as you have rest days between strenuous workouts, it’s wise to take a pause, listen to your body, and continue only when it’s ready. In other cases, stress is a sign of growth. Just like knowing the difference between a sore muscle and a broken bone, by listening to your body and mind, you can get a reference point for what’s going on internally.

In my case of deciding to stop traveling, as things moved towards a full calendar year of living out of hostels and a backpack, I quite simply didn’t want to do it anymore. But the reasons for not wanting to do it were at that point very different from the reasons I didn’t want to do it when I was starting. In the beginning, it was fear of the unknown that made me want to throw in the towel, but I wasn’t quitting or running away from anything anymore. I’d done what I set out to do and then did orders of magnitude more. And now, I was tired… and continuing on for the sake of simply doing more didn’t seem like it had much additional value, and more importantly, it wasn’t something I wanted anymore. I wasn’t stopping for any other reason than that I’d had enough; it was as simple as that. I didn’t want to anymore, and so I didn’t. It didn’t feel like there was some wall I had to break through to keep growing, and while I’m sure I’d continue to grow, the marginal utility of doing so seemed to have diminishing returns.

There’s no golden rule here other than to listen to your body and mind, evaluate what it’s saying for whichever parts of it may be true, and then decide how you intend to act on that information. Pause for a moment and look into the discomfort, and understand whether we’re hiding from the work to be done or if there are others reasons for the discomfort. It’s a lot easier said than done, but it’s also not complicated or opaque. We know, and we know that we know; we just don’t often like admitting that we know because by admitting that we know, we’re now responsible for owning up to whatever truths are there. If I acknowledge that I know my reasons for being upset are trite and petty, then that’d mean I’d need to stop being upset, since what would it say about me if I continued to be upset after knowing I was being trite and petty? But being upset feels good and vindictive – and so it is that looking into our feelings and emotions can often be inconvenient in the short term, even if it’s extremely useful in the long run.

In terms of pushing through pain to the growth on the other side, it’s very much true that we’re often capable of a whole helluva lot more than we think we are… but rather than mindlessly powering forward into every obstacle we can find, it’s extremely worthwhile to check in on ourselves from time to time and review exactly why we’re doing what we’re doing. Priorities can and do change over time, and what was once the driving reason for doing a thing may one day no longer be a factor or reason that matters at all anymore. In checking in with ourselves, it’s also extremely important to stay objective and honest in our review to avoid getting sucked into the sunk-cost fallacy of continuing to invest in something we no longer truly want but continue to do so because we’ve already put so much of our time, money, or resources into it that we feel obligated to carry on. If the reason for doing a thing isn’t what it once was, it’s important to make an honest re-evaluation as to whether the continued cost makes it worth going on with. This goes for a job, relationship, passion project, and so on. There will undoubtedly be moments when you face obstacles and want to give up. I’m not talking about momentary flights of fancy, so much as digging into your soul to understand that if building your dream camper van by hand is really what you want anymore. And if it’s not, that’s fine, but also don’t come to that conclusion just because it got hard – few things are worse than regretting not giving everything you had; giving up and going home may feel good for a moment, but rest assured you’ll wonder what could have been for a whole lot longer. But if you leave it all out there, you can always hold your head high regardless of the outcome.

Furthermore, listening to your body and mind is also of paramount importance in matters of taste, particularly in terms of understanding the places, people, and things that you do or do not like (as much as is reasonably possible). Just because everyone else seems to like dancing in loud clubs doesn’t mean that you need to like that shit too. Similarly, just because it seems that everyone else likes beaches and laying around in the sun while sipping on cute cocktails with umbrellas doesn’t mean that you need to like it as well (or that you’re weird for not being exactly like them).

I really wish I’d kept this in mind while traveling, and more specifically, I wish I’d had the nerve to hold true to my internal convictions in these areas as I went from place to place. Had I followed this bit of advice myself, I have no doubt that much of my trip would have been vastly different. For instance, I knew damn well early on that I wasn’t a fan of beaches or the whole beach culture, and yet as I traveled, I went from this beach town to that beach town and every other beach town in-between. Doing all of this, even while I knew in my head and heart that I was (and am) a person who derives a lot more enjoyment from being in the mountains and trees, as opposed to the beach and sand. And yet I kept going to beaches (mostly because that’s where all the cool kids seemed to be going), all the while deluding myself into thinking that somehow I’d magically start enjoying a life of lazing about with a cocktail, getting sunburnt, and feeling itchy as fuck from the sand and saltwater.

Obviously, I never really got into it, and with every beach I went to, I had the same sorts of experiences around the same sorts of people and the same reminder that I was probably better off somewhere else. Had I gone to more mountain towns along the way, I likely would have loved them all. And, in fact, although they were relatively few along my way, for the ones that I did visit, I loved every single one of them, which is a helluva success rate.

Looking back on it all, I wonder if I was insane to do what I did. That is, going to all the places that I already knew weren’t really for me. But I wasn’t. I simply (and sadly) wasn’t following what this principle was addressing (which is why it’s here) and wasn’t doing what I knew to be true for myself. The same goes for nearly every time I went out to a nightclub or venue with loud music and drunk Europeans on vacation. Sure, some clubs could be fun in the right mood with the right music, and I knew I desperately needed to push myself to be more social while traveling, so it made sense that I was just trying to put myself out there (or at least that’s the rationalization I’d tell myself when going out the door). But I can’t count the number of times I went out with what felt like nearly the exact same people, and I hated it just as much as every time before (when what I really wanted was a solid game night with friends!). And yet, just like beach towns, I went time and time again. Which then leads to the question of why one would keep doing something over and over that they knew they wouldn’t enjoy? Mostly, it was, for lack of a better explanation, the result of my longstanding desire to belong and maybe, just maybe, connect with other people (and maybe to have some of their cool rub off on me by proximity), but that also never happened, despite being in locations with tons of people.

And in the end, it makes sense that I never connected with the people there because I was rarely with the kind of people I actually liked! There’s a non-trivial correlation between the club persona and those who love laying around on beaches, sipping rum-based drinks, in that they’re commonly the same damn demographic. Meaning that if I had listened to my inner compass and gone to the places that weren’t beach towns or party destinations, I likely would have found a different breed of traveler, who, quite possibly (or so I’d like to think), would have been more like myself! Who knows how things would have actually turned out? I don’t. At this point, it’s all speculative, and it’s easy to make a lot of wrong assumptions in hindsight. I may or may not have actually enjoyed anything or anyone differently. However, the fundamental point here remains the same: listen to you. You already at least have an idea of what you do and don’t like, so go and enjoy what you do like, and fuck everyone else who thinks it’s lame (with the caveat that while it’s important to do you, it’s equally important to not conflate “doing you” with the idea of being a reclusive hermit purely out of reasons to do with social anxiety). For what it’s worth, it stands to reason that when you’re in a place you want to be, it’s more likely that you’ll meet others who are more aligned with how you think and feel, and as a result, you’ll (probably) enjoy yourself a whole lot more. Which takes us to...

And that’s it for this round! Of course, if you want to skip ahead at any point, feel free to buy the full book on Amazon here. Thanks!