Lessons from 30 years of living

Passion and motivation are valued far too high in our culture. We tell people to find their passion, and we go about in search of this imaginary thing that we think will just inevitably pop out of nowhere and strike us like a lightning bolt from Zeus. We pretend like we have a lock that only one key will fit into and all you have to do is look hard enough for long enough to find it. We romanticize and create fairy tales in our heads about doing work that doesn’t feel like work and loving every minute of it and we put a large amount of pressure on ourselves and those around us to “figure” out what we are meant to do in life. In reality, this is a big fat lie and people spend a great deal of energy and time searching for something that was right in front of them in the first place.

This is how it works. You have interests, things you enjoy more than things you don’t. Inside these interests, there is a world of possibilities, some of which will provide you with money and some which won’t. Out of the things that will offer you money to do what you enjoy you will end up having many tasks that you do not enjoy and if you are not passionate about all of these tasks did you make a mistake? Of course you didn’t, and that is because you can’t be passionate or motivated about everything. You may love animals and want nothing more than to work with animals on a farm, does that mean you have to be passionate about shovelling shit? Of course, it doesn’t.

We have the equation backwards, instead of;

passion = motivation = action

It should be;

action = motivation = passion

If you are stuck trying to figure out what you are passionate about, start just doing stuff, it doesn’t matter what it is, just do it. Don’t wait for motivation to come, don’t wait for Zeus to fling a lightning bolt at your face, just pick something and do it. If it doesn’t work out, pick something else and do that. Keep doing this process and eventually, you will find something that gives you the feeling you were looking for. It’s not a hard problem to solve, but attempting to solve it through procrastination rarely works. Keep moving with the momentum of the actions you take, after you have tried enough things, you will develop a better idea of what you like and what you don’t so that the next action you take can be more down a path that you enjoy.

If you do this enough, you end up in the place you wanted to be at the start. And remember, a lot of people think they know what they want to do in life, and then do it and guess what, it turns out it wasn’t for them. They were wrong, who could have guessed it? The only difference between the person that thinks they know what to do and those that don’t is that they are more prone to action and through that action, they come to conclusions faster than those that procrastinate. You have to allow yourself to be wrong from time to time. Don’t sit by waiting for passion to come your way, just pick something and work hard at it do it and see how things turn out.

When in doubt, do what people have done for thousands of years

I have always found it very helpful to have tools to aid in better thinking, after all, you don’t go reading every single self-help book on the market without the intention of developing better-thinking practices. You don’t follow the teaching of buddha without intending on becoming happier and you don’t practice stoicism without figuring out what resilience is. I have found that over my life whenever I am in doubt or doubtful of how to act in a certain way If I can look at how we have acted for centuries then I can better navigate the issues I am facing.

We have an ungodly number of decisions to make every day, what food to eat, what entertainment to consume, what job to choose, how to communicate with our friends and family, what to do with our spare time, and how to spend our money and so forth. It can be overwhelming to make the right decisions at each turn, especially with so many opposing views around us. The ability to simplify the choices grants us more time and energy and less pain and worry. One of these techniques is to approach choices with a Hunter-Gatherer mentality.

Let’s take dietary choices as an example. It’s not hard to imagine the food our ancestors consumed, such as nuts, seeds, fruits, vegetables, meat and fish. Now, look at modern man’s diet of processed foods, preservatives and high fructose corn syrup. Which do you think makes the most sense to our well-being? What about beauty products, holy hell that is a hot topic. Shampoos, conditioners, body butters, face creams and make-up products laden with chemicals that only the most astute scientists can pronounce. Do you think you need all of this; do you think that if you stopped applying all of these serums and lotions you are going to fall apart, are you just absolutely filthy dirty and without these products your stench will be so unbearable that people will flee from you in the streets? Don’t be so narcissistic. You’d be surprised to know that great skin and great hair don’t come from a bottle.

What about how we communicate with the people around us including our loved ones? No wonder we have an epidemic of loneliness when we only talk to people through text messages and social media comments. You are supposed to see people, hear them talk, watch them move, and heaven forbid it, touch them too.

You can apply this lens to many aspects of life, not as a standing rule but as a guiding principle. It is probably better for you to get outside and see the sunrise than it is to stay in a dark room and look at your phone. It is probably better for you to work on a farm than in an office. It is probably better for you to play games and enjoy time with friends than to watch an 8th episode of garbage on Netflix. Again, this is not a rule to live by, just a tool to use to guide you to better habits. Of course, there would be elements that wouldn’t benefit from this.

Hunter-Gatherers didn’t have good surgical solutions, does that mean you should avoid surgery if a doctor advises it? Of course not. Take these things with a pinch of salt, apply them where it works and see how it makes you feel. That might be one of the most important takeaways from this book.

Learn to think for yourself and figure out what works for you, don’t just do things because other people have done them too, try it out for a while and see what changes it makes in your daily life.