DISCIPLINE, DIRECTION, AND THE ART OF LIVING WELL

Do we live in the moment or do we focus on the future? Both require discipline in their own way. Having the discipline to play when it’s time to play and work when it’s time to work is difficult to balance. A big part of stoicism centers around what’s known as ‘Momento Mori.’ This term means to ‘meditate on death.’ It’s an unavoidable fact of life that we all die. Some late in life, some early. The stoics remind themselves of this frequently, not to be somber, but to remind themselves to be grateful for each and every moment and occurrence. This could be a justification for the hedonist—why not party and drink and just hangout with friends since we don’t know if we have tomorrow? Working for your future seems silly given our future isn’t guaranteed right? Well, that’s not a bad argument to pose. But with this in mind, it begs the question, why do anything? If we aren’t guaranteed tomorrow, why bother eating healthy? Why bother eating at all? Why bother exercising? There’s a lot of time invested into those activities and all for what if we meet an early death? You’re probably starting to see the holes in the logic. We’re walking in nihilist territory. Nihilism is the school of philosophy that nothing matters. We all die. We spend our lives trying to take our mind off death by filling it with pointless activities that in the end amount to nothing. Somber way to think, yes. But nihilists have some good points and I’ll discuss that in a different writing.

If you’re like me, the question that exists in my head at this point is: how do we balance living in the moment while leaving some amount of productive energy and focus to put towards our future? I definitely can’t answer that, but I think about it a lot. I break my life down into what I call the requisite routines. These routines are as follows (from Requisite Routines):

Sleep

Food

Exercise

Leisure

Career

People

 

Now, I used to have relationships live as a subcomponent under leisure and career. However, I’ve found a much better home for relationships: all of it.

Everything is a relationship. Our relationship with sleep, food, exercise, leisure, career, and people. We often think relationships and probably think about two people holding hands. This is one very specific type of relationship. Your relationship with each of these requisite routines will help provide a metric to how you’re balancing your existence. To create a good relationship which each of these things means you have struck good balance, in my opinion. I struggle with my relationship with leisure though I have gotten much better.

It’s good to work hard in the now for the future because productivity and progress towards your goals compounds. Since success is progressive realization of a worthy ideal or goal, then the second you begin pursuing a worthy goal and making progress towards it then you’re successful and that progress will compound. As Warren Buffet famously says: compounding is the 8th wonder of the world—and could also be the key to success in life at a fundamental level. Once you’ve had a taste for progression and it’s compounding effects, you won’t want to go back. You’ll be motivated by your motivation. The act itself is satisfying in that you know the work itself is having a positive impact and influence on your life. But you can’t get lost in it and that’s what the other components are for.

I recently spoke about this in another writing, but I can’t get over this concept I first heard Dr. K explain. Here’s a video where he talks about it. If you don’t feel like watching it, it’s basically about how we need more active challenges. An active challenge is one that we seek. One that is self-imposed. When we have too many passive challenges (challenges given to us by life), it feels like life is just happening to us. But it’s not just about having less passive challenges, it’s about the ratio of active challenges to passive challenges. I think this perfectly encompasses the way I’ve felt about my “many irons in the fire” way of living. I am always adding things to my plate. Most people say “isn’t that a lot” “aren’t you worried you’ll burn out?” And my answer is always, no I feel great. All this stuff gives me purpose. I feel in control, not like I’m being controlled. It’s such a beautiful concept and a great explanation of how more makes it feel like you’re doing less or like you at least have less happening to you.

I don’t really have anything to add to this one right now. So yeah, that’s it.

Go challenge yourself.

~ Bonde