Motivation

“Everything negative – pressure, challenges – is all an opportunity for me to rise.” – Kobe Bryant

In engineering, there’s a thing called a “hydrostatic stress test,” where they take pipes or fuel tanks or ship parts or whatever and they pump tons of water into them. The intense pressure from the water then exposes leaks and weaknesses in the structure, showing the engineers where the vulnerabilities are. Essentially, this is a pressure test.

I believe that COVID-19 has been a kind of hydrostatic stress test for each place and each person around the world. Each system’s weakness has been revealed. Countries overburdened with regulations have been punished for their overregulation. Countries that have a penchant for authoritarian and/or incompetent leaders have had those leaders exposed. And countries that have factious, distrustful cultures have paid the price for their factious, distrustful cultures. 

This stress test has occurred within our individual lives, as well. Couples that had been burying their problems for years quickly had them exposed. Weak and opportunistic friendships got washed out. Fragile careers were broken. Miserable lifestyles replaced. Bad TV shows deleted. 

But the stress test of hardship doesn’t just expose weakness, it also reinforces strength. Good relationships become better. Important decisions get made. Priorities get straightened out. 

In the past year, I’ve seen myself at both my best and my worst. I’ve also seen my country (Zimbabwe) at its best and at its worst. Of course, political parties will argue over who gets credit for what, but neither had anything to do with it. Zimbabweans have always been a bunch of theoretical, overly political, slightly paranoid, conspiracy theory whack jobs. And COVID exposed that in us. 

But say what you want, Zimbabwe has done a splendid job with this here pandemic. In a “perceived” world, we would have been wiped out or had high cases but we are doing alright. We even have vaccinations rolling out “steadily”, which I didn’t expect but is happening smoothly, and this warms the heart. 

Speaking of which: get vaccinated as soon as possible. Ignore the noise and nonsense. There are a lot of hacks out there making a quick buck spreading bad data about the vaccines. Follow the science. Get vaccinated.

The “new normal” has been greatly exaggerated

After the world dedicated much news to COVID over the past year, I both hope and expect this to be the last blog I ever write about it. Partly because I’m sick of it and I’m sure you’re sick of it. But partly because, for most people in the world, this whole global episode is nearly over.

So I leave you all with my final COVID take: the predictions of how much the world will be changed because of COVID—i.e., a “new normal”—have been greatly exaggerated. Things will soon feel more or less like they did in 2019. And many of these grand predictions that seemed so profound a few months ago will seem silly in hindsight. 

Cities will not die. People will move back to them because the pleasure and economic benefits of being around many other people have not changed. 

Restaurant, entertainment, and hospitality industries will come back, as they have after every pandemic over the last 3,000 years. 

Governments and politics have not changed—or, at least, if they have, it’s not because of COVID. Democratic governments have not become more authoritarian. Authoritarian governments have not become more democratic. Corruption in Africa is still high, there is no pressure made morality happening there.

People will have to get COVID vaccines frequently and it will be totally fine—just as they get flu vaccines, measles vaccines, hepatitis vaccines, etc., and it’s totally fine. Vaccine passports already exist and have existed for decades. They’re so normal you forgot you already had them. 

Okay, maybe the remote work thing will stick a little bit. It’s probably overdue. But I would still bet that it is being overestimated. If you want to get ahead at your job and in your career, you will want to be face-to-face with your boss, with the client, with your team, as much as possible. Physical presence will become a professional advantage, therefore smart people will continue to seek it out. Not to mention all the extraverts in the world who are dying to get back into an office every day. 

Instead, the things that have changed are the things that you and I hear almost nothing about. The funding and astounding progress made in biotech (mRNA vaccines alone will likely save tens of millions of lives in the coming decades). The supply chains that have been reconfigured, the trade relationships rearranged, the economic destinies shifted, the government debt inflated, the currencies devalued. And this is why we are talking about pressure, no pressure.

There are the actual world-changing events—yet they are so big and abstract, we can hardly see them. They are like the water we swim in. The tides shift us dozens of miles, yet we will look around and feel as though we are in the same place. We do feel the pressure of the pandemic, but are we really under pressure?

Selection Bias

Right, so when it comes to pressure no pressure, you need to understand that there is a selection bias. What this means is there is a group of people that will choose pressure. However, there is a group of people that will choose no pressure. Both choices are correct because they are based on perception. I eat my steak medium-rare, you eat yours well done. At the end of the day, we both ate a steak…

This problem happens all the time in psychological research, by the way. It’s why you should never trust a headline that says something like, “Study on Facebook users shows social media makes people narcissistic” or “Phone survey shows that three out of four people hate their phone company.” 

Why? 

Because when you conduct research by posting a personality test on Facebook, you’re not just testing people on Facebook, you’re testing people who love taking personality tests (i.e., narcissists). Or when conducting a phone survey, you’re not just researching people with phones, but people who actually answer their phones or are bored enough to take a survey. You are not considering their mood or feelings at the time. What pressure are they under? Life? Health? Finance? Love? You have no clue.

So pressure or no pressure, you are right. Do you! And stop trying to justify or explain yourself to anyone. Trust me, they have their own pressure, which has nothing to do with you! In closing, I will ask you to do me a favor. Please do not let other people’s pressure be your pressure. Deal with your pressure, see it as an opportunity to be better and be great. Like I said, do you! Pressure or no pressure.

As always, hope you and yours are safe. Reach out in the comments section and let’s chop it up!

Photo Credit: Photo by Kenneth Gorzal Surillo from Pexels

“The people heard it, and approved the doctrine, and immediately practised the contrary.” 
― Benjamin Franklin

This one will be short and confusing but I promise it is important. In his 2013 Wesleyan commencement address, Joss Whedon talked about the inherent contradictions of being human. “The contradiction between your body and your mind, between your mind and itself. I believe these contradictions and these tensions are the greatest gifts that we have.” The notion of our “self” or “personality” as something established and fairly long-lasting is being replaced by a new, much more apt paradigm. As something soft and negotiated, and more importantly, through a process that requires work as opposed to something one is born with.

You have, which is a rare thing, that ability and the responsibility to listen to the dissent in yourself, to at least give it the floor, because it is the key – not only to consciousness but to real growth. To accept duality is to earn identity. And identity is something that you are constantly earning. It is not just who you are. It is a process that you must be active in.

Embracing our inner contradictions is important. This is quite a shift from the prevailing popular mild disdain for “flip-floppers” (John Kerry should feel vindicated). This contradiction, and this tension … it never goes away. And if you think that achieving something, if you think that solving something, if you think a career or a relationship will quiet that voice, it will not. If you think that happiness means total peace, you will never be happy. Peace comes from the acceptance of the part of you that can never be at peace. It will always be in conflict. If you accept that, everything gets a lot better.

In his book The Ego Trick, Julian Baginni argues that the self is really a “bundle” of thoughts and while it still very much exists, it is merely a collection of things and not an immutable monolith: “We are these very remarkably ordered collections of things. It is because we’re so ordered that we are able to think of ourselves as being singular persons. But there is no singular person there, that means we’re forever changing.” Yet, while we are thoughts, memories, and parts, Baginni does believe we are more than a sum of our parts. The fact that we are dynamic changing systems means that we are constantly in the process of negotiating our identity. Questioning our assumptions, and revelling in our contradictions instead of castigating yourself for your inconstancy.

Whedon concludes his speech by addressing the second from last graduation speech, changing the world: “So here’s the thing about changing the world. It turns out that’s not even the question, because you don’t have a choice. You are going to change the world because that is actually what the world is. You do not pass through this life, it passes through you. Meaning you experience it, you interpret it, you act, and then it is different. That happens constantly. You are changing the world.”

In other words, don’t feel quite so bad about being a walking contradiction and be more accepting of your flip-flopping ways, taking comfort in the fact that being able to “argue yourself down” makes a little more aware and able to pull aside the stage curtain, if you will. So what then are the implications of this inherent conformity for brand loyalty? What impact does your oft-renegotiated “personality” have on your lifestyle choices then? Food for thought.

The motivation behind any action should never be the result but the process. Tweet Me

We have all met someone who has grand ideas the whole time, you meet them today and they are into farming. Next week they are into rearing pigs, the next they are into stocks and bonds. Yet in all the ventures nothing actually gets done. They talk more than they execute, a clear contradiction.

Reasons Why You Are A Walking Contradiction

1. Lack of Ambition – Imagine this, you are in a relationship with a gym freak. They exercise every day and eat healthily, the whole shabang. So you end up conforming to their regime not because you want to exercise and be healthy but because you are piggybacking off them. The goal you are chasing is not yours, but someone else’s and what happens, in the long run, is you have no ambition to achieve it because it was never yours to start with.
2. You are Result Driven – The motivation behind any action should never be the result but the process. Enjoy the journey because there are many lessons to be learned and appreciated. Remember the result is a bonus, it is the process that gives satisfaction. Imagine having sex just to have a baby and not actually enjoying the sex! Make sense?
3. You are Emotional – Many people, myself included, make decisions based on emotion without the benefit of intellect. The classic example, you drink too much and because you are hungover you swear you are never going to drink again. Or you are so full from all the buffet you ate, you are sitting on a couch with your jeans button popped and your belly hanging over and you say ” I need to go on a diet“. The decision is temporary, you FEEL a certain way then but will you honour what you said even after the feeling you said It in has left?

The ability to learn to should always be revered even when pain is the teacher. If you notice what I have done with this post you will see that there is a contradiction in points raised. The reason is intentional, to show that it is okay to have a contradiction. You just need to know why you are contradicting yourself and how detrimental that contradiction is to your ultimate goal.

As always, hope you and yours are safe. Do not be afraid to second guess yourself once in a while, it shows you are weighing all options available to you. We have choices for a reason, do not be afraid to explore all of them until you find the most suitable one for you. Contradiction or not, the choice is yours. Share with us your thoughts in the comments section.

“Pain comes to teach us a lesson and when the lesson is understood it disappears into the night.” – Mansfield

Sitting on my front porch, watching the sky light up with lightning I realised something. Everybody wants to feel good, but no one wants to feel pain. We all want to live a carefree, happy and easy life, to fall in love and have amazing relationships. To look perfect and make money, and be popular and well-respected and admired. Everyone would like that—it’s easy to like that.

If I ask you, “What do you want out of life?” and you say something like, “I want to be happy and have a great family and a job I like,” it’s so familiar and common it doesn’t even mean anything.

A more interesting question, a question that perhaps you’ve never considered before is what pain do you want in your life? What are you willing to struggle for? Because that seems to be a greater determinant of how our lives turn out.

Everybody wants to have an amazing job and financial freedom but not everyone wants to suffer through long work weeks, long commutes, and boring paperwork. To navigate gruelling corporate hierarchies and the blasé confines of an infinite office hell. People want to be rich without the risk, without the sacrifice, without the delayed gratification necessary to accumulate wealth.

We all want to have great sex and an awesome relationship, but not everyone is willing to go through the tough conversations, the awkward silences, the hurt feelings, and the emotional psychodrama to get there. And so they settle. They settle and wonder “What if?” for years and years until the question morphs from “What if?” into “Was that it?”

Happiness requires struggle. The positive is the side effect of handling the negative. You can only avoid negative experiences for so long before they come roaring back to life. It’s like a cycle.

At the core of all human behaviour, our needs are more or less similar. Positive experience is easy to handle. It’s negative experience that we all, by definition, struggle with. Therefore, what we get out of life is not determined by the good feelings we desire, but by what bad feelings we’re willing and able to sustain to get us to those good feelings.

Bob Marley said “The truth is, everyone is going to hurt you. You just got to find the ones worth suffering for.” That quote rings true in many areas of life. You want that hot summer bod? You don’t end up with one unless you legitimately appreciate the pain and physical stress that comes with living inside a gym for hour upon hour, unless you love calculating the calories you eat, planning your life out in tiny plate-sized portions and no Nandos chicken.

People want to start their own business but you don’t end up a successful entrepreneur unless you find a way to appreciate the risk, the uncertainty, the repeated failures, and work insane hours on something you have no idea whether or not it will be successful. Ask Noah, when he build the ark, he introduced two phenomenons, rain and flood. Both had never been experienced before so the buy in to his idea was low. People had no idea what he was talking about so they were reluctant to help, but he didn’t consider that, he considered the goal.

Most people want a partner, a spouse. But you don’t end up attracting someone amazing without appreciating the emotional turbulence that comes with weathering rejections. Or building the sexual tension that never gets released, and staring blankly at a phone that never rings because you have been friendzoned. It’s all part of the game of love. You can’t win if you don’t play.

The quality of your life is not determined by the quality of your positive moments, but the quality of your negative moments. Tweet Me

What determines your success isn’t “What do you want to enjoy?” The question is, “What pain do you want to sustain?” The quality of your life is not determined by the quality of your positive moments, but the quality of your negative moments. And to get good at dealing with negative experiences is to get good at dealing with life. And there’s a lot of  advice out there that says, “You’ve just got to want it enough!”

Truth is everybody wants something. And everybody wants something enough. They just aren’t aware of what it is they want, or rather, what they want “enough.” If you want the benefits of something in life, you have to also want the costs. If you want the beach bod, you have to want the sweat, the soreness, the early mornings, and the hunger pangs. You want the yacht, you have to also want the late nights, the risky business moves, and the possibility of pissing off one person or ten thousand.

If you find yourself wanting something month after month, year after year, yet nothing happens and you never come any closer to it, then maybe what you actually want is a fantasy. Maybe what you want isn’t what you want, you just enjoy wanting. Maybe you don’t actually want it at all. And this is a reality for most, thinking you want something yet your actions prove otherwise.

You can’t have a pain-free life. It can’t all be roses and unicorns. And ultimately that’s the hard question that matters. Pleasure is an easy question. And pretty much all of us have similar answers. The more interesting question is the pain. What is the pain that you want to sustain? It’s the question that can change your life. This is what makes me, me and you, you. It’s what defines and separates us, and ultimately brings us together.

In my book World War You, I write about wanting the reward and not the struggle. How we want the result and not the process. And how we are in love not with the fight, but only the victory but life doesn’t work that way.

Choose the pain first, the reward will make more sense then. As always, hope you and yours are safe.

PS. This article contains expanded excerpts from the book, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck: A Counterintuitive Guide to Living A Good Life

Photo Credit : Photo by Fetraniaina Anatii Killahr from Pexels

“If you do not overcome your fears and act on your idea, it will die as a mental construct” – Mansfield

When you refuse to be present, there are times when you wonder why someone else seems to find success easily when other people struggle. 

You may start to think, “How the hell did they get to where they’re? I’m smarter than them!” 

That may or may not be true, but one thing is for sure: if you’re not afraid to take action, you are more likely to find success. Learning how to overcome your fears gives you a significant advantage, whether or not you think you are intelligent or a hard worker.

You have to remember that it’s not all about the “Great Idea.” 

In fact, lots of people have great ideas. Even more, maybe sharp as pencils. They can know exactly what to do, but what good is all that knowledge, imagination, and information if they’re too scared to do anything with their skillset?

Let’s not give fear too much of a bad rap here. When mankind needed to be hyper-aware of our environment in more primal times, fear was certainly a useful tool for staying alive. We were born with the ability to fear, so like anything else we’re born with, ultimately, it serves a purpose.

Fortunately, most of us aren’t typically in “fight or flight” situations like our ancestors. Even so, people tend to invoke that same primal instinct about things that have nothing to do with life or death. It just seems like it when a big change or decision is upon us that forces us out of our comfort zones (even when we know financial “comfort” isn’t quite as comfortable as financial freedom).

The Protective Mind

The protective mind acts like a helicopter mom, hovering over us as if every move we make will end in disaster. 

It’s constantly creating doom and gloom scenarios, trying to scare the heck out of us in the hopes that we won’t try anything new. 

In many cases, it’s our own protective mind that prevents us from taking the actions necessary to reach our dreams.

When that happens, all of our great ideas are now accompanied by uncertainty and doubt. So, you might think that a lot of people wait for their fear to subside before taking action to reach their dreams. Wrong! You don’t have to be fearless in order to act.

You acknowledge the fear and act anyway.

Fear itself holds no real power over us because it’s only a reflection of what may happen in the future, not what’s actually happening now.

Being Present & How it Can Grow Your Success

So what does that mean for us? 

It means that being present is vital. It means that it’s not the situation that creates your outcomes in life; it’s always your reaction to the situation that will determine your life.

It’s Not Your Circumstance, It’s You

There is a part of you, your higher self, that wants to stay present. It wants to be with what you’re doing and where you’re at in any given moment, no matter what’s happening around you.

If you feel stuck, or like things aren’t moving or changing fast enough, or whatever negative weight you’re feeling, it’s because you’re not 100%, present with whatever is at your feet, even if it seems crappy.

Here’s the problem. You’re thinking, “Mansfield, you’re not giving me the answer that I want! I want to make a move and feel more satisfied now!”

I’m going to tell you something you’re going to hate: If you can’t be happy where you are, you aren’t going to be happy in the next place either. I firmly believe how you do anything is how you do everything.

While you are in this job/business you hate, practice enjoying where you’re at now. No matter the specifics of your unhappy situation, find the good in it while being present.

Change Your Mind, Change Your Life

I am going to tell you something you’re not going to believe.

When you can do this, magic is going to happen. Something will unfold and call to you, and another opportunity is going to be standing right in front of you. Now, you can move to it with grace and without fear.

Why?

It’s because you’re coming to your life with positive and enlightened energy instead of a fear-based, negative, contraction-based energy. This negative energy is only going to infect your next location. You probably won’t even see the next opportunity coming with this clouded vision.

Regardless of the area of life we’re talking about that you’re dissatisfied with, find the satisfaction in it. Don’t look for anything outside of it.

Even if you end up doing this for 30 days, 10 days, or three months, it doesn’t matter; find happiness where you’re at, and just be open to the new things that come into your life.

Successful people have doubts, and successful people worry. The only difference between those who succeed and those who don’t is that successful people act regardless of the fear. If you don’t have integrity or brains and you still act, you are more likely to find success than geniuses with integrity who keep it to themselves because they’re too afraid to put themselves out there.

Habitual fear can be paralysing. It can trick us into believing that we can’t act, that we shouldn’t act, that acting is going to lead to pain. Even if it’s what you’ve been taught or it’s led to pain before, you can’t let it hold you back. You’re never going to be happy or successful if you don’t get beyond your fear.

Conquering Your Fears

Fear happens. It’s natural and normal. But you don’t have to let fear paralyse you. 

There are 3 essential keys to overcoming fear: awareness, understanding, and rewiring. 

You have to recognise what you’re afraid of, confront it, and then change your thoughts and emotional reactions. Well, you’re certainly aware now, and you have a better understanding of fear. So what’s left?

Rewiring.

In order to rewire yourself around fear and truly start living the life you want, you need to do two things.

One, you need to change the way you react to your thoughts. When those negative, fear-based thoughts come to mind, you have to train yourself to focus on the present.

After you’re able to understand that your fear isn’t real — that it’s just the future you’re making up — the final step is looking at the story you’ve told yourself and reconditioning or reframing it.

By that, I don’t mean telling yourself “This thought is wrong.” Since fear lives only in your imagination, there’s nothing right or wrong about it. Instead, I want you to ask yourself a simple question: “Is this thought helping me, or not helping me?” It’s that simple.

The truth is, you can change your beliefs any time you want to.

That means every time you have a fear that’s holding you back, I want you to tell yourself, “That’s not helpful. I’m going to believe something else.”

Two, you need to get in touch with what your ultimate life actually looks like. You can’t really go anywhere if you don’t know where you’re headed, can you? You don’t just wander around hoping to get somewhere! What you need is a goal destination, like a restaurant or a bed and breakfast. Then you can make the map and go where you need to.

Once you stop worrying about what’s going to happen in the future and start living in the moment, you’ll be amazed at how much progress you make in a short time. You need to harness your inner power, to do this you must think BIG but start SMALL.

As always, hope you and yours are safe. We would love to hear from you so share your thoughts with us in the comments section.

Photo Credit: Photo by Medhat Ayad from Pexels

“Logic is easier said than done, emotion is easier done than said”- Unknown

A lot of dating advice glosses over the concepts of compatibility and chemistry. Assuming most people have a grasp of what these two words mean and why they’re so important to a successful relationship. Everyone kind of assumes we know what compatibility and chemistry mean and whether we have them or not.

This advice mostly ignores diving into compatibility and chemistry because they can’t be faked or changed. These ideas are either there or they are not. The words compatibility and chemistry are not the same things. A lot of people use the words loosely to try to define that thing which exists between two people — the unspeakable and unseen connection (or lack thereof). But they’re not the same thing at all, and understanding the difference is crucial if you want a happy, healthy relationship.

Compatibility is the natural alignment of lifestyle choices and values of two people. A youth minister and a drug dealer are probably incompatible and I doubt many end up dating each other. In the context of wanting to “change” each other, they might try but chances are it won’t last.

If you value women who are intelligent and book smart and you meet a high school dropout who is attracted to guys who have big muscles and petrol heads, then you have a fundamental incompatibility that will probably never be overcome and we will never date one another.

Compatibility is about the long-term potential of two people. High compatibility comes from similarities in lifestyles and values. More chances than not, Catholics hook up with Catholics because they share the same values.

Chemistry, on the other hand, represents the emotional connection present when two people are together. When there is a high degree of chemistry, that strong connection can bring out warm emotions in the each other, creating a kind of positive feedback loop through which two people continue to make each other feel better and better.

When you have a high degree of chemistry with someone, they overtake your thoughts and/or your free time. You’ll stay awake talking till the sun comes up and not even feel like an hour went by. You hope that every call or text is him/her. You’ll walk through life constantly wondering, “What would he/she think about x?” where x is a song, Gilmore Girls, or a beer.

Call it passion; or love; call it a sickness. The basic traits of your/their personality and your/their slightest behaviours ravage each others’ dopamine receptors in a neurological orgy of starry-eyed dreaminess.

Specific examples of what creates strong chemistry are harder to pin down. It may be the way someone howls at your jokes, the questions they ask you about your day, the way you hold each other in bed, or how they help you figure yourself out. It might even be the way they smell.

Chemistry is made up of subtle behaviours and dispositions that mesh with behaviours and dispositions of the other person. What’s created is a kind of closed karmic loop in which chemistry is felt by both parties equally. The most important rule about chemistry is that whatever you’re feeling, he or she is most likely feeling the same way. You almost become empaths with one another.

The artist Alex Grey once said, “True love is when two people have pathologies that complement one another.” He wasn’t lying.

High levels of chemistry usually come from opposite yet complementary qualities in people. A woman who is highly-strung, energetic, and slightly neurotic will tend to have a high degree of chemistry with a guy who is relaxed, mellow, and open. Introverts often have natural chemistry with extroverts. People who are orderly and intense planners sometimes work best with people who are spontaneous and unorganised. They will probably open the door at 3 am in the morning just to find out why a stranger is knocking.

Unlike a lack of compatibility, a lack of chemistry doesn’t repel –it simply results in a lack of emotional intensity. Things just feel kind of dead and boring. A lack of chemistry will mean boring, emotionless sex. A high degree of chemistry will mean intense, life-altering, toe-curling sex that causes your mind to cosmically splatter itself on the walls of your consciousness. Joy.

Navigating life with confidence requires that you understand these concepts. If you want to ultimately end up enjoying your time with an amazing partner—and I don’t just mean enjoying sex, but I mean really, truly enjoying your time together—then it’s important you get a cognitive handle on these emotional indicators.

The most important aspect is understanding what you want, what makes a person compatible with you, what personality traits have chemistry with you? The first question you should ask yourself is “What do I want?” And then you should probably ask yourself a few more questions.

You need to know what you like and what you want in a partner. Like if you want kids or not, or if you are really into dark-skinned women. Those answers matter. If you don’t know, then you need to cautiously gain enough experience until you do know.

I learned that I have chemistry with women that are driven and ambitious. Their personalities work with mine in a unique, yet comfortable way (for both of us). I’ve also found my personality meshes well with women who are a bit neurotic. I tend to click with women who appreciate a good laugh, sarcastic wit and are very giving and caring.

Understanding who you are and what you want is key because unfortunately, compatibility and chemistry don’t always occur together. A relationship with high compatibility but little chemistry is likely to be boring yet comfortable (stepping on toes here). Chemistry without compatibility, on the other hand, usually lacks longevity. It’s fun but only until the fun stops.

High chemistry and High compatibility is the sweet spot Tweet Me

As much as logic is superior to emotion, emotion overrules logic. So understanding your chemistry language becomes more important. The reason for this is simple, many of the decisions we make in life are emotional. So you are better off making the RIGHT emotional decisions and not the bad ones.

Hope you have enjoyed this weeks post, share with us your thoughts in the comments section or shoot us an email. As always, hope you and yours are safe.

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“Everything you see exists together in a delicate balance. As king, you need to understand that balance and respect all the creatures, from the crawling ant to the leaping antelope.” – Mufasa

Life, we live it. We love it, but it has no formula. As much as you can or want to plan for the perfect life, life happens. If 2020 has taught me anything, it is the simple fact that you can never be fully prepared for life.

What I have also realised is we experience three emotional states throughout life.

State #1 Comfort

The first one is the state of comfort. This is where we all want to be in, but that isn’t necessarily what is in our best interest. In this state, we experience a sense of security and pleasure, but little emotional growth happens. It’s like being on vacation rather than in real life.

State #2 Growth

The second state is one of emotional challenge. Because most of us haven’t trained in how to hold space for challenging emotions, we often want to resist or avoid this state and head back to the comfort state.

The more we resist our uncomfortable challenges, the greater the chance is that we will feel stuck in them, rather than the exhilaration that can come from learning and growing. Growth is not comfortable, but there is a reason why.

State #3 Trauma

The third state is one of trauma. The trauma state is when our well-being gets jeopardised in some way. Perhaps there is a traumatic event affecting us, or our stress levels have reached a level that feels overwhelming. Our mind may seem as if it is on a hamster wheel, and our thoughts may be making things worse. We may also enter the trauma zone when we are triggered, perhaps without even realising it, and re-experiencing emotions from a traumatic event that happened long ago. Whenever we are in this state, it is extremely important to reach out and get support.

Life tends to unfold in stages, and problems happen when we get stuck on one stage. I mean we all have had moments we have said to someone ‘grow up’ or that has been said to us. The simple reason is that you will be acting outside of your supposed stage. With the 3 emotional states above, I would like to further expand how we go through life stages.

Stage 1 – Copying

We are born helpless. We can’t walk, can’t talk, can’t feed ourselves, can’t even do our own laundry.

As children, the way we’re wired to learn is by watching and mimicking others. First, we learn to do physical skills like walk and talk. Then we develop social skills by watching and copying our peers around us. Then, finally, in late childhood, we learn to adapt to our culture by observing the rules and norms around us and trying to behave in such a way that is generally considered acceptable by society.

The goal of Stage One is to teach us how to function within society so that we can be autonomous, self-sufficient adults. The idea is that the adults in the community around us help us to reach this point through supporting our ability to make decisions and take action ourselves.

But some adults and community members around us do not know how to support us at this stage. They punish us for our independence. They don’t support our decisions. And therefore we don’t develop autonomy. We get stuck in Stage One, endlessly copying those around us, endlessly attempting to please all so that we might not be judged.

In a “normal” healthy individual, Stage One will last until late teenage years and early adulthood. For some people, it may last further into adulthood. A select few wake up one day at age 45 realising they’ve never actually lived for themselves and wonder where the hell the years went.

This is Stage One. The mimicry. The constant search for approval and validation. The absence of independent thought and personal values.

We must be aware of the standards and expectations of those around us. But we must also become strong enough to act in spite of those standards and expectations when we feel it is necessary. We must develop the ability to act by ourselves and for ourselves.

We must develop the ability to act by ourselves and for ourselves. Tweet Me

Stage 2 – Self-Discovery

In Stage One, we learn to fit in with the people and culture around us. Stage Two is about learning what makes us different from the people and culture around us. It requires us to begin making decisions for ourselves, to test ourselves, and to understand ourselves and what makes us unique.

Stage Two involves a lot of trial-and-error and experimentation. We experiment with living in new places, hanging out with new people, imbibing new substances, and embracing new cultures.

In my Stage Two, I ran off and visited other countries, I learned new languages and new cultures. My best friend’s Stage Two was diving headfirst into the opposition political system in Zimbabwe. Everyone’s Stage Two is slightly different because every one of us is slightly different.

Stage Two is a process of self-discovery. We try things. Some of them go well. Some of them don’t. The goal is to stick with the ones that go well and move on. Stage Two lasts until we begin to run up against our own limitations. This doesn’t sit well with lots of people. But despite what your favourite motivational speaker may tell you, discovering your own limitations is a good and healthy thing.

You’re just going to be bad at some things, no matter how hard you try. And you need to know what they are. We all must learn what we suck at. And the earlier in our life that we learn it, the better. So we’re just bad at some things. Then there are other things that are great for a while, but begin to have diminishing returns after a few years. Athletism and sports is one example. Staying up until the wee hours of the morning is second. Drinking on a Tuesday night is a third. There are many more. Trust me.

Your limitations are important because you must eventually come to the realisation that your time on this planet is limited and, therefore, you should spend it on things that matter most. That means realising that just because you can do something, doesn’t mean you should do it. It means realising that just because you like certain people doesn’t mean you should be with them. That means realising that there are opportunity costs to everything and that you can’t have it all.

At some point we all must admit the inevitable: life is short, not all of our dreams can come true, so we should carefully pick and choose what we have the best shot at and commit to it. Many are stuck here because they think that they are limitless. That they can overcome all but risk the “Peter Pan Syndrome” of the forever young, always discovering themselves but finding nothing.

Your limitations are important because you must eventually come to the realisation that your time on this planet is limited and, therefore, you should spend it on things that matter the most. Tweet Me

Stage 3 – Commitment

Once you’ve pushed your own boundaries and either found your limitations (i.e., athletics, the culinary arts) or found the diminishing returns of certain activities (i.e., partying, video games) then you are left with what’s both a) actually important to you, and b) what you’re not terrible at. Now it’s time to make your dent in the world.

Stage Three is a great consolidation of one’s life. Out go the friends who are draining you and holding you back. And the activities and hobbies that are a mindless waste of time. Out go the old dreams that were outrageous and are clearly not coming true anytime soon.

Then you double down on what you’re best at and what is best for you. You double down on the most important relationships in your life. You double down on a single mission in life, whether that’s to work on the world’s energy crisis or to be a phenomenal nail artist or to become an expert in brains or have a bunch of snotty, drooling children. Whatever it is, Stage Three is when you get it done.

Stage Three ends when a combination of two things happen: 1) you feel as though there’s not much else you are able to accomplish, and 2) you get old and tired and find that you would rather sip martinis and do crossword puzzles all day.

In “normal” individuals, Stage Three generally lasts from around 30-ish-years-old until one reaches retirement age. Stage Three is about leaving the world a little bit different than the way you found it.

Stage 4 – Legacy

People arrive into Stage Four having spent more than half their life investing themselves in what they believed was meaningful and important. They did great things, worked hard, earned everything they have, maybe started a family or a charity or a political or cultural revolution or two, and now they’re done. They’ve reached the age where their energy and circumstances no longer allow them to pursue their purpose any further.

The goal of Stage Four then becomes not to create a legacy as much as simply making sure that legacy lasts beyond one’s death.

This could be something as simple as supporting and advising their (now grown) children and living vicariously through them. It could mean passing on their projects and work to a protégé or apprentice. It could also mean becoming more active to maintain their values in a society that they no longer recognise.

Stage Four is important psychologically because it makes the ever-growing reality of one’s own mortality more bearable. As humans, we have a deep need to feel as though our lives mean something. This meaning we constantly search for is literally our only psychological defence against the incomprehensibility of this life and the inevitability of our own death. To lose that meaning, or to watch it slip away, or to slowly feel as though the world has left you behind, is to stare oblivion in the face and let it consume you willingly.

Key Takeaways

Developing through each subsequent stage of life grants us greater control over our happiness and well-being.

At each subsequent stage, happiness becomes based more on internal, controllable values and less on the externalities of the ever-changing outside world.

Later stages don’t replace previous stages. They transcend them. Stage 3 people still care about testing their limits. They just care more about the commitments they’ve made.

The truth is that transitions between the life stages are usually triggered by trauma or an extreme negative event in one’s life. A near-death experience. A divorce. A failed friendship or the death of a loved one.

Trauma causes us to step back and re-evaluate our deepest motivations and decisions. It allows us to reflect on whether our strategies to pursue happiness are actually working well or not. Covid 19 has been one of those triggers for many to look at their life and question ‘ What am I doing’?

Hope you enjoyed this long read and as always hope you and yours are safe. Please share with us your thoughts in the comments section.

Photo Credit: Photo by Engin Akyurt from Pexels