The ‘Less Wrong’ Guide on How to Live The Best Life
An amalgamation of Tony Robbins, and Mark Manson’s Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck.
Instagram and its contemporaries have played their hand in telling us what the best life is meant to look like.
Visit these platforms long enough and you can be led to believe that when it comes to winning or living the best life, you fall shy of the mark because let's face it, your life does not look remotely as grandiose or exciting, especially all the time.
That’s not taking a dig at you or myself, that’s just stating a fact of what life actually is.
The real insta vs reality if you will.
When we take a step back from the lens of social media, that’s when we can see that life, on the whole, is a pretty simple, borderline underwhelming ride for most of it (particularly during quarantine!).
At present, the hashtag #bestlife has amassed over 2.9million posts on Instagram.
It’s an attractive prospect that social media offers over life. Who wouldn’t want to have a hand in controlling how others perceive your life?
Sadly, life does not guarantee such a hand and we must play by its rules.
Know Thyself
“To conquer oneself is the best and noblest victory; to be vanquished by one’s own nature is the worst and most ignoble defeat.’’
- Plato
Self-awareness is a very vital part of discovering our strengths and weaknesses.
But in a time where binge culture is now the new norm, we may not take the time to really explore who we truly are.
Becoming aware of one’s nature is the starting point from where a person can develop who they are to who they want to be.
For me, I’ve had a real fascination with self-development since I was seventeen years old.
Keeping a long story short, I was not in a good place, particularly with myself, and ended up having hypnotherapy sessions with mum’s friend. I didn’t like myself at the time, to put it mildly, a trait I’m sure many teenagers can relate with, but for me, it was beginning to get out of control.
“ You live most of your life inside of your head. Make sure its a nice place to be”
-Anonymous
What I liked about hypnotherapy is that it helped me develop an understanding that I could change my behavior and that I was more than this hopeless, reactionary teenager that I had believed myself to be.
This mind-shift led me to believe I could begin changing my reality.
I became hooked on self-development books and personalities. From Eckhart Tolle, Jack Canfield, Joseph Campbell, Malcolm Gladwell, Robert Greene, Ryan Holiday, Mark Manson, Tim Ferriss, Paul Mckenna, Abraham Hicks, and Tony Robbins, most of my student loans were spent buying and consuming as much as I could on these people.
What’s good about the journey of self-development is that it's never ending, with many depths to uncover no matter how many years you devote to it.
What Drives Us?
According to Tony Robbins, our behaviors, emotions, actions, and want for quality of life are driven by six essential needs that shape us.
These six needs are:
- Certainty
- Uncertainty/Variety
- Significance
- Connection
- Growth
- Contribution
I took Robbins’ driving force quiz and found out that my primary driving force was growth, which after years of introspection, sounded about right (even if I do sound like someone who identifies with everything in their horoscope readings!).
The upside of having growth as my main driving force means I like to strive to better myself and improve my overall quality of life.
The downside however means that I have a tendency to struggle with perfectionism, which often leads to self-burnout (that’s definitely me!).
The latter part was particularly true as even these days I still tend to err on the side of perfectionism, often taking the all-or-nothing approach rather than try and find a more balanced route.
Understanding the psychology of this was a huge turning point for me on not only how I prioritize my life but also identifying what needs I was meeting (or not meeting) for my life.
We all have different driving forces, but knowing which one governs most of my life has really shed light on how I operate and react to the world.
A ‘Less Wrong’ Approach
‘‘We shouldn’t seek to find the ultimate ‘right’ answer for ourselves, but rather, we should seek to chip away at the ways that we're wrong today so that we can be less wrong tomorrow. When viewed from this perspective, personal growth can actually be quite scientific’’.
-Mark Manson
I have found that over-thinking an approach leads to procrastination, waiting for the green traffic lights of life to say ‘Go!’.
The beauty of action, even if it is more painful, at the very least allows the opportunity for feedback, assessing, and re-strategizing.
As Tim Ferriss mentions in his book The 4 Hour Workweek:
“The universe doesn’t conspire against you, but it doesn’t go out of its way to line up the pins either. Conditions are never perfect. ‘Someday’ is a disease that will take your dreams to the grave with you. Pro and con lists are just as bad. If it’s important to you and you want to do it ‘eventually,’ just do it and correct course along the way.”
Life after all is meant to be lived not theorized.
I like to apply the less-wrong method that I picked up from Mark Manson’s Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*** because it's less stressful.
Perfection casts a large and domineering shadow, whereas progress can be as big or small as we want it to be, but the important thing is, we’re still moving.
I don’t have to pressure myself on achieving a 100%, but rather be 1% better than last time.
After a while, that 100% will happen on its own accord.
The Overall Quality of Our Life
‘‘The quality of our life is the quality of where you live emotionally’.’
- Tony Robbins
The biggest way to measure the overall quality of our life, regardless of status and material wealth, is where we spend most of our life emotionally.
Life is never a cakewalk all the time, but week to week on average, if you had to give it a percentage, how much of that week would you say you were happy?
Sometimes facing that truth can be a humbling experience but until we do, our life will stay the same.
I’m not deluded. Happiness is a broad subject with many depths, differing from each individual.
There is no one-size-fits-all, just what works for you.
Living our best life does not mean that all of our dreams have to come true in order to be happy, but let go of how it should look like and instead, celebrating it for what it is.
Ultimately, it is down to us to decide what living our best life looks like, not social media.
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