100/100 - 5 steps to make the most out of our life
I started this essay months ago... Writing about it made me frustrated and sad : by taking stock of my thoughts ont the topic, it was all too clear that I had lost my way on several of them. It was the perfect time to write about it for many reasons, but also the worst for many different reasons.
So I followed my own principles, and let it sit, while exploring them one by one, reclaiming them. Real deep growth means getting back to beginner’s state over and over. Overdoing it is part of the process too. So are feeling lost, afraid, doubting ourselves and the process while trying to trust it. All of it and more. Change (and life itself) is a big mess.
Here are some signs that you may not use your time in a way that is satisfying to you (one is enough, especially if intense and persistant) :
Sleep issues (including fine quality of sleep but constant fatigue)
Reduced functional time : someone fine can function for 10 hours on average before being really tired. Anxiety or depression and other disorders can reduce this to 1 hour in severe cases.
Frequent/permanent bursts of sadness or fear (especially if ‘unexplained’).
Feeling like time tends to fly by ‘too quickly’, even if it can seem way too slow as well sometimes.
Feeling like it’s impossible to do what really matters to you because you don’t have enough time or energy.
I was checking 3 out of those boxes, and in an intense way until a few weeks back. I realised that I had slipped into this territory again, the one of being caught in so many vicious cycles that it feels like it may never stop and I may never have time to do what’s important to me. So I went back to basics and made sure I would embody these words, not just aspire to them.
Here are the steps I am following to reset and ease back slowly the way I spend my daily time.
Pausing and listening
Stillness and reflection are absolutely key in this process.
Without them in our life, everything feels way too blurry to take on real deep change, or even to understand what we are experiencing. And trying to change the way we use our time is definitely real deep change.
To learn how to pause, we need to start from what we consider as a pause. Meditation is one of the surest, fastest and strongest way to learn stillness and to connect to ourselves. But many people have even difficulty to stay a few moments doing nothing in silence. For them, meditation is simply too hard right now.
This specific difficulty is in itself a symptom of deep underlying emotional struggle. It shows us also how much we struggle to accept ourselves the way we are. But be sure of one thing : we can all find our way back to stillness and delight in our own company, which is our deep natural state... As long as we start from where we are at.
When stillness isn’t available to us yet as a safe practice, we can already benefit from simply slowing down. Doing activities that make us feel almost still, or at least calmer helps greatly.
Taking breaks without getting our phones out. Taking a deep breath from the belly and slowly letting it out through the mouth. Practicing staying silent with people, just enjoying each other’s company or even just being bored together. Walking and letting our thoughts wonder. Listening to music while daydreaming. Stopping for a few instants once in a while during our commute to simply observe the world going on without us… There are many ways to progress back towards that childlike and very wise ability of staying in the moment.
(check this essay for more ideas on how to train your mindful muscles)
Daring
To live the most out of our life, we will need to change regularly, either to adapt to the environment we choose, adapt to life itself or simply to follow out deeply human need to evolve. Change is the only real constant we’ll ever face.
That change (especially when it’s deep) will always requires that we get out of our comfort zone, which will always have that scary vibe that accompanies vulnerability. When we change, we take risks, and real risks are scary : we need courage to take them on.
We will need to find out what we really want, which can be scary enough as it is. We will need to explore what it is by doing all sorts of new unsettling things. We will need to learn how to listen to ourselves more and better. We will need to fail miserably every so often (the bigger the goal, the more frequent the failure involved). We will need to face how little we know about ourselves and how paradoxical we really are. We will need to embrace the awkward messes that we are. How much we suck, we are wrong, imperfect, incompetent, uncomfortable, scared, intimidated, self-limiting we can be…
Change is a journey that can be as great, liberating and empowering as it is humbling, unsettling and subtile. One big happy mess when it’s taken on fulll speed.
More on the courage to change and be who we really are in this essay.
A little bit of everything
If I had to choose just one word to characterise deep change, it would be balance. No life lived in any kind of extreme is sustainable or even really appreciated on the long term, most of us know that deep down...
But humans are also really bad at finding balance, even more in our fast paced world. Instead, we tend to have some sort(s) of cycles, going round and round between being too self-indulgent and too harsh on ourselves.
We often call them “being reasonable” and “letting ourselves live”, but rarely truly do any of both in the end. There is something very disheartening in living stuck in those cycles.
Life stuck in cycles doesn’t feel at all like we can have an impact on our destiny, like what we do actually matter in the grand scheme of things. We feel stuck and discouraged. Often bitter too.
That is why there is something so liberating in finding ways to balance everything that is important to us. Even if it will never be achieved as a goal : even if we do find some sort of balance, life changes, circumstances change, WE change no matter what we do. So balance has to be found over and over, the way our courage or what we think we know about ourselves does.
I’ve met so many people betting their life on something big in their future, ready to sacrifice things they know are important (like time with our loved ones, their passion, their sleep…) for things they think they really need first in order to be happy (generally money, status, diplomas…). I have yet to meet someone who really “won” that kind of bet.
What I’ve met a lot, are people who lost their dreams, their will to live or simply lost themselves in that game. They will need more, always. They will keep procrastinating what they deem as really important in their heart, until something breaks. Their bodies, their soul, their spirit… Or simply until they die.
How many cautionary tales and tragic anecdotes do we hear about those people who were waiting for their retirement or these other big things (money, status, power, diploma...) to ‘really live’ (be it travel, make art, spend quality time together…) until they actually got retired and couldn’t do any of it, because they were too sick, physically shattered, depressed to have lost all that was their daily life, or tragically lost their spouse? Or, they got the job, money and status they just don’t have more time, jut more responsibilities? Young adults who will have spent their lives between mental health issues and studying before tragically passing in an accident?
It might sound morbid, but like many people who have faced death in a very intimate way, I use my mortality as an incentive for being brave and go after what truly matters to me.
Don’t get me wrong though, there is nothing wrong about making sacrifices for our bigger goals. We will always have to sacrifice things to get what we deeply want.
I’m just saying, don’t forget to also live : paint on the week end, write that book on stolen minutes, learn/practice that craft 10mn of practice at the time, go on dates with people you love and create actual memories with them, take time to breathe and look around you, to connect with nature, to dance and listen to music, to read good books and taste great food...
Learn to know yourself and the world around you. Switch your phone off and use your senses to live your life. One meaningful moment at the time. LIVE!
You can have more of the life you really want, right now. Allow yourself to make a bit of it happen.
And if you already do that, and know deep down that you really love what you already have and wouldn’t change a thing, but still feel like life is passing by : make bigger bets.
Decide that you will save money for that thing you really want to do someday, NOW, give that thing a deadline. Take some risks. Evening classes. Online classes : thanks to the Internet, we can learn everything we want NOW. Look for things you might want to explore, start where you are, and bet on yourself.
Start making your dreams happen bit by bit. One step at the time, we will make the hard things happen. Don’t wait for the perfect time to do what matters. STEAL the time, it’s yours anyway. DARE!
More on balance on this essay.
Make room for play
I don’t know you, but I’ve been raised with the idea that play is for children and immature adults. And I always hated it.
Play was such a privileged time of my childhood. Its scarcity as I got older really made me very sad and slowly infused bitterness. The day I watched the TED talk on the power of play was very joyful and dare I say, life-altering.
Humans are wired to play until they die. When we don’t play, our brains work less efficiently, we are more prone to depression, anxiety and all sorts of things that make life MUCH harder than it already is.
Play is like putting on happy glasses : everything is slightly lighter and easier when we play, even the hardest things.
After a few years making room for play in my life and learning more about it, it takes me very little time to diagnose a lack of play in someone’s life : they simply lack “colours”. Even when they are joyful and lively by nature, there’s a sadness in their eyes and voice, in their words.
I can hear their inner child calling for help. Some kind of soft “There must be more to life, that can’t be all there is to it, can it?”. Yes, there is more to it.
Play is some of that “it”. We all need it in several forms. Humour by itself isn’t enough. Entertainment either. We need to enter some kind of games, to be active in that process, find engaging activities that bring us joy to share with people close to us.
Video games, board games, rough and tumble play… alone or with company : pick your favourites, and don’t be afraid to experiment with the ones you don’t know well. You might find a new love hidden there.
There is no way around play, we all need some : it reminds us of our aliveness. So : what are you playing at lately?
(Find an essay on play here)
Honour pleasure
Another thing that is often missing in our lives. We hear so often in many different ways that we need to be productive. That our duties and our ability to own up to them define how well we “got it together”. And boy, do we want badly to get it together…
How many of us feel ruled by our to-do lists and duties?
Here’s one little secret about to-do lists : we will always have more things to do than we have time, they should be directions, not orders. They are certainly not the boss of you!
If we focus on doing everything more than on choosing what things we want to prioritise, life tends to feel a lot like a permanent run, feeling late and overwhelmed.
If we focus only on minimising the to do lists to diminish stress, we always end up cutting out things that are in reality more important than the ones we actually do.
Do not focus on the to do lists. Focus on balance instead. And never forget that pleasure must be a part of that balance.
Pleasure doesn’t need to cost anything, use huge chunks of time or anything really. Pleasure is about perceived luxury : things that make life fuller, more worth living.
It can be as simple as getting up 10mn earlier so we can really take our time drinking our coffee in the morning, changing your commute to walk in that area you enjoy, taking 10mn everyday to walk with someone you love (even in complete silence), switch technology off so we can really enjoy that meal, that break, that moment; taking time to dance recklessly, calling someone you love and didn’t hear from in a long time…
Pleasure is about not taking life for granted, making sure we are not just machines working, taking care of logistics, and surviving.
What are tiny things you can do often that would bring you pleasure? What things do you love but don’t do as often as you like? What makes your days special?
So here it is.
I am lacking words to describe how much working on those tiny but big things more seriously has been helpful for the past couple of months (and the past decade) to come back to myself. I finished my 100 days project exhausted, overwhelmed, sad for it to end and a bit lost.
Even if I still had really hard and stressful days, and I’m currently in the middle of some of the biggest and deepest change I experienced in years, I’m putting an end to this essay that much more centered and calm.
Life doesn’t have to be different (not even less stressful or painful) for you to be able to enjoy it more. All those things are small and big at the same time. Making sure we check on them and incorporate them can make our experience of life much richer and more satisfying, even if we don’t enhance anything else. No matter how life has to be stressful or hard, those are tiny things in our control that makes it easier to manage.
So... What does this essay inspire you to try?











