I have been thinking about the different decisions we take in life. When we are young, our parents make those decisions for us, and we have no choice but to roll with it. No one teaches us life hacks around this. When we hit eighteen, we make big decisions about education and our future, decisions which are supposed to be ours based on our likes and preferences, but that rarely happens so. At that age, we are so influenced by our families, friends, and society, most of us end up falling for peer pressure or we tend to pick the path of least resistance that makes all of the above stakeholders reasonably satisfied.
My point is we are never taught to really listen to ourselves. Instead, we constantly drown ourselves in the noise created by society and people around us. That’s our benchmark, and that’s our point of reference. So, how do we really acquire this skill as a human?
Your mind knows only some things. Your inner voice, your instinct, knows everything. If you listen to what you know instinctively, it will always lead you down the right path.
Do you believe in this quote above? I strongly do. It has taken me thirty years to realize listening to my inner self is an option, and in fact, is the most trustworthy option while making a decision.
Finding your inner voice
Over the last few years, I have been on the path to understanding and connecting with my inner voice better. It is not a very simple process, and it is one that has no end. One has to show up for oneself every day and try. Try to drown out the noise, try to silence the inner critic, try to block out negative thoughts, try to stay away from mainstream media, and slowly get comfortable with the acceptance of not knowing.
Not knowing is great! Not knowing is perfect! Not knowing is a wide world full of opportunities to grow. But you will find very few people who have the courage to acknowledge that they do not know something. I wonder why that is.
Why has society made it so difficult for us to be open and be curious like we were when we were children? Why did we reach a point where we need to look for a life hack to make decisions.
I think that’s the first step. The first step is to know that it is ok to not know. Then begins the beautiful process of exploring. Exploring things that we would like to know more about and about things we know nothing about.
Life is a series of curious experiments
I like to look at life as a series of curious experiments. None of them I take very seriously. Some of them are very close to my heart, but all of them are gonna have a natural end someday, isn’t it? That’s just life. It ends.
A lot of choices I have made personally and professionally have been based on this simple theory of life’s impermanence. Sometimes it does not work out, and it is okay. Other times it does, and your crazy experiment pays off in ways you can never imagine.
For instance, I have taken some risks taking up jobs that may not have been a natural progression of my career in a traditional sense. In 2016, I changed industries from Tech to Hospitality despite many warnings from concerned folks. The warnings were well intentioned and completely true, to their credit. Hospitality is not an easy industry to work for, and the marketing function is drastically different from what I was used to at tech. It has very long working hours, your personal and professional hours start to blur, and it is not the right fit for everyone, especially people who do not begin their careers with the industry.
So after eight months or so, I decided to quit that job. It was a decision that felt right to me. I am not a big fan of words like “powering through”, and “grit” in all situations. Here is where you really need to hear your inner voice, and be connected to it. Perseverance is a wonderful thing – save it for things that really matter, save it for things that are irreplaceable in life, save it for things that truly bring you joy.
The difference between noise and your inner voice
Now tell me, do you understand this difference? Most people go through not so great experiences because they are so afraid of looking weak or wrong in front of their family and friends. The voice in their head tells them they are going to look like a failure, and they are desperate to prove that voice wrong at great cost to their mental and physical health.
That’s it. That’s the life hack. Identify this noise that masquerades as your inner voice. This first step in itself requires a lot of un-conditioning to happen within us. But once you do that, you can reduce that weight off your shoulders, and accept that nothing matters more than you do.
Yes, there are situations that require patience and perseverance and grit, but is that situation what you really want? In my case, this job was not it. True, I opened myself upto a new experience, learnt tons of things I would have otherwise never known, and made some amazing friendships along the way.
Was it right for me? – No
Did I have fun doing it? – Hell yeah!
This is the life hack I am trying to bring forth. You are never going to be able to control the outcome. No matter how informed your life choices are, no matter how much you think you know, no matter how much you planning you do – that’s just the reality of life.
So instead of doing the right things, focus on doing things the right way. Instead of worrying about whether you making the best decisions, take a decision and choose to do it the best way you can. In the grand scheme of things, an eight month job stint matters nothing, but everyday I spent in that job, feeling empowered by my choice, having fun and learning new things is an experience I would never want to replace.
This applies to all decisions, big or small. How we do things show us who we are. We can invite some people over and cook an extravagant feast, but all they will remember is your energy and how you made them feel while they were at your place – It is the “how”!
You can be super efficient and plan a trip that is the most optimized, cost saving and balanced from all perspectives. But if you do not approach it with joy, and induce positive energy in your fellow travellers, your plan does not matter.
Choose to be free. From societal expectations, from peer nonsense, from your conditioning. Operate with the base knowledge of not knowing anything. You will be surprised at how much fun you can have. Slowly, you will start connecting with your instincts, and a higher power (your inner voice) will guide you. Till then, there are no wrong choices, as long as you do it the right way, and choose joy while at it.
It is not about the “what”, it is always about the “how”. That’s the life hack.
Do you agree?
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