I’ve been living a life very different from the life I always wanted and I have not been happy. It’s hardly surprising that I’ve struggled with stress and frustrations every single day.
I miss writing and need to write to work through my thoughts and emotions and have, during these last years, felt increasingly lost. I knew I needed to make a change, but since I also knew that unless a miracle happened that made me financially independent, I would not be able to change most things in my life.
I need to work to earn money, I need a roof over my head and a bed to sleep in. I need food and daily comforts. Most importantly I have a huge amount of student loans that need to be paid off.
I am sure others can just throw everything away and live in a van (I don’t have a driving licence though, so how would I move it?), but I’m just not a human who can do that. I tried ignoring the demands of the world and struggling to pay my bills every month was far more stressful and horrible than the life I have now.
I am lucky. I know this. I have a good job with great career opportunities in the future and the team I work with daily is absolutely awesome. I may not be very good at my work, but they don’t seem to mind. They appreciate that I fight to improve and do my best.
I am very lucky indeed.
It’s just not the life I want. I don’t want to commute for 3 hours every day, I don’t want to sit in a huge office with 50 other people, I don’t want to have nothing in my life but work… but that’s what life is. My work is difficult and I work so hard, that I no energy left for anything else.
I get up, prepare lunch and go to work. I work, then I go home, work out, have dinner and I try squeezing in an hour of studying before bed, I go to sleep and get up and do the same things the next day.
I need routines, but I also need more than this. I want to have time and energy to practice guitar or go for a walk in the forest. I want and need space in my life to recharge myself.
We all do, right?
So, since I struggled with my routines and rhythms the last year and wasn’t able to change anything in an optimal way (only option I see us quitting my job and that’s not an option I want to choose), I only see one other way to become more happy and content in life.
I need to change myself.
How does one go about that, though? It’s just such a great and terrifying goal to set, I had no idea how to start. I don’t even know what about myself I need to change to be happier, so I had to find a way to explore who I really am in many different ways. It also needs to be something I haven’t thought about, because if I had, wouldn’t it already have helped in some way?
If I need to change, I need to confront myself in new and unexpected ways. I need to learn new things about myself and push myself towards growth.
Now, a lot of people always make fun of self-help books, but that always seemed strange to me. Isn’t it wonderful to want to change and grow? It should be applauded, not ridiculed.
Whether change actually happens depends on the person, not the book. Reading a self-help book shows a desire to grow, and honestly, isn’t that already half the battle won?
Most of us go through life not even considering what kind of human we want to be or how to become a better version of ourselves. I was like that once too – not too long ago, actually. I even felt great reluctance to change and almost defiantly wanted to stay “true to myself”.
I was very wrong. I assumed staying true to myself meant not changing, but now I believe that staying true to myself means the opposite- namely, spending your whole life trying to explore who you really are and become the best you that you can possibly become.
I decided to challenge myself. I chose to give myself one whole year to see how much I could possibly grow if I made that my goal that year. This is what I came up with:
12 books and 12 months to become a better person. To become a better me.
I am currently on my fourth book and I am already seeing a change in my mood and my behaviour. So, I want to share this with you.
First, as I said the books I choose need to be both books I have always wanted to read, or considered reading, but it also needs to be books I never wanted to read or thought about. It needs to be books that can push me and teach me things I never even knew about. It needs to be the kind of book that you look at and say “hell no, that’s NOT my kind of book” and this is because we need to do something unexpected and unknown if we want to discover new sides to ourselves.
And yeah, so, it’s not enough just to read those books, we need to force ourselves to read them with an open mind (way more difficult) willing to learn more about ourselves and others. Maybe you’ll learn it really isn’t you, but maybe – just maybe – you’ll end up learning something about yourself that you would never have discovered if you had not been willing to open yourself up to the opportunity.
The point of changing oneself is to change, not to re-commit to values and world-views you already have. It doesn’t mean we can’t do that, it’s perfectly fine to do just that. We need be open to it. Even if our values don’t change, all I hope is that perhaps we grow to better appreciate and understand the values of those around us – whoever they might be.
Changing our understanding of others, becoming more accepting and open to others is also changing ourselves.
Growth can happen on so many levels and happiness stacks. Change a little thing and build on those changes to create a happier and better life. That’s what I believe, at least.
So, the first book I read was called How To Ikigai and was written by Tim Tamashiro. I felt this was a great beginning to a year of growth, because it is a book about finding what makes us happy and what gives us purpose in life. It doesn’t mean all you need is to discover this one thing that you love, and you can be happy for the rest of your life. It’s not a quick fix guide either. It’s more finding what you love in what you are already doing – in the life you already have. It’s not creating a new life from scratch but seeing what you love in your life so clearly that you can focus on it and start to grow it to be all that you want it to be. Sometimes we forget why we do something or why we like something, and this book has helped me remember what I truly love in life – it has helped me remember what makes me excited to get up in the morning. It was never not part of my life, but my focus was somehow lost in all the boring and frustrating things of everyday life.
Tim Tamashiro encourages us all to take time to get to know ourselves better and be curious. It was never easy for me to figure out what I want in life, and even if I did sort of know, making a living doing it always seemed impossible to me. He tells us that our ikigai, our purpose or reason for being, doesn’t have to be our work. It can be, but it doesn’t have to be. It can be something we do in the weekend that we love to do, and which brings us joy even when we are not actively immersed in that activity. It can be people, it can be taking care of our family and loved ones. It can travel the world or building your own home. It can be anything and everything.
A part of me thought that finding your “passion” meant it would naturally be something you worked with every day, but your work doesn’t have to be your passion. Or perhaps it is better to say, it doesn’t have to start that way. You don’t have to quit your day job to follow an impulse to become a potter and create beautiful clay mugs. You can start just making mugs on the weekend and slowly expand. Of course, that’s not to say you can’t quit your day job and become a full-time potter – my point is, the way I understood his advice, it was to take time and experiment. Make lots of things of clays if you like that and then one day, be ready to recognise and act on any opportunity that comes your way.
If you make pottery for a year and then find something else, maybe you want to photograph flowers, then it’s not wasted to choose differently. Tim Tamashiro suggested taking a year and try things out, get to know ourselves and what we like and dislike. I love that and I will definitely spend my free time trying out things and figure out what I like and dislike.
The second book I read was by Doctor Deepak Chopra and is called SynchroDestiny. I honestly don’t think it matters if you call it synchronicity or coincidence. The fact is that every day odd little things happen and this book has truly taught me to appreciate and enjoy all those little odd moments more than I was ever able to before.
Let me give you an example of one of those fun little moments. The other day I was visiting my aunt with my mother and the two started talking about eggs. My mother buys her eggs from a friend who raises chickens because she doesn’t approve of the way we treat chickens in those big factories and she feels the home raised chickens eggs taste better. My aunt told us one of her neighbours were raising chickens too and that she had often wanted to ask if she could buy a few eggs from her once in a while. She complained that it was difficult to find someone close by who raised chickens to buy eggs from.
Can you guess what happened? Not long after someone was at the door. It was that very neighbour, and she had brought eggs for my aunt and asked if she wanted them for free. They themselves had too many to eat. How is that not a wonderful experience? Because I was reading this book, I truly appreciated this experience in a way I wouldn’t have before.
Life is filled with these moments and the greatest advice I got from the book was to look for one moment like this every day. I feel like noticing and appreciating these little moments make me happier in general, but maybe just looking for odd coincidences in life make happy and that’s fine too.
It’s strange how magical everyday life can actually be. That, in my opinion, is quite a wonderful thing and I am happy I read this book.
The third book was pretty different. I have practiced qigong and meditation for many years (rather inconsistently unfortunately) and of course, over the years I starting becoming more and more interested in Taoism, but I never had the patience to read a theoretical work on what Taoism was through history and how it developed to present times, so I chose Eva Wong’s book called Taoism.
It has given me a great introduction to the theory and history, and even though it is much more academic and theoretical, knowing more about Taoism has inspired me. Maybe in combination with Deepak Chopra’s book, I have become far more consistent in my daily practice. This too has contributed to both my body and mind feeling healthier and stronger – I may have far to go before I am truly healthy and strong again, but even a little bit makes a huge difference to me.
I have also started to take a qigong classes, even though it’s been years since I attended any kind of sports class or evening activities. I am not very good at social situations, as you may know, but when I go to a class to learn something it is far more difficult for me to focus on being social, because I am there to learn something.
My focus is learning, not small-talk and social interactions. I don’t have enough brain power to both learn and socialise. How does anyone do that? In any case, I chose to give it a go, because I recognise that I need a teachers guidance now that I have gone so many years without.
I have actually already finished my fourth book and I am currently reading my fifth, which means I am almost half way and I don’t regret giving myself this challenge at all.
I haven’t chosen all of the books I intend to read yet, so you may have to wait until a few months for more posts as go I go through this challenge. I can tell you, that the book I am currently reading is really testing my own commitment to this challenge, because it is very far from anything I would normally read. It is an important step on this journey, though, so I will keep reading and try to keep an open mind as well. I have a few other books on my list (a list that is always changing, as I discover new books I might read during this year) and I promised myself a nice and fun read after I finish the book I am currently reading.
As time passes, I will write more about this challenge, so keep an eye out for the next posts about this one year challenge!
