Top Five Lessons I Learned This Year
– Carl Jung
2016 was a tremendous year of change in my life. This year included going back to school, starting a new job, saying a lot of hellos, saying a lot of goodbyes, and learning a lot about myself. I have never felt more anxious but have also never felt more alive. Looking back, I will always remember 2016 as a year of moments. Moments of regret, moments of realization, and moments of pure joy. I have experienced some of my highest highs and lowest lows. Many of these moments led to me launching myself into a journey of self discovery (which I have playfully started to call my spiritual awakening). This journey included a lot of reflection, a lot of discussion, and a lot of learning. As a result, words like wholeness and authenticity have become ideas that I refer to on a regular basis. Reading works by the likes of Brene Brown, Elizabeth Lesser, and Harriet Lerner, I have also been able to create some structure around the things that I’m finding out about myself.
As 2016 comes to a close, I have started reflecting on the most important life lessons I have learned this year. The following are the five that have made the biggest impact on my life.
1. The Distinction Between Hope and Expectation
This one was huge for me and changed the way I saw my daily interactions. I have always considered myself a hopeful person. Whenever something would come up I always muttered “I hope” to myself in order to stay optimistic. “I hope that I get that job.” “I hope those people like me.” “I hope everything will turn out alright.” Digging deeper into those statements however, what I found wasn’t hope, it was expectation.
Hope, in its purest form, is a very positive thing. The researcher CR Snyder (who I came across via Brene Brown’s writing) created the Hope Theory. In this theory, hope comes down to three things: Goals (creating outcomes), Pathways (finding tangible ways to get there), and Agency (a belief in your ability to achieve it). While outcomes are present here, hope is not defined by them. Hope is not a feeling but a way of thinking. Hope fosters resiliency and positivity. Expectations do not.
To me, expectations come in the form of an attachment to outcomes. While hope creates structure, expectations creates a false sense of entitlement. When expectations are met, things are great. When expectations aren’t, it can lead to great disappointment. From my experience, things don’t go your way a lot more often than they do. In many instances, expectation causes prolonged suffering.
I’ve always been the type of person to preach the phrases “manage expectations” and “let’s stay hopeful”. However, what I found this year was that I was saying one thing and experiencing another. Deep down the two terms of hope and expectation had become the same. My mind was defaulting to expecting things to happen, which led to a lot of disappointment. Creating the distinction between these two terms has been an important first step in creating a happier life.
2. Embrace Uncertainty
In the last two years, I have become a very habitual person. I like to eat the same breakfast everyday at the same place at the same time. I exercise four times a week immediately after work (although sometimes I allow myself to do a morning run instead). I start every morning with a 30 minute meditation. All of this was part of my plan to become a healthier person. Which is great, until I realized that one of the reasons for these collection of habits was because I had an unhealthy relationship with control 0ver my life. Well not so much control, as a deep avoidance of uncertainty.
In many ways this is a continuation of creating a distinction between hope and expectation. By controlling as many things in my life as I could, I was trying to create a scenario where my expectations couldn’t not be met. However, this usually ended with the old adage of “even the best laid plans go awry” coming to fruition. After a lot of reflection, I realized that this all stemmed from a fear of uncertainty.
I’ve always considered myself a flexible person who is open to change. While this is still something I strive for, I have realized that I am actually a lot more rigid than I’d like to think. Understanding that I have a fear of uncertainty has made it easier to work towards becoming the resilient and open person I have always wanted to be. Learning to embrace change and uncertainty has been a big shift in my thinking over the last year and will continue to be major theme for the rest of my life. Living in a world that has so many variables, trying to avoid uncertainty is a futile exercise. Learning to let go of expected outcomes makes life easier.
Strangely, I have found that letting go of hard goals has actually improved my results. For example, since my shift occurred, my habits have actually strengthened. This is due to the fact that I dug deep and got real with why I actually had certain habits. My why changed from one of control to one of growth. The habits are no longer about me working towards hard goals and are now about wanting to progress myself. As Friedrich Nietzsche said “he who has a why to live for can bear almost any how”. Creating a why that I am actually passionate about instead of one that is based on avoidance has made everything seem easier. On my search for wholeness, this shift has made me emotionally, mentally and physically healthier.
3. Gratitude Turns Scarcity to Abundance
One of my favourite articles this year was written by the Dalai Lama about how the fear of being unneeded drives our anxiety. I’ve reread the article probably 20 times and it still resonates with me every time. The call to action is as follows:
“What can we do to help? The first answer is not systematic. It is personal. Everyone has something valuable to share. We should start each day by consciously asking ourselves, “What can I do today to appreciate the gifts that others offer me?” We need to make sure that global brotherhood and oneness with others are not just abstract ideas that we profess, but personal commitments that we mindfully put into practice.”
In many of Brene Brown’s works she talks about the idea of scarcity and the “never enough” attitude in our society that drives so much of our lives. We wake up in the morning complaining about not getting enough sleep. We tell ourselves we aren’t thin enough. We tell ourselves we aren’t confident enough. We have essentially created a society where it seems like there is never enough. Here is one thing hit me after reading the Dalai Lama’s article: gratitude is free. It will cost me nothing to be thankful for the things that I have. It’s free for me to appreciate and verbalize the goodness and gifts of others. Love and compassion are not finite resources. I honestly believe that by taking steps in acknowledging each other, we can start to reverse this culture of scarcity that we live in today. The journey from “not enough” to “I am enough” starts with us helping each other. The best part is that this can be done completely free.
4. Enjoy the Ordinary Moments
While external gratitude can make everyone’s life happier, I firmly believe that internal gratitude can do the same as well. Most of us set high standards and goals and are always chasing something in order to become happier or more successful. However, we tend to miss how great the ordinary moments are when we are too busy chasing the extraordinary. The concept of Hedonic Adaptation, (“the idea is that no matter how good something makes us feel, most of the time we drift back to where we started, emotionally-speaking”)* has definitely come into play in my life. I honestly believe things have never been better in my life than where I am right now. However, it’s also very easy for me to normalize the successes and positive emotions and it doesn’t take long for me to start longing for more again. Up until this year, my life has always been an endless chase for more. Get better grades. Get a better job. Get more friends. This created a very tiring way to live my life.
One way to fight the normalization of positivity is by using gratitude to appreciate the ordinary moments. In my life this comes in the form of slowing down every once in a while to be present with the little joys in life. One of the best gifts I received this year was a Gratitude Journal that the Habit Course team gave me for my birthday back in June. This has allowed me to take on the habit of reflecting on the little and big joys in my life the first thing every morning and the last thing before bed. While this might not give me moments of exuberance, I have noticed a lot of gradual changes in mindset and positive thinking over time. Taking gratitude reflection breaks during the day has also helped a lot to rewire my brain from automatically dulling the positivity.
In Brene Brown’s research she once concluded that “when you talk to people who have survived great losses it is clear that the most profound joy we experience is in those small moments that are so easy to overlook.” Being mindful of the ordinary moments is a change that was important for me to make to create a happier and more fulfilled life. While I still want the dream jobs, the large social circles and the external validations, I also don’t feel like my happiness is defined by them anymore.
*I am not a Psychologist so it is completely possible that I am butchering the whole concept of Hedonic Adaptation
5. Openness Creates Openness
Over the summer, I made a conscious decision to be more open and honest with the people around me. As someone who has never been very comfortable with vulnerability, this wasn’t easy. However, it was an important change that I wanted to make. When I started to reflect on the people in my life that were the most fulfilled and successful, I noticed that they all had a sense of openness and authenticity around them. Vulnerability wasn’t a weakness for these people but a strength. What left me the most inspired when interacting with these people was that they always found the courage to tell their story in the most real way possible. In an age where social media sugar coats everything we see, this realness was something that I found myself drawn to. I remember asking myself who I wanted to be and how I wanted to show up in the lives of people around me. The two words that came up immediately were “open” and “whole”.
The first step in being a more open person was to be okay with being vulnerable in front of those close to me. This included talking about my fears more openly and asking for help when I needed it (something I realized I’m not really good at). I started to let my guard down with my family and close friends. I started to be more honest with myself as well. Going through this process was simultaneously exciting and scary. Talking about things you’ve never talked about before with old friends, with no idea how they would respond, definitely created for some nervous moments.
I think opening up always comes with worry. The worry that you will be judged now that the facade of perfection you have created has been broken. The worry that the relationship with the people around you will change negatively. However, I have experienced very little of that. What I found on the other side of vulnerability was more vulnerability. What happened after I made the conscious effort to be more open is that everyone responded by being more open with me. I have learned more about some of my friends and family over the last few months than I could have ever imagined. The relationships I have with the people in my life have never felt deeper and more fulfilling. As a result, I also feel a lot more whole as a person.
One thing I’ve realized is that trust is built not only on the positive, but also on fear and failure. As much as I’d like to only share the good with the people around me, it is only when I open myself up to them as my imperfect self that I can truly foster deep trusting relationships. Another way to put it is this: how can I expect other people to trust me with their fears if I’m too insecure to trust them with mine? Creating a space where I am open also allows for others to share that space as well.
Conclusion
My life has definitely changed a lot in the last year. I’ve had numerous people come up to me in the past 12 months and tell me how different I look and how different I act. Most importantly though, I actually feel different. 2016 feels like the beginning of something important in my life. I really have no idea where I’ll end up but I’m more excited about the future now than I have ever been.
“People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances with our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.”
– Joseph Campbell
