A brief guide for realizing a joyful vision for your life
For the first twenty-six and a half years of my life, things were pretty swell. I have been blessed with the benefits of a stellar education, having both parents in my life who I know love me, the fortune of good physical and mental health, and various passions that give me meaning and propel me forward.
Ask any friend, and they might describe me as happy and outgoing. I would imagine they’d throw out words like “funny,” “curious,” “selfless,” or “positive.”
And for twenty-six and a half years, I was proud to embody those qualities.
But then, around November 2015, living in San Francisco at the time, life hit me full force, like a stream-roller flattening a penny sitting idly along train tracks. I began experiencing intense physical and mental anxiety. Meditating, in an attempt to relieve it, didn’t work: the anxiety was incapacitating. I couldn’t sleep. I kept breaking out, causing me to become very self-conscious, which heightened my anxiety even further and made my sleep even worse. I developed phobias; I was afraid I’d walk outside and encounter a cigarette smoker or construction or a truck running its engine. While these issues may seem trivial to a regularly functioning person, they seemed insurmountable to me. I lost connection with close friends in SF. My worldview darkened, and consequently, I began spouting negativity and neediness, insecurity, and instability.
Why am I telling you this? Because the reality is pretty much no one I encountered blinked an eye. Life seemed to go on as normal. Somehow, November was my highest performing month of more than a year at work. People believed I was still that same carefree, confident person. Obviously, though, they were wrong.
I suspect many others have been confronted with the confusion of thoughts and feelings that come without warning, making you feel as if you’re in the back row of a roller coaster: not able to see anything ahead, and completely out of your own inertia. And perhaps, like I was, you have had to deal with the agony of trying to act as you always have, when you don’t feel as you always have. Perhaps you have felt anxiety similar to what I experienced. Or you have doubted yourself. Or you’ve experienced heartbreak, or wanted to scream at the stupidity of people.
Even if you personally haven’t, I still believe this article can uplift your life. What you’ll find here are strategies you may not have considered, all in one place, that I believe can put you down a path toward realizing a joyful vision for your life. Most of these strategies come from my experimentation with different approaches, while some come from mental health articles or directly from professionals in the field. However, this advice should not be used in place of the counsel of a mental health professional. While it worked for me, it may not work for everyone.
From my experience, being overwhelmed by anxiety or even depression does not have to be your reality. Life does have meaning and purpose. Your life has meaning and purpose. That’s not to say coming to this realization won’t take some work.
At the time of this breakdown, my life actually looked great from the outside.
I had a well-paying job at a cool startup with great work-life balance and awesome, talented coworkers. I was successful in my work, too.
I had a wonderful girlfriend, who not only is attractive, smart and a good person, but we also held many of the same values and interests. We shared a similar sense of humor, a love of reading, and a spirit of adventure, which meant we were usually either laughing about something ridiculous, having a stimulating conversation or exploring some cool new destination.
I also sought support from my closest friends. To this end, I recognized the importance of maintaining close relationships.
So, what the hell happened?
Here’s a theory: I hit a breaking point. The things I became so stressed about were bubbling at the surface for a while without me taking action. For several months, working in and commuting to downtown San Francisco felt like chaos. And for some time, I was mostly unhappy at work. My job was to generate sales conversations, and I had always valued my freedom to research and be strategic. This ability was taken away with an imposed daily minimum of 50 calls per day, which felt like tremendous pressure.
I wish I had formulated these strategies before I hit that breaking point, which froze me in a state of dysfunction. But my gift is that now you have them, and can put them into action.
Reconnect to your purpose: Unfortunately, our culture propagates the belief that the goal in life is to maximize our individual utility — eating the tastiest burgers, driving the most expensive car, etc. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Here’s the reality: the reason that we here is to help make the world a better place, and ease the suffering of others: people, animals, planet.
If you lose sight of that when certain things start to stress you overwhelmingly, you may be heading down a slippery slope. Maharishi said “It is the focus on the highest ideal day after day that saves life from being wrapped up in small whirlwinds.”
You should write down five sentences about why you are here. These stated reasons are your purpose in life. Keep this journal or piece of paper somewhere handy. Look at it every day. This will help reconnect you with reality. Be specific (remember SMART goals): “To be the best father I can be” is too vague. “To help my daughter flourish in her studies, I will spend one hour tutoring her each night so that she graduates middle school with all A’s” is much better.
Start with what you know about yourself today. To give you some ideas, my purpose for being on the planet is related to helping the Earth, helping animals, and helping others achieve their potential; in the process realizing my own potential. A big part of my breakdown was that for too long in my professional and personal life I became disconnected from this purpose.
If you do identify this particular purpose, I think you’ll find that working toward a goal, especially an altruistic one, will give you a huge lift. Like Viktor Frankl said:
He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.
Analyze your surroundings: Have you considered that the direction and layout of your home and the city you live in have for thousands of years been documented to affect our well-being? If it’s bothersome to you to see trash or cigarette butts on the streets or pollution, there are far cleaner cities, you may want to explore. It will probably be worth the short-term sacrifice to find a job in a city where you’ll be significantly happier.
At the time that I began unraveling in San Francisco, I was living in a home that received virtually zero natural light and had a history of people moving out because they were unhappy. It also happened that the two entries to the home were aligned with south (“destructive influences — problems and suffering” according to the guide above) and northwest (“influence of mental instability and inconsistency”). Now, this isn’t to say that the correlation is definitive or that you cannot overcome it, but in my case, the conspiring factors: the city, the job, and the potentially insidious environment at home were just too much all at once. If you aren’t getting much natural light, consider working in front of a Day-light for 30–45 mins a day.
Commit to a daily “spiritual practice”: This is the most important advice I can offer to cultivate a higher enjoyment of life: a 30-minute daily spiritual practice, which is a combination of exercise and a mantra said in your head or aloud directed toward a change you want to bring to your life. Swimming, or running outside are great activities since they allow you tune out distraction, as opposed to say, at the gym, surrounded by TVs. I find that doing this at sunrise, in solitude, is an amazing test of personal strength and a great way to start the day.
Your mantra could be directed toward landing your dream job. It could be diminishing fear, or believing you are a person of high self-worth. For maximum impact, it should be one or two short sentences and should be within your control. It shouldn’t be about meeting a celebrity, or changing a desired romantic partner’s thoughts about you, because those things are not. But you do have the ability, through this practice, to make yourself more attractive to those individuals. Make sense?
After doing my ‘spiritual practice’: running, swimming or yoga for 96 out of the past 99 days, I have felt a powerful positive transformation that I didn’t think was possible at my lowest point.
It won’t be easy, but you can do it. Start with a goal of 10 days straight. Then 30. Once you hit 90, you will really feel like you can conquer the world. At some point, it won’t even be something you think about. It will just be something you do.
Keep perspective on how far you’ve come: For better or worse, in life, progress typically comes in small increments.
One of the things I lost sight of in SF in becoming so frustrated with my job was truly how far I had come at that point. In college and in LA, I went from working 100 hour weeks between unpaid internships and catering, living in the most random of situations, to finding a job I was very successful in at Groupon in Chicago, living with a few of my closest friends, to landing at a highly competitive startup, affording me the opportunity to live in a few of the nicest areas of SF, a highly desirable city; a tremendous upward trajectory in quality of life. Now, back in Chicago, I’m propelled by these new strategies and enjoying life, working at a company whose mission I find very meaningful. And all that was over an unbelievably short five year span.
So, no matter where you are now, keep perspective on how far you come. Visualize yourself one year from today. What do you want that person to look like? What are your aspirations? Who are you surrounded by? Write down that vision. Then, take small steps today to get there. Maybe it’s creating a personal website to showcase your work. Maybe it’s volunteering, or taking up a leadership position in your company. No matter how you will realize that vision, it likely won’t happen at all at once :)
Uplift your spirit: You’ve heard a lot about meditation, but what technique to do, and how? David Lynch, accomplished movie director, describes the first time he practiced Transcendental Meditation (TM): “I fell into bliss — pure bliss.” “I have not missed a meditation once in thirty-three years. I find that joy of doing increases. Intuition increases. The pleasure of life grows. And negativity recedes.” David’s experiences with TM are supported by significant, astounding research. You might also enjoy a meditation mentor, so consider the popular app Headspace as you are guided by the soothing voice of founder Andy Peddicombe.
Yoga is perhaps the most-researched and effective way to harmonize the flow between mind and body. At the time of this post, I’ve done a yoga practice eleven out of the past twelve days, and can honestly say this is the best I’ve ever felt. There’s an explanation for this, too: the yoga ‘sutras’ — the classic texts of yoga — explain that yoga, meaning unity, is the complete settling of the activity of the mind.
Find a studio. Connect with a teacher. This has the added benefit again, of being around others on the same path to raise their consciousness.
Uplift your mind: Every day, we’re confronted with emails, nightly news and push notifications detailing the latest tragedy. No doubt, this has a likelihood of affecting your well-being.
Instead of tuning into this negative stimuli, shift your focus to the positive. Listen to, say, You Are A Badass or The Art of Happiness. Subscribe to Sadhguru’s Youtube channel, including a video of him explaining how we can overcome fear by rooting ourself in reality. Install the Momentum plugin to start every day with a beautiful background from a unique part of the world and an inspirational quote. Listen to Good Vibrations. This content will remind you that life, your life, possesses a deeper purpose.
Bottom line: There’s too much good in the world to self-select the bad.
Embrace uncertainty: What if your partner left you? Or you had to leave your job and were forced into Plan Z: relocating back to your parents’ place? At first glance, these might seem like unfortunate developments. But have you ever considered this: now the future is ripe with possibility! Sure, meeting the “love of your life” and being in a healthy, stable relationship is rewarding. But, you know what’s perhaps equally rewarding? Getting out there in the world, meeting lots of new people and taking time to focus on yourself! Whenever you’re feeling down about your present situation, repeat this mantra: “I have the ability to change my life. I can’t wait to see how this turns out.” It’s true, so you should believe it!
The truth is, it doesn’t matter what you look like or what skills you have or don’t, you have it in you the capacity to love, to be loved and to find a job that gives you happiness.
The world is filled with infinite possibilities to find love and happiness. It’s your birthright, to realize a life that is happy, healthy and whole. And the more you focus on enabling this in others, and the planet, the more your life will unfold in ways you could never have imagined.
Live according to your values and let go of what you can’t control: Drs. Sarah and Michael Bennett advocate in their worthwhile book (with a misleading title), F*ck Feelings for the reader to: “Accept what you can’t control and go into what you can do with what you can control. Not seeing yourself as a failure, when you haven’t really failed because it’s not something that you could have controlled in the first place. Admiring your ability to withstand rejection and keep pushing towards a more reasonable goal while being a good person. Figuring out your own values and sticking to them.”
For example, I can’t take back some of the insecurity and instability that I projected in my relationship as a result of the difficult state I was, but at least the whole time I was a good person and lived according to my values, which is a relieving notion. A little bit of self-compassion can be so helpful in these circumstances, too.
Let go of comparing yourself to others: My social circle is comprised of many friends who have realized extraordinary success in their careers. As much success as I’ve experienced in sales, I often would get down by comparing myself to friends who were working in a field I perceived to be more prestigious.
When I expressed frustration I hadn’t found my “path” yet and brought up this comparison, someone close offered two great pieces of advice: 1) Perhaps these individuals you’re comparing yourself to have fewer interests, which makes the choice easier for them; so look at it as a positive that you have so many interests 2) Do you really want to be an investment banker? An attorney who graduated from Harvard Law? Well, if not, then why are you comparing yourself to these individuals?
As good looking and witty and talented as you are or are not, you can always point to someone else and say that they are more so. But do your best to be comfortable with the God-given abilities and looks you have and again, focus on what’s in your control. Even better, if there is someone you admire, reach out and grab coffee and really understand what steps they’ve taken to get to where they are.
Project positivity: You might not always feel like the most positive person in the world. There may be times that your surroundings bother you, or you just feel like complaining about the actions of others. It’s okay, because it happens to everyone.
It’s important, though, that you develop a strong filter around these negative thoughts. Don’t let the negativity that formulates in your mind seep out often, because the truth is no one likes negativity, even if they agree with you. Let a moment of awkward silence pass as you think of something else to say before projecting anything negative.
Others don’t want to be brought down by how noisy your apartment is and how you didn’t get a good night’s sleep, your disgust for trash in the streets; probably not even your concern for enchained elephants in photos from their trip to Thailand. Perhaps reserve any negative thoughts for a therapist whose job is to listen and offer unbiased feedback and reassurance, instead of a loved one or close friend who, after not too long, will feel dragged down in your relationship by the weight of your negativity.
The more positivity you project, the more people will be attracted to you, and the more positivity you will feel and cultivate in your mind, creating a feedback loop.
You might not always have something interesting or funny thing to say in a conversation, but you can always project positivity. Try talking about how much you enjoy the other person’s company, or how amazing you think the live band that’s playing is. Share with your friend how much fun you had with him or her just walking around town and doing absolutely nothing. The more wonder and awe you project out to the world, the more you will realize it for yourself and your life will begin to unfold in magical ways. Trust me.
This article is dedicated to Adam London (1989–2016) Jeffrey Surnow (1951–2015) and Tripp Healy (1980–2014), three men who lived life to the fullest, who we lost far too soon.
I believe it’s an amazing and heroic thing to take charge of your life, and welcome the opportunity to share more insights and connect @ jared.r.hocking@gmail.com
Other inspiring resources: Fake it until you become it, Be vulnerable, and Bring structure to your day
