2021 was a difficult year…a rollercoaster…physical pain, mental drain, emotional strain, and spiritual gain. Highs and lows that allowed me to be in ‘flow’, experience peak joy & happiness, and fall deep into the dimension of diametrical darkness and depression.
I know the age-old adages. It is in looking back that we understand. You can’t know where you’re going until you understand where you’ve been. We are Hansel and Gretel, dropping the breadcrumbs behind us a we go, and if we ignore them, all of that wisdom will be swept away. I can attest to the idea that the realizations come quickly, the learning takes time, and the living is the hardest part (no matter how much instagram wants to tell you its not). In ‘Greenlights’, Matthew McConaughey said “many of the answers to your questions and problems are in your journals about life.”
So I went looking. I reread copious amounts of notes from my teachers—books, podcasts, classes, experiences, and relationships. I went flipping through my last few years of journals.
What did I find? There seemed to be three ubiquitous themes throughout 2021. These reflections are meant to serve as a precursor to a series of posts that will include life lessons, favorite quotes, and concepts that I think are worth sharing.
Reoccurring themes:
1. Low expectations are one of the secrets to a happy life.
2. Real, deep rest, disconnecting, and relaxing is mandatory for everything you want out of life.
3. Learning to cultivate the ability to maintain your equanimity through challenging periods may be the most important skill one can develop for sustained happiness.
I want to use this space to zero in on number three. It feels acute because I’ve been disappointed in how I’ve handled adversity for most of last year, regularly choosing suffering and the path of most resistance. The thing is, the idea of seeking challenges in life and always seeing them as opportunities or catalyzing change agents is easy to intellectualize but really hard in practice. Even if you have reminders all around you. On my bedroom wall, I have a large photo framed which reads a quote of Viktor Frankl’s: “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” Still, I continue to forget. Still, I ignore. Still, I experienced suffering.
It’s almost always easier to enjoy our revelations on the other side of the mountain after climbing through hell or high water.
What also seems to make it easier is sharing. Compassion. Listening. Learning. The literal meaning of compassion is to “suffer together”. We can never appreciate how far we’ve come if we don’t take time to celebrate how far we’ve come. How much more precious our suffering becomes when we share what we’ve learned with each other, and realize how this is just part of the human experience. That pain is inevitable and suffering is optional.
I jotted these insights in my journal on October 30th last year and thought they were germane to this topic.
- You are the cause of your own suffering
- Take radical responsibility for the conditions of your life
- You are in control of changing the aspects of your life that aren’t serving you, no matter how scary it may be
- You need to unplug, drop/eliminate the constant bombardment of stimuli
- Stop “people-pleasing”—you don’t owe anything to anyone but yourself
- If you don’t handle your shit, you bring your baggage out into the world and inflict it on everyone around you
- Reassess boundaries regularly and etch-a-sketch new lines where necessary
- Stop taking life for granted, as if it’s your right to be here; we’re here until we’re not so we might as well have a little fun every day
- Perspective and mindset are everything
- Accept the challenges life presents and move forward with grace; fast is slow, slow is smooth
In talking about last year, my sister shared a quote from Rilke about asking important questions and living into the answers, along with keeping close to your mind and your heart these truths that you’ve discovered for yourself. I thought that was a good prompt to close this out and share why I’m learning to look forward to looking back. Below is a shot that will forever be etched in my memory—my last journal entry of 2021 from Lake Arenal in Costa Rica, in which I made clear my commitments for the upcoming year. First, I’m going to regularly reflect on how much progress I’ve made in all areas of my life and give credence to that body of work instead of hitting goals, raising the bar endlessly higher, and not celebrating or enjoying the journey. Second, I’ve asked a handful of close friends and family to hold me accountable to this commitment of not getting sucked into the depressive spiral when the going gets tough. And lastly, I am pre-blocking time for both active rest and deep rest off the grid every quarter this year.
If you haven’t spent time looking back on 2021, I encourage you block a couple hours and see if you can find some nuggets of wisdom for yourself. We spend so much time dwelling on the past (depression) and planning for the future (anxiety); maybe you can focus on a realization from last year’s experience to change what you’re doing in this moment, and change the trajectory of your future.
Philoso-Feed 