Why healthy introspection is what you need
Especially in these overwhelming times

Disclaimer: I by no means stand on a moral high ground on happiness, and this is not a sanctimonious or self-righteous guide, yet just a will to share everyday struggles and learnings as a fellow millennial.
So these are pretty fucked up times it seems right?
I will spare you the details but as you already know it feels like the world is going to shit. Prospects in all categories seem to be shrinking; most careers of the future don’t even exist yet (how am I supposed to invest myself into a profession when it will quite possibly be made obsolete by robots within a decade?). World influencers seem to be coming up with what frankly comes across as rather desperate solutions to today’s issues (e.g.: Bill Gates suggesting to tax robots, or Tony Blair offering to rebel against Brexit, universal income? Maybe.). The inevitable automation of what seems like, well, everything, is accompanied by a return to Hitlerian times politically. We are segregating ourselves, and globalisation seems like nothing more than an ephemerous reality of our generation.

On top of that we live in a world drowned in digital connectivity which overstimulates our brain beyond what it can tolerate in terms of daily stress and information. We have brains wired to only be aware of the potential dangers and threats to our tribe in the jungle, not of a bomb exploding half-way across the world. We cannot process this information rationally especially if delivered in the form of a newsfeed, which is particularly overstimulating (the concept of infinite scroll = infinite information).

Moreover let us sprinkle on top of that the fact that our parents lived a golden era rising from the ashes of the war-torn previous generation. They were therefore inhabited by an unquestionable optimism for the future generation and expected us to thrive even more than they did. Sure, we are more educated, informed and politically progressive than they are, yet we most probably are less happy for the above listed reasons.
Right, not to dwell on the sad bit, but the point being, we seem to have an enormous amount of choice and a lot of the options don’t seem good enough, also even though there are a lot of options, it seems there aren’t enough for everyone.
So what the hell do you do in the midst of all of this? You turn within. (“Did he really just say that?”) Yes I did.
Let me explain what I mean by that. In an overcrowded, overstimulating, uncertain world such as the one we live in you need to have the capacity to understand what your true needs are. Simple. Not the ones decided upon by L’Oreal’s marketing team, nor by Facebook’s sociology team (which will tailor your preferences), nor by your government, nor the ones imposed on you by your overbearing mother. What I am in sum saying is you live in a world where external influences are more powerful, sophisticated and numerous than they have ever been, and every powerful stakeholder wants to sway you one way or another.
So what the hell do you do in all of this? You turn within.

For the sceptics out there who think I am an anarchist about to offer a rebellion against corporate institutions as a solution, hear me out. It makes sense that the world is this way, as there are more tools, more data that understands your preferences and how they could be swayed (trust me I used to work for an e-commerce software company that analyzed how to optimize for you to buy on shopping sites). Also we are more educated than ever (even though it doesn’t always seem so when you watch TV), so to manipulate someone into buying, voting, it is increasingly complex and therefore signals are subtler than they used to be.
What I am saying is you live in a world where external influences are more powerful than they have ever been, and every powerful stakeholder wants to sway you one way or another.

And frankly, this gets under your skin, and you buy into a life that you never really wanted in the first place and you wake up one day wondering how the hell you ended up there. Let’s safely say metaphorically it sometimes feels like we are small fishing boats trying to stay afloat in a roaring seastorm of strong winds, waves and thunder.

So how do you “look within” then, you might ask.
It’s quite simple actually. You incorporate elements in your routine that allow you to regularly disconnect from external stimuli and reconnect with yourself. And that does not consist in deleting Facebook or Tinder only to download it again 4 weeks later. It is a progressive, continuous, rigorous amount of activities you should be doing, some daily, some weekly, in order to regularly do that check-in exercise of answer the question: “Is this really what I want, or did I somehow absorb this ambition from an entirely external influence against my own interest?”.
You incorporate elements in your routine that allow you to regularly disconnect from external stimuli and reconnect with yourself
Here are a couple of things I find really helpful to incorporate in my routine:
Daily:
- Write three pages in the morning about what crosses your mind: But really you’ll end up writing about yourself. This exercise comes from the amazing book called The Artist’s Way, and its purpose is to reconnect with your inner creative. I find this exercise very useful as you also reconnect with yourself period. You realise what upsets you, what drives you and lots of surprising things boil to the surface. Really, try and stick it out for at least 3 months, and then you might get hooked. You become more self-perceptive, which is one of the most useful skills to have.
- Meditate: Seriously sit your bum quietly for anywhere between 5 and 30 minutes and focus on your breathing and take some time just to check in on yourself. It’s a great exercise to recenter yourself. You might pick up on whether you are overworked, unhealthy or just plain happy. Try the headspace app.
- When you get upset, focus on 3 breaths until your blood cools down: A good friend of mine used to call it the drone effect. Just imagine being a little drone flying 3m above your head, just to distance yourself from the issue at hand so your blood has these 3 seconds to cool down before you react.
Weekly:
- Exercise: I know, yet another blogpost that tells me to work out. Don’t look at your phone, just focus on the physical effort. When you are at the gym / running / swimming, you are nowhere else. It is your break from the world and opportunity to recharge.
- Read a book continuously for an hour: Our attention span is diminishing, hence the ability to focus on one thing for an hour is an invaluable skill that we now need to learn to retrain.
- Don’t check your phone when with friends: Try and be present in conversations, and listen attentively to what your friends are telling you. The quality of the listening between friends is one of the best indicators of healthy and meaningful relationships. And sometimes good friends can be good reflectors of who you really are.
You become more self-perceptive, which is one of the most useful skills to have.
You will find that if you do these things regularly with the mindset of “I want to filter out the shit that is spoon-fed to me vs what I really want”, you will indeed start cleansing your surroundings. You will learn to say no to tangents that drag you out of your path, and most importantly you will stop trying to please other stakeholders whilst compromising your own integrity and happiness.
Also, you will develop what I call a stronger inner compass or what we commonly call, the gut. Its voice will be louder in times of alarm or joy. You will know right away when something doesn’t feel right and you will mostly listen to your true wants and needs to guide you closer to fulfillment. The result of this is that your choices are based on an inner motivation rather than external (e.g.: “I don’t want this job as this industry is not the hottest thing at the moment” or “I am not sure this country is on the right political path, do I want to live here?”). You know that a given opportunity is what you want regardless of its state or of the environment surrounding it, and you will make the best of it whatever it takes. And that is fulfilling.
That rooting within yourself gives you strength to say no to things that aren’t good for you
The other side-effect of this is that in a way you become more “intimate” with yourself. You get to have more quiet times with yourself addressing your inner anxieties which within a first phase might most probably be uncomfortable. However the trick here is, if you stick it out, once you get used to “hanging out” intimately with yourself, that place of retreat is much more peaceful than the unhealthy dependence on external stimuli. This despite the fact that one’s deepest self can be the scariest place for most of us.
Our generation should not be afraid to start within in order to scope out personal ambitions and learn to abstract external factors. We need to burn through some of our issues to create a comfortable inner cocoon which can root us and allow us to face the seastorm that is the external world.
That inner root is what a lot of us lack, and we need to practice that reconnection so there isn’t a dissonance between what we were meant to do and what we got dragged to do.