Learning to Track What Makes You Feel Alive
Planning, questioning the path, listening to your body, and following your track.
“If you are depressed you are living in the past.
If you are anxious you are living in the future.
If you are at peace you are living in the present.”
― Lao Tzu
Forward planning is, generally speaking, a good thing.
But it’s possible to have too much of a good thing. Things in excess often become their opposite and spending too much of your day with your head buried in the future is a problem.
Before explaining why it’s a problem, one I battle with on a near-daily basis (especially in times of uncertainty), it’s important to distinguish between two types of forward planning:
Deliberate and logical planning: This is the good kind of forward planning. It happens when you carve out a chunk of time to achieve a specific goal such as getting your finances in order or planning a trip for next summer. Without a healthy dose of this type of planning, your life would be one big spontaneous mess.
Untamed daydreaming and anxiety-filled “planning”: This is the not-so-good kind of forward planning. We don’t carve out time for it. Rather, it carves time out of us. It sneaks up behind you, taps you on the shoulder, and then smacks you in the face. It sucks air from your lungs and gives you shortness of breath. Sometimes it’s pleasant and optimistic but far more often it induces anxiety, stress, and worry. If there’s something in your life that doesn’t sit right, that you want to change but aren’t sure how, this type of “planning” is all too familiar.
Clearly, a reasonable amount of the first type of planning is essential to a responsible, intact, and well-lived life. The second kind, not so much.
“Track what makes you feel good and bring more of it into your life. Notice what makes you feel lousy and do less of it.”
― Boyd Varty, The Lion Tracker's Guide To Life
Spending too much time daydreaming, anxious, or full of worry not only sabotages the present moment experience of life but also clouds your ability to listen to your body. In turn, after making enough mind-driven decisions without consulting your body, it might feel like something is missing from your life.
Let me explain.
“I don’t know where I’m going but I know exactly how to get there.”
― Boyd Varty, The Lion Tracker's Guide To Life
In the modern world, we have become out of touch with our bodies. We hit autopilot and follow the standard life path of school → job → marriage → kids → retire → die. As a society, we aren’t overly concerned with how you, the individual, feel about your day-to-day life.
In fact, I wager that most people are miserable 10 hours per day 5 days per week. Care to disagree? Sit on a rush hour bus or train and report back the collective energy of its commuters.
When we have a problem, we use our brains to logic our way through it which, by the way, is a great strategy for many of life’s problems. But it’s not the only strategy. Some problems aren’t rational so trying to use your brain to logic your way through them is the equivalent of hammering a screw. Good luck.
“Don’t try to be someone, rather find the thing that is so engaging that it makes you forget yourself.”
― Boyd Varty, The Lion Tracker's Guide To Life
Some problems, like choosing who to spend your life with, finding your true purpose or calling, deciding whether or not to have kids, and picking the right people to build friendships with, must be assessed through feeling and action, not just thinking and logic.
Life is full of information. Signals and cues screaming, waiting to be seen and heard. But our brain, hammering away at a screw, can’t detect, or rather, chooses to ignore, them. Conditioned by society to stick to the script and follow the path most treaded, our brain is quick to shut out the feelings, sensations, and instincts that arise in our bodies telling us when to change course, when to walk into the unknown and uncertain.
“People are not looking for the meaning of life, they are looking for the experience of being alive.” ― Joseph Campbell
This isn’t a call to throw logic to the wind in vain pursuit of feelings or instincts. Just as our brain’s logic can lead us awry, so can our body’s natural instinct. But it is a reminder that to create a life filled with joy and meaning and to die free of regret, we must unlatch from the bandwagon of modern life, attune ourselves to our bodies, and carefully listen for what calls us. For the work and experiences and activities and people that make us feel alive.
“You have a first track. If you go and get some of what you need, you might get a second first track. In life, we don’t get trails fully laid out. We get tremendous unknowns and, if we are lucky, first tracks. Then next first tracks.”
― Boyd Varty, The Lion Tracker's Guide To Life
Then, one day, one step, and one moment at a time, we can pursue them. Only then can the untamed anxiety and worry be caged and locked away. Not because we have it all figured out, but because we are finally listening to what feels good and doing more of it, and exposing what feels lousy and eliminating it.