(S/o old Kanye…might wanna ignore the new Kanye🤣)
“We all have two lives; the second one begins when we realize we just have one. - Confucius
This last week, my second life just began.
But first, some context…
Over the past few months, I’ve unfortunately had to deal with quite some shit:
- crutches for my left foot—and my foot surgery which just got delayed a month 🙃
- daily physical therapy for (both) injured shoulders, thanks to prior baseball + football injuries
- gastroesophageal reflux disease…which means
- no carbonated drinks, no caffeine, no chocolate, limited fat, no dairy, and basically no alcohol
Whatta time, eh?
You’re probably wondering how ALL this managed to stack up…good Q…so here’s the simplest explanation I can give:
- Ankle sprain way back. The vid is below. And in case you couldn’t tell, it was likely the dumbest choice of my life (for 5 bucks, big brains 🧠 move):
(…and no, the 10th time I watch doesn’t make me cringe any less)
Then a few years after that wise ol decision, I found myself with 2 shoulder issues and this dietary issue getting worse called GERD i just described.
For the past year, I’ve taken daily actions towards improving my health and monitoring diet, but I fundamentally still prioritized career/intellectual growth a bit higher.
My assumption was that these things would eventually heal on their own naturally.
Nope…
So flash forward to this past Monday, I had to go down from Vancouver to Seattle (a 3.5 hour bus ride) for surgery consultations with 2 different doctors, and ended up coming back with BOTH of those consultations getting cancelled/re-scheduled, and surgery pushed back a month further.
Nice…
I found myself a night later back in the UBC dorm, frustrated and trying my best to constructively reflect, with one thing in mind:
Something (big) needed to fundamentally change.
I then saw this poster in my room printed from a few weeks back:
It’s a pretty simple graphic that marks one box for each week of our life…originally from Tim Urban’s blog post:
(If you couldn’t tell, there ain’t too many boxes…)
So what did I do? I began to fill out each of the boxes…from the first box, down each row, until I got to about midway through the 19th row (my life today).
While filling out the boxes, I thought back about how I spent my prior years—the great mems w/ sports, friends, and adventures, and the not-so-great things like my current injuries, overthinking moments, and other worse times—and I came away with an insanely clear new outlook.
I now had a totally new approach for the future.
Below I’ll lay out my core takeaways…
The essence of an amazing life might be a lot simpler than you think. On an individual level, there are only 2 things that really matter in life (…both of which are easy to overlook):
A) Happiness ABOUT your life:
- i.e. your sense of purpose, value added to the world—and how satisfied you are about the actions you’re taking in life, through the lens of your “remembering self”, as Daniel Kahneman puts it.
B) Happiness DURING your life
- i.e. your sense of day to day momentary pleasure and enjoyment—and how happy you are right now, again and again, through the lens of your “experiencing self” (Kahneman, again).
The goal is to knock the ball out of the park in both departments. So I’ll start with what it means to win at part A:
A) Live a legendary, meaningful life
(i.e. being happy about your life)
When filling out these boxes, I noticed that I felt better about certain time periods than I did about others.
Will you look back at what you’re doing now with pride? This is the 🔑 question for addressing part A.
I felt best about those times I was working towards/with something bigger than myself (meaningful projects, team sports etc.), and worse about times I wasn’t growing, not contributing to society, or wasting parts of my potential…
This “remembering self” is about the story we tell ourselves. And it’s damn important, so why not aim to make this story sweet?
- Filling out the life calendar hit me with a HUGE wave of inspiration, like something I haven’t felt in at least months:
- It inspired me to completely redesign my monthly goals, start really pursuing content creation/side projects, and of course, re-order the physical copy of James Clear’s book, Atomic Habits, for my dorm.
- When looking back at those boxes, I realized my biggest nightmare was simple: wasted potential.
“The pain of regret is much worse than failure.” - Sahil Bloom
…and the great Shawshank quote goes, “get busy livin’ or get busy dyin”
B) Thriving + present in each of those days….surrounded with love
(i.e. being happy during your life)
“A great life is just a long string of great days.” - David Senra
Each box is precious…and acknowledging life’s finiteness means you can ignore the shit that just doesn’t matter.
“Almost everything--all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure--these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.” - Steve Jobs
And while we’re on the topic of death, I’ll also add in one more gem of content from my new friend John Maverick, discussing the most common regrets of old people:
(I’m eyeing #7 right now, if you couldn’t tell)
I’ve decided to quadruple down on health with daily physical therapy for shoulders, strict diet, new cycling workouts, and of course, some yoga inspired inspired by Jenn Breen’s Bainbridge Yoga House 💯
Will be back on the ⚽️ field to tear it up soon ;)
Closing thoughts
I felt inclined to put out this post cause I really do think my life just fundamentally changed.
I’m no longer viewing these issues as happening TO me. It’s all happening FOR me, as I grow and adopt this new identity that’ll last.
The person I’ll be after recovering from all 100 injuries (lol) will be much stronger than I ever would've been without that struggle.
And I think these lessons can apply to anyone—so how about we all get after it, eh? (Canadian talk creeping up subconsciously now😳)
….
And with that, thx for reading ! If you’ve got any thoughts, pls reach out by hitting my email or twitter :)
Cheers✌🏼