Do less.
You don’t hear this advice being thrown around too often. We usually hear the opposite: do more, be more, win more, learn more. Every step of the way, our peers validate the accumulation associated with more.
But I’m exhausted. Aren’t you? Haven’t we all reached the point where the stuff, the degrees and certifications, the books, the laws, the work, the food, have all just become frivolous? When we’re all REALLY craving meaning and connection, that pursuit of more offers a tangible armor to protect us from the fear of not getting there.
At what point can we finally admit that more has simply failed to live up to the hype? For example, how much MORE knowledge do we need before we realize that the four degrees and a hundred thousand dollars in student debt just got us farther from the true wisdom we are seeking.
Allow me to digress a bit. I’m not saying all ambition is bad. I’m still rooting on the builders, creators, and hustlers. Go for it, y’all. But ambition without a “why”can be reckless. The millions of dollars your making by working so hard won’t make you feel very wealthy if your relationships are in shambles, or your health is hanging on by a thread.
Our addiction to more has blinded our discernment on if the more we are creating is actually worth a damn. Take a moment and ask yourself, how much of what you do is in service to a worthy mission? How much of it is actually helping you and your communities from the pressing problems of our day? Fair warning: that inventory can be quite embarrassing. I know it is for me.
We’ve sacrificed quality for quantity and the vast majority of us are acting on auto-pilot, not in alignment with a God-given mission. In an effort to change that heartbreaking reality, I propose starting by helping our young ones find that mission before it’s too late…more on this soon.
Why are men spending their young adulthood pursuing the reckless more. Our binge drinking, binge watching culture gives young men an outlet for their natural aggression that results in the quantifiable damage to their health, communities, and I’d venture their souls as well. Presented with our culture of more, it’s easy to make excuses for why we’re NOT thinking critically about how we can make the world better. Why we aren’t engaging in deep dialogue about topics that interest us. The sacrifice of the meaningful more at the altar of the reckless more is how we ferociously silence the inner calling to make meaning of our lives.
Stick with the Program?
Our education system was modeled after a Prussian military model that was used to cultivate obedience from its subjects. Henry Ford and his friends knew that to effectively fill their factories with docile and diligent workers, required shaping the workforce from the time they were very young. Thus our school system rely on factory bells to corral our young minds into the homogenous shape best suited to menial labor. And, as they inundated us with information and stimulation until we were exhausted, our minds naturally rebelled. And they gave that a name and a solution. You have ADD. Here are your pills. Now, be quiet and listen to teacher.
I would argue our bodies took the biggest hit from the culture of educational indoctrination. As chronic dis-ease (a body not at ease) skyrockets, we are more disconnected from our intuition than ever, and it’s not a coincidence. As our connection to our bodies was programmed away by obedience, our sense of purpose was locked away. And as our bodies disintegrate, we go ask a guy in a white coat to give us a pill to deaden the signals that our bodies are sending to us. The signals that are begging us to pay attention.
The answers are definitely out there and not right in here, in the body. They know better about my body, than I do. Psych!
In school, we learn to listen to our teachers. And we are thus trained to listen to our bosses, the government, doctors, the “experts” – all at the expense of our own intrinsic knowledge. As access to information proliferates, most of us have no idea how to be the leading scientist on the ongoing experiment that is our body – and our life.
Going back
Here’s another idea. Say, for the sake of experimentation, that our bodies are not wrong. They don’t need to be silenced like the unruly kid in class, and that they are actually capable of healing. Maybe, our bodies are always healing and constantly moving us in the direction of wholeness, strength, and vitality. And maybe, if we stopped listening to teacher and learned to pay attention, we’d discover a truer teacher within. And I think our bodies have one primary lesson to teach us: DO LESS!
Going back to the body isn’t hard the way Calculus or Biology are hard. It’s hard in the same way that not eating the snack your mom packed before lunchtime is hard. The people I work with usually try too hard and do too much, thinking that they can think their way to that brilliant solution that will solve all their problems. Meanwhile, that chatter covers up the deep pit of disconnection they are feeling in their chest.
As a scientist in the laboratory of human experience, I’m way more interested in that pit. Let’s send some breath there and see how it shifts, changes, or what thoughts are provoked from the attention to that part of the body.
Going back to the body is the ultimate “do less” strategy. Despite what the experts, who get paid to get you to want to do more, may say, you have all you need right there under your head. You don’t need to go buy another one or obsess about someone else’s. Your body is endlessly fascinating. How it moves, hurts, heals, speaks to you, and constantly knows what it needs to keep you alive. If only you’d stop doing so much and spend some time with it, you might slow down enough to hear what it’s whispering to you. “….Come back, please.”