3 Factors That Have Made A Huge Difference For Me
In the cathedrals of our minds resides the quality of our lives.
In this inner sanctum, we experience every moment and memory of our lives.
Whatever the duration of our lives or the degree of physical or cognitive quality we possess, it is how we experience our lives that matter most.
Fundamentally, the quality of our minds dictates the quality of our lives.
What Is Health?
In my view, health is the optimisation of three factors:
- Lifespan – How long you live.
- Health Span – The quality of your movement and cognition.
- Soul Span – The quality of the experience of your life.
We are all too familiar with examples of those who have excelled in the domains of lifespan and health span but have seriously struggled in the domain of soul span.
When I speak of Soul Span, I am not referring to organic mental illness.
This is an entirely different matter that requires the input of trained medical personnel and often the use of mood-altering medications.
I am referring to our felt experience of the world.
Whether we feel engaged in a life that is meaningful?
Whether we experience periods of joy or happiness?
Because as Cicero once said:
“Diseases of the soul are more dangerous and more numerous than those of the body.”
The Formula
There are very clear formulas to optimise the domains of lifespan and health span.
I have covered these in detail over the last 100-plus articles here.
What these factors consist of have been discovered through the application of hard science.
Science can tell us a lot about the factors that determine our life experiences, but many of the answers reside in the domain of philosophy, art, and literature.
I do not profess to have the answer to this issue.
Minds far greater have struggled with the question for thousands of years, and no consensus has yet been reached.
Anything I say here is based on my own experience and reading.
The journey here is one you must traverse.
You and you alone.
As Rumi once said, “It’s your road, and yours alone, others may walk it with you, but no one can walk it for you.“
The question is whether there is a formula for optimising soul span similar to lifespan and health span.
Maybe there isn’t an exact formula, but the following are three key ideas I believe make a major difference to the factor of soul span and the quality of your life.
- You Are Not Your Thoughts.
Each and every one of us has an internal dialogue in our heads.
All day.
Every day.
It’s probably chattering away right now.
“What is this guy talking about? I wonder, should I have a coffee now or later? Damn, I feel tired. I must not have slept well last night.”
If you spoke that internal dialogue out loud all the time, people would start avoiding you pretty quickly.
And yet, that dialogue is constantly pecking away inside your head.
And in the heads of everyone you meet.
But as Joseph Nguyen says, “Don’t believe everything you think”.
It does not take long for us to become identified with the chatter in our minds.
Without realising it, we become our thoughts.
They define who we are.
But those thoughts rarely glitter in praise of who we are and are more commonly an endless stream of low-grade negativity.
And we wonder why we are not happy.
We have no idea where our thoughts come from.
None.
We do not control our thoughts.
But…
We can control how we react to them.
We can learn to observe them.
Non-judgmentally and view them at a distance.
We can detach ourselves from our endless stream of thoughts and watch them.
Like we would a squirrel in our garden.
And when we learn how to do that we free ourselves from the negative chatter.
This is the purpose of meditation.
It is not to rid yourself of thoughts.
It is to stand at arm’s length from them.
And observe them.
For the strange and mysterious things that they are.
But in doing so, we free ourselves from being emotionally whipsawed around by them and can add some peace to our lives.
You are not your thoughts.
If you want to free yourself of them, learning to meditate is a must.
Like so many others before me, I have spent years reading and learning in an attempt to discover the answer to the question:
What is the meaning of life?
The answer is…
There is no answer.
And that searching for one may not be helpful.
And might even be harmful.
As Albert Camus once said, “You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.”
But do not confuse this with the idea that you cannot live a meaningful life.
Just because there may not be a precise answer to this question or we may never know what the ‘meaning of life is’ does not mean we cannot live a life that is imbued with meaning and purpose.
These are similar but, importantly, different concepts.
One is a definitive end-point answer.
The other is a process of discovery and experience.
We can live incredibly meaningful lives without knowing the specific answer to the question, “What is the meaning of life?”
Understanding this has been incredibly liberating for me.
We live in a time when the grander narratives of myth and religion have lost their foothold. This freedom has left many adrift without an answer to foundational questions we have as humans.
I do, however, believe we must all feel connected to something greater than ourselves.
As Carl Jung says, “The decisive question for man is: Is he related to something infinite or not? That is the telling question of his life.“
There is no doubt that this world is full of mysteries.
Why are we here?
Where did we come from?
Did we exist before birth?
What happens after we die?
Are we alone in the universe?
And so many other dizzying questions.
Simply staring up at the stars at night provides us with an immense sense of awe and beauty.
It connects us to the numinous, a sense that is ‘inexpressible, mysterious, terrifying”.
I know that life can be meaningful.
For me, that is enough.
The opening scene of the HBO series Chernobyl starts with a question.
“What is the cost of lies? It’s not that we’ll mistake them for the truth.
The real danger is that if we hear enough lies, then we no longer recognise the truth at all. What can we do then?
What else is left but to abandon even the hope of truth and content ourselves instead with stories?
In these stories, it doesn’t matter who the heroes are. All we want to know is: “Who is to blame?”“
When I say, ‘Do not lie,’ most of all, I mean that we must not lie to ourselves.
We are the easiest to fool with our own lies.
And when we do, we often also look for someone to blame.
We are also the ones who will pay the greatest price for those lies.
What I have learned is the greatest lie is to not live the life you know that you truly should.
When asked on their deathbeds, this is people’s number one regret.
Above working too hard is the regret of not having the courage to live the life they knew they should have.
But didn’t.
Their greatest regret was lying.
Lying to themselves.
That they were someone different to who they knew they really were and convincing themselves to live a life aligned with the values of someone who they were not.
In the deepest recesses of our minds, we know who we really are.
But as Nietzsche says, “They fear their higher self because when it speaks, it speaks demandingly.”
We fear what our deepest selves tell us.
We fear the pain that pursuing that path would lead to.
But we forget the greater pain that will result if we do not.
We lie. To ourselves.
As Abraham Maslow says, “What one can be, one must be”.
To not become who you are is to lie.
And as the HBO Chernobyl series finishes, the protagonist who asked about the cost of lies refrains:
“Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth. Sooner or later, that debt is paid.”
You know what to do.
You know when you are lying.
We all do.
The question is whether you realise the cost of those lies.
Because sooner or later that debt will be paid.
A life well lived.
The journey of optimising soul span is fundamentally about a life well lived.
We can take guidance and counsel from greater minds that have reflected on this topic but in the end we must walk our own paths.
Maybe we can never know precisely what our destination may be, but I am confident that each and every one of us knows when we are on the right path.
When we are moving towards the manifestation of our highest selves we feel a sense of meaning.
A meaning that makes this life worthwhile.
But when we track away from what represents our highest selves, we suffer.
The goal, then, must be to identify your highest goals and then have the courage to move towards them.
Doing so will undoubtedly bring pain and suffering.
But not doing so will likely bring even more.
At least the pain and suffering we endure on the path to our highest selves will be worthwhile.
This life is short.
Lifespan and health span matter.
But for me, soul span matters most of all.
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As with all the material on this site it is not medical advice and is for general informational purposes only. None of the information provided constitutes the practice of medicine, or any professional healthcare services. No doctor patient relationship has been formed. Information contained on this platform is used at the readers own risk. Readers of this information should not delay or disregard in obtaining professional medical advice or treatment for any health related issue. The information presented is in no way a substitute for medical advice.
