Don't postpone your best life for later
Suffering is optional. The moment you realize that life is happening for you, not to you, your world switches!
This week we are reviewing chapters 2 and 3 from The Illusion of Time, by Francois de Neuville, a Featured Innovator in the Fearless Journeys community. Francois will join us on a live session later in December when we complete the book.
Last week, we reviewed the first chapter of this book, which included the first of the 11 lessons of “how not to suck” at life. That lesson was that “We All Die Eventually.”
The second lesson in this book is the subject of Chapter 2: “Don’t Die With a To-Do List.”
The chapter starts with another disturbing story. One of Francois’ friends who had survived the tsunami with him died only a month later in a plane crash. Just as Francois was starting to get his life back together after the tsunami, this happens. It broke his art, made him angry, and full of despair.
He looked at a photo from his paragliding team in Indonesia. He was now the only one in that photo left alive. To him, it felt like he was living in the movie, Final Destination.
That’s when he had a significant insight that changed everything. “I will be next! Eventually I will die too! I can’t change it, can’t escape it. The only thing I can do about it is to make sure I live before I die.”
He changed his mindset from being a victim to being a survivor.
“Life is precious,” writes Francois. “We all tend to live with the illusion of time, postponing our best life for later. Based on what? You don’t know what tomorrow is going to be made of. You don’t even know if there will be a tomorrow.”
This is a funny thing about life. We must live as if each day could be our last, because one day it will be. But we also can’t live as if tomorrow will not come. Otherwise, we would live our live with too much excess and be broke and broken
So the point Francois is making here is not to let life pass you by. Do not let life just happen to you. Live every day with intention.
Francois tells the story of one of his friends who suffered an accident that left him paralyzed. This friend was living as busy of a life as any of us, prior to his accident. But going through so much suffering and having nothing else to do but lay in a hospital bed for so long gave him time to think and reflect.
He told Francois that “People go through life without taking time to think. My accident has taught me to bring perspective and be more conscious about life. We tend to rush our lives, running the race others are putting us into (society, culture, beliefs, etc.) We don’t take the time to figure out what we truly want. We try to fit in and do ‘normal.’”
Francois’ message to us is that “we don’t need to wait for a traumatic experience to live our best life. Plenty of people share their trauma to wake us up, so we don’t make the same mistake.”
“…there are plenty of things you want to do, learn, or experience in your life,” writes Francois. “Everyday you have a little bit less time, so don’t postpone.”
What’s one thing you really want to do that you have been postponing? Is it taking a trip? Getting married? Having that next child? Learning a new language? Or maybe ballroom dancing? Getting fit? Running a marathon? Reconnecting with a loved one? Making amends with a friend? Don’t postpone these things. Take action on something right now. Today. Time is ticking.
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In Chapter 3, Francois delivers us a third lesson: “Suffering is Optional.”
Optional? How can he say that when so many people in the world are suffering right now? Or when we reflect on the times we have suffered? Or maybe we are one of those people suffering right now.
This is where Francois distinguishes pain from suffering. Everyone goes through pain. Stuff happens in life. When I tore my Achilles tendon three months ago, it was excruciatingly painful and sidelined me for over a month. In fact, it was only after about two months that I was finally able to walk on my own two feet (without a medical boot). It sucked. And yet, worse things have happened to better people. But the point is, we’ll all go through unexpected periods of pain. We can’t avoid it.
“Pain has a specific purpose; it is a signal from the body or the mind to tell us that something needs to be addressed,” writes Francois. “However, suffering appears when we focus on how the pain makes us feel, usually when we don’t accept it. The danger is to ignore the pain (the signal) or to stay stuck in the experience of the pain. It is about how we experience the pain that will create sadness, anger, frustration, or depression, etc.”
Francois says that “suffering is a state of being; it is optional” because “we have the freedom to control our inner world.”
That’s what Victor Frankl taught me and many readers in his book, Man’s Search for Meaning. Even as someone interned in a Holocaust camp, Frankl and others like him defined their inner world to reduce their pain and suffering. There was nothing they could do as prisoners in those camps to change their circumstance. But one thing they could do was control how they reacted to it, especially internally.
It is our reaction to the pain that causes suffering.
Francois says that time helps us deal with pain and, simplified, it is usually a 4-step process:
Trigger
Pain
Full expression of the experience of pain
Letting go
We also should not live in a state of denial. In order to “let go” we do have to confront the pain and experience it head on. We should not be afraid to do so. If we don’t confront, or if we choose to react poorly to it, we will suffer with it much longer.
Some choose to play the victim, which Francois says “is a dangerous game because you soon become your story and let the pain define who you are.”
This also means you must confront reality. Once you do, “you can decide to accept what can’t be changed and focus on changing what you can (how you experience the situation). When you accept, you can start healing; it’s the only way forward. Denying is refusing to admit what is there (your feelings, a situation, etc.)”
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The big takeaway from both chapters two and three is to understand there are two ways to approach life. You can allow life to just happen to you or you can make life happen for you.
“The moment you realize that life is happening for you, not to you, your world switches!”
Suffering is a choice. Happiness is a choice too. Will you suffer for a day or a week? Or suffer your whole life? That choice is yours. Don’t waste the time we have. We don’t know how much more we have left. But we do know it won’t be forever.
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Reading is also a choice. I hope you have been enjoying these short summaries, but there’s nothing like reading the book yourself. However, the most important thing is not simply to read the book or these review, but to reflect on them and use the reading as inspiration to take action in your own life. Today.
To stay on pace with the Fearless Journeys community, read chapters 4 & 5 by next Friday, November 22. That is just another 23 pages of reading and will give us two more lessons on how not to suck at life.
Use your time wisely this week!