Why it all matters

This is the planned unplanned fourth part of the “Four Bubbles of Life” series, added to the list for posterity and mentioned here, here and here.

Quick background: I have axiomised the four essential aspects of life as being the following:

• Work, which supports your life with value,
• Health, which prolongs and gives quality to your life,
• Leisure, which gives you energy, and finally,
• Love, which is the purpose of your life.

I may have not defined them in such a way in previous parts, but life has the tendency of changing your mind on things, and their purpose. I may address any discrepancies or confusion some time, maybe down below, maybe in some future post.

But this post has a different purpose.

It is to understand why, even though you know what you need to do, at any point in time, there are times when you don’t do it. And times when you burn out. I’m burnt out today, so hoping this will hit you just as hard as it hits me.

Because you know what you want, and what you need to do. But there is a reason why the balance above needs to be respected, you just don’t yet understand it. I don’t understand it either. But hopefully, we will.

And the following will help to get an intuition to it.

Multiple Energy Systems

When I first came with the 4 bubbles idea in mind, I thought we only functioned on a single energy system, which we fill up through fulfilling leisure activities. And this in turn, allows us to perform the rest of the activities that we need.

But thinking back on the idea of “work” as a life essential task reminded me: it is an energy system in itself, one which is more palpable compared to leisure. It literally gives us the value (i.e. money, benefits) to do other stuff: eat, drink, pay rent. It literally enables living, it’s an energy system in itself.

Due to certain situations I lived through, I thought work had a different kind of purpose as well. Literally purpose. I thought that, through work, humans fulfill their need to feel valued, to be of use to their communities. There are, unfortunately, multiple examples of people that die shortly after retirement, and the general consensus is: their lives ran out of purpose, so their lives ran out.

But giving “work” both these contributions makes it too important, which breaks the metaphorical minimal and maximal division of life aspects which I proposed in the 4 bubbles.

So, with your permission, I will assign the “purpose” battery to the most fitting life bubble: love.

It’s the reason why you work, why you keep yourself fit and healthy, and it gives you a very different kind of energy, compared to the one you get from leisure.

So without further addo, I present my thesis:

There are 4 energy systems on which humans operate, that enable the performance of all activities. Those are:

• Value system, supplied by Work activities,
• Vitality system, supplied by Health activities,
• Focus system, supplied by Leisure activities,
• Purpose system, supplied by Love activities.

Let’s go through each of them, in more depth, to understand why the energy systems are increased if and only if the activity the people are taking are targeting the specific type of life task, and how does the replenishment of one energy system improves your performance in all other life activities.

Value System: It is mostly about money

From times immemorial, people needed to work to they could live. Given your likely familiarity with the concept, I will cut short the reasoning behind why you need to work. You know you need to, takes up a large portion of your life, you likely are reading this on your way to or from your work place.

Furthermore, you likely understand how money allows you to take care of your health, to pay for vacations and concerts and drinks and escape rooms, and if your family needs it, you need to work for it.

But what happens if you do not earn money? How do you live? We likely do not need to go into unemployment rates, or take notice of the rise in homelessness. You understand all of this, and how important it is.

But you can have a, dare I say it, meaningful life without working for money. Here is something that I think I need your thoughts on to reason about it better.

Being a house wife, or house husband. I know it’s a way of working, and a way of living, without earning money per-se. And depending on how wealthy your spouse is in this circumstance, you may not even need to take that much care of the house.

But in that case, wouldn’t it possibly be the case that you’ve replaced your Work activities with Love activities instead? There’s multiple theories:

1. It’s still a Work activity, since the remuneration is obtained through enabling the spouse by carrying certain burdens for them.
2. It’s a mixed Work/Love activity (most likely),
3. It’s no longer a Work activity, but purely Love tasks.

I used to consider house chores as being Love activities in one of the previous posts, and obviously, I am having a hard time changing my mind (like everyone else, one of the reason we get stuck in addictions). But I reckon we should make this amendment:

Corollary: chores are a form of mixed Work/Love activity.

They are work, since you earn the value that you would otherwise pay someone else to do those chores for you, and it’s love, because you do them to support yourself and your family.

Vitality System: Mens sana in corpore sano

Contradicting health advice not-with-standing, everything just feels better when you’re healthy.

You are more focused on your tasks at work, you perform better for your partner, your laugh is more hearty when you go out with friends, you do not need drinks to have a good time. Nothing hurts, you’re not tired, you feel like the king of the world.

Then you take advantage of your health, do shit that you know you shouldn’t, eat and drink poison, push your limits, spend longer days, sleep shorter nights, and when all things add up, you cannot:

• Work anymore, because your focus is off due to drowsiness, or distracted by your pain. Then, you need to take time off, to take care of your multiple sources of pain, which cost you money that you’d otherwise have earned more of.
• Relax anymore, because you can’t sit back properly without jolts. Maybe you can’t properly get out of a chair, or have a stroll through the park. Maybe that hurt knee and sprained wrist distract you from your yoga session (true story). Maybe you cannot breathe deeply anymore, because you keep inhaling bad stuff intentionally.
• Spend time properly with your friends, your spouse, your children. Your life’s purpose. Being with them doesn’t cause the same beautiful feeling, because you cannot do everything that they are doing, or enjoy it as deeply. You still get something out of being there for them, but there’s a deep sense of regret when you can’t join them.

But we forget about our health, until it bites us because we’ve forgotten about it. Unfortunately, as a society, we only see health as something that, when it’s bad, it decreases our quality of life.

What we forget, or overlook, is that optimising your health is something that can improve your life overall, the baseline can be significantly higher than people expect it to be.

It’s something that even the self-proclaimed longevity expert Bryan Johnson admitted in one of the podcasts he’s participated in (it was Dr Mike, not Israetel, but the actual medical doctor).

Disclaimer: I must admit, I am a huge fan of Bryan, I try to apply most of his advice (other than taking pills), and I know he’s crazy. But he’s tenacious, appears to be good natured, and his philosophy helped me immensely to prioritise the things that matter in my life, and that includes my health (to an “unhealthy” extent, some of my friends say). That being said, I needed to include the “self-proclaimed” in his introduction, since he never got qualifications for the title of “longevity expert”. Back to my point.

He was challenged on his views of optimising longevity, and was asked the following question (paraphrased): “If you were to be told you have only 40 more years to live, would you live those years the same way you do now?”, to which the answer was, arguably not an immediate, but categoric yes. Why? Because the QUALITY of his life has improved to such an extent that he wants to live his life the way he is, even if that will not extend his life any further.

So guys, learn to learn from the good parts of people, and apply what is useful, dismiss what is useless (quote stolen from Bruce Lee again), and realise the importance and usefulness of your health before it’s too late. You may be surprised with how strong of a high your improved health and athleticism can be.

Focus System: How much more can you take?

We all love our weekend. Our chill night on the couch at a movie. A board or video game with friends. A night of eating out and drinking. It’s our time to relax, after a long time doing work, earning our living (literally, as we’ve earlier discussed).

But why do you need it so much? Do you need it more than me? Do I need it more than you? Don’t you find it weird how some people need to chill more than others, and how others find things like kickboxing or shopping to be so entertaining and happy for them, while others could not even imagine wanting to do either.

It’s because of the way their mind is set. They see activities differently from you. Even though it’s the same activity, in their mind, it’s something relaxing. And it can be something related to their health, or something they earn money from, or some activity that they perform for their family, with their family.

But it’s in their head. And this allows them to get energy from the mixed-purpose activity, that they can later use to focus on parts of their lives they do not see as relaxing.

Get it? A leisure activity is defined by your state of mind. Whenever you feel like doing something, that thing is leisure. Whenever you feel forced to do it, it becomes burden, and you need to spend energy you’ve gathered from other activities. The luckiest people live in a constant state of leisure, and they have enough energy to focus on everything they’ve got.

It’s a difficult thing to hack though. Your mind does not like to be changed. And worst of all, it does not like to be proven wrong.

Purpose System: why it all matters

Throughout history, men have died for their families, for their countries, for their religions, for their freedom. We like to have something to fight for, one way or another. A reason for us to exist, a purpose. Something that we love.

Because love is not rational, it cannot be explained. You cannot justify the way it started more than you can justify your very existence. But it drives you to do things, things you would rationally not consider doing.

Some people love fame and money, true, but most of us love each other. Other people, I mean. Specific people that we have chosen (or not chosen, but somehow gotten) into our lives, which we value more than ourselves.

We will go that extra mile to do everything for them. Or for ourselves, for those lucky few that actually love themselves.

But what do you do, then, if you love no one? You love nothing? You get lost in time and space, in nothingness. You have no reason to get out of bed in the morning, so you sleep it out forever. You have no reason to focus, so you lose your job. You have no reason to take care of your health, so you start addictions (or the other way around). And yes, there’s no love in your life, so you have no purpose.

But many-a-times you hear how a specific someone was the one thing that turned the life around for people who lost themselves. The partner becomes the motivation to take care of yourself, so you may take care of them. The children push you even harder, because they’re small and innocent, and you want to protect them from the harshness of life, if only for an extra moment.

Even if you’re exhausted, you remember them, and you push that little bit forward.

And everything is worth it.

It is all worth it

If you had the composure to go through all my ramblings above, I hope you now have a better understanding of what makes you tick, and what makes you break, and if you’re not in a good state, how to put yourself back together.

The worst part of this system is also the best part about it: it is interconnected. You break one part, it all falls apart, but if you fix one thing, it spirals into everything becoming better and better.

It is not easy, to keep it all under control. And there will be times when you miss on one of your energy sources for a little bit too long. But focus on one thing, actually do it, and it will eventually all be ok.

You have more control than you know, and now, you know how to leverage it. Or at least, you have some system that allows you to think about how to leverage it.

If you have any further suggestions to the system, please think aloud down below. There must be aspects I’ve missed, and I expect a lot of counter-examples to my statements, cuz I like to generalise, so let me know what you find!

Otherwise, go live a complete life!