Recently I’ve been thinking about the end goal of working and life. I’ve wrote quite a lot about these things in previous posts, but I guess it’s also useful to define in concrete terms what your goals are.
After coming back from my vacation, my wife and I got a planner for 2024, and we dedicated ourselves to journal our every single day. Nothing too hardcore like doing reflections or expressing gratitude everyday, but just to write down what events happened, and how you feel about it if any.
It’s been 2 weeks, and I’m happy to say that we’re going strong and committed to writing our entries. But one day as I was writing it, I had existential crisis looking at the previous entries. “This can’t be all these is to it can it?” A typical day, which is similar almost everyday looks like this:
- Waking
- Working
- Eating Lunch
- Working
- Eating Dinner
- Exercising
- Playing Games
- Studying
- Sleep
Ad-Infinitum. I made it a point to do 2/3 things every single day. I either Read, Exercise or Study.
To be fair, this is called a routine, and it’s good to have routines and structure in your life. But to what end? We get on this flywheel of routine activities, but what destination does it bring us to? It’s like getting onto a car, but not know where the destination is. Sure you’re a safe driver, but where are you going?
This lead me to contemplate yet again, and my answer to the question is Health and Wealth. Whatever activities I’m doing or routines that I’m sticking to, they should lead me to Health or Wealth.
It’s easy to explain wealth. Money. Career. Work. I don’t have to go into that. Work and Study takes up almost half the day and there’s so many guides out there telling you how to achieve that goal. But growing wealth can’t be a never ending task as well. You get good at your job and it earns you all these cash, what do you do with it? It’s stupid to accumulate it without an end goal as to how to utilize it. I brief spoke about this when writing , and reviewing “Dying With Zero”. Money is mean to be spent! Whenever I say this statement, most of my friends scoff at me. But I think it’s really them who needs to change their mindset. (Again, I’m acknowledging my privilege for being able to have this mindset).
So my end goal for wealth isn’t specific material things, but an abstract goal of “Being able to live comfortably”. Having a roof over my head is comfortable, and I don’t have to strive to stay in a condo in Orchard road. Buying games and gadgets whenever I please is comfortable, and I don’t have to strive so much to increase my cash flow. Being able to go on holidays, pay off my bills, cover my insurance is comfortable enough. At some point, the amount cashflow you’re getting, and the amount of liquid cash you’ve accumulated is enough for you to live comfortably, and reach those amounts (cashflow and liquid cash) is my end goal. I can honestly say that I’m almost there, as I don’t worry so much about money nowadays, and the fact that I’m writing fluffy posts like these can attest to that. It’s not a flex, but an acknowledgement to myself to the progress I’ve made, and how much more I have to go.
It’s a little bit more nuanced for health. To break it down:
- Physical Health
- Mental Health
- Relational Health
For Physical Health, I used to have the end goal of bigger muscles, lifting heavy weights and being a gym rat. That’s all behind me now, and I’m content with my muscle mass. Instead, my goals are to lower my fat percentage, do bodyweight work outs (pull ups, push ups, squats all can be done at the bar for free!), and to be more flexible with my body. I no longer spend hours at the gym like I used to, but I do regular calisthenics, running/jogging/sprinting, and stretching exercises. Functionality > Physique is what I strive for.
For Mental Health, it’s about becoming less judgmental, less jealous, less critical, and becoming more empathetic, more understanding, more forgiving. Social media is the real poison, and it’s took me too long to realize that. Polarizing, racist and hateful videos/comments on Instagram. Braggarts on LinkedIn are no different when they flaunt their successes, akin to social media where all you see are the happy parts of your life. Even places like reddit which fills you with apocalyptic news, news about hateful crimes, war, and discrimination. The comments are no better, again filled with polarizing views and hateful speech only made possible by the shroud of anonymity. Reading all these views makes you think that the world is more hateful then it really is. The silent majority phenomenon is a real thing, and the world isn’t as hateful and polarizing as how it’s being portrayed by the loudest speakers online, inciting negative emotions through rage-bait content. I’ve already gotten off Facebook, and I’ve recently gotten of Instagram (only used for posting photos, not for scrolling content), LinkedIn and Reddit. In doing so, I hope to clear my mental space of these extreme view points, and fill it more with love and compassion via selective reading of materials of books of that nature.
For Relational Health, it’s about friends and family. To love my family and friends, and more importantly, to not have unhealthy expectations of them. Loving them is one thing, but expecting them to fulfil your adequacies is not, and perhaps I have been doing that a little too much with my friends. I’ve recently realize that I feel jealous when my friends don’t talk to me, and meet up without me. This stems from insecurities, and possibly even emotional immaturity where I feel that my emotional needs should be obtained from friends. That’s not the way. I need to be emotionally secure with myself, and friends are supplements. Just like eating whole foods versus taking supplements, you can’t live off protein powder alone, and you need a strong healthy diet in the first place. My goal therefore is to build a healthy relationship with myself, and not be dependent on my friends, and to not expect them to do anything for me. They are not obliged to, and I have no right to tax them for my emotional needs.
How then do I build a healthy relationship with myself? By being comfortable with myself. Exploring interest, hobbies and activities without the need to ask friends along. It’s not to say cutting them out entirely from all activities, but it’s not to be dependent on them to do stuff. I don’t have to wait for everyone to say yes before I try something out, like BJJ or cycling at a new place, I can just do it myself, and be comfortable doing so. Again, the friends are there to supplement your lifestyle, to complement it. and not being dependent on them is the first step of building a healthy relationship with myself.