Show Me How To Live

I am attempting to answer two questions:

• What is the most effective strategy for living a life of meaning and fulfillment, that contributes to the flourishing of my community?

• Since flow is the optimal state of human consciousness, why would anyone devote any time and attention to anything else?

Shouldn’t my life strategy be focused on accessing flow as often as I can? What are the conditions for flow? The flow state, or ecstasis, is when all of your talent flows through your mind and your body, through your decisions and actions; no waste or latency in the system. Talent gets wasted when people get distracted, people hesitate when they  get distracted. The most common distractions are uncertainty and self-doubt. “What if something goes wrong? What if I’m not good enough? What if I didn’t prepare enough?” The conditions for flow are; unshakable faith in oneself, audacity in the face of uncertainty, and integrity in the face of distraction.

How can I create those conditions? I need a mission that requires faith, audacity, and integrity. I need a mission that is too important to be derailed by uncertainty and self-doubt. An inescapable fact of human nature is that human beings sacrifice everything for their highest priority. I need to set my nonnegotiable priorities. 

What is my number one priority? I believe that everyone is born with talent and the desire to unleash it. I believe that the optimal expression of one person’s talent can change the world for the better. My number one, nonnegotiable priority is the quest for the optimal expression of my talent. That makes my talent, my time, and my attention my most valuable resources, because time and attention are the mechanisms that transform talent into skill and peak performance. 

My other nonnegotiable priorities are the tasks that allow me to survive, the activities that allow me to flourish, and the tasks and activities that allow for the survival and the flourishing of my community. 

So I need to devote my time and attention to my nonnegotiable priorities, beginning with the quest for the optimal expression of my talent. I need to structure each day around my nonnegotiable priorities. I need to set myself up for success by identifying and eliminating distractions from my daily routine. Anything that doesn’t serve my nonnegotiable priorities is a distraction. 

I need to structure my days to create the conditions for flow: unshakable faith in myself, audacity in the face of uncertainty, and integrity in the face of distraction. Unshakable faith in myself means unshakable faith in my talent, my skill, my preparation, and my conscience as my compass for navigating through times of uncertainty. To develop unshakable faith, I must master my craft. Mastering my craft means I must develop the skills, make the sacrifices, and take the leaps of faith that are necessary to transform all of my talent into skill and peak performance. Twelve of the skills I need to master are: authenticity, courage, focus, clarity, accountability, discipline, sacrifice, community, faith, audacity, integrity, and flow. 

Audacity is the utter disregard for the uncertainty of outcomes. The outcome of an adventure must be uncertain, and I can’t let that uncertainty distract me from the adventure of my life. The adventure is worth the discomfort that comes with confronting and overcoming uncertainty.

Integrity is the ability to align your decisions and actions with your conscience. Your conscience is the voice that calls you to be your most authentic, most courageous, most extraordinary self, and calls you out when you fall short. Your conscience emanates from your talent, and points in the direction of your talent’s optimal expression. It is your compass for navigating through times of uncertainty.

My nonnegotiable priorities are:

• Conscience and the optimal expression of my talent

• Meaning, fulfillment, and contribution

• Peak performance and wellbeing

• Faith, audacity, and integrity

That means my conscience is the boss. My body and my mind need to know that my conscience is the boss. My ego, my id, and my resistance to uncertainty need to know that my conscience is the boss. My conscience is the boss, because integrity means aligning my decisions and my actions with my conscience. Integrity is a skill that can be trained and mastered like any other. There are many modalities for training and mastering integrity…

• Meditation

• Journaling

• Visualization

• Yoga and other methods of physical training

• Learning a musical instrument, a new language, or a martial art

• Travel

• Sensory deprivation tanks

• Psychedelic rituals

I must find the training tools that are the most useful, and incorporate them into my schedule. This is how I set my conscience up for success. This is how I create the conditions for peak performance that delivers wellbeing. This is how I will master my craft. This is how I will transform my talent into skill and peak performance. This is how I will unleash the optimal expression of my talent. This is how I will have the adventure of my life. 

This is what has been missing.