Following on from Part 1 in creating a sustainable lifestyle I’m just going to start by saying, “Good-on-you.” So where does one start then to design a sustainable lifestyle?
“The first step to getting the things you want out of life is this: Decide what you want.”
- Ben Stein
1. Figure out what it is that makes you tick.
I love this question from the amazing Alan Watts, “What if money were no object, what would you do?”
What makes you itch, tick, get jiggy, whatever you refer to it as… what is it? Well, make that the cornerstone of your lifestyle or find a way to somehow get it into your life.
2. Determine what your foundations are in life.
What do you stand for in life? What is not worth compromising? Use these things as the basis for the standards you live by.
Attitude and mentality mean a lot in this equation. Our lifestyles are dictated by them. So what do you value in life and how does this shape your lifestyle? Do you value spending time with friends and family? If so, it will naturally be easier to incorporate this into your day to day life in the long term. It makes you happy. It bring meaning and joy to your life. It’s not a chore. You genuinely enjoy doing these things. Grab that. Take hold of it. This is good. Life can be like this. You’re allowed to have these things in your life. Now use that as a base to what you want to build your lifestyle around.
“You need to find a way to live your life, that it doesn’t make a mockery of your values.”
-Bill Ayers
3. Start by incorporating sustainable lifestyle habits into your day. One habit at a time.
Taking a short 5 minutes to meditate and breathe upon waking is far easier to comprehend over a lifetime than trying to find an extra 30 minutes in your daily routine. If you make this your minimum requirement, you’ll find more often than not, that you will exceed this simply because it is achievable and sustainable. Some days, that 5 minutes will turn into 10 because you realise you have the time. Use this principle for the basis of adopting new habits. Start small. Go for a 10 minute walk. You’ll realise that you may as well round it off at 30 minutes since you’re out and about anyway. Let’s play off this for a moment.
What if you aim for an overall goal of say, 2 hours of unstructured movement a week. This doesn’t require you to wake up at 5am every morning to force yourself to battle the sub-arctic temperatures because some crazy nutter on the interweb once suggested that this is the only way you can possibly get exercise into your busy routine. It simply means you can walk for 10 minutes here, walk for 30 minutes there, play frisbee with the kids or do star jumps whilst watching Masterchef because surely that show makes you fat by just watching it.
Let me go off on a bit of tangent here for a moment. I’m rather passionate about this point. Don’t worry, it all reconnects at the end.
Making play a priority in your life is more important than making exercise a priority in your life. Say whaaaat?? You heard me right. Play is the bare bones of living. Compare a family of inactive couch potatoes to that of a family where the parents make the effort to run and kick the football with the kids of a Sunday afternoon. The kids grow up learning how to move naturally. The odds are in their favour that they won’t grow up dreading school sport or having to slave for hours at a time at the gym. Moving should not be a chore. It’s a natural bodily function. Humans were made to move. It is not something that you need to try and fit into your busy schedule. It should simply be a part of your daily routine; naturally.
Do this calculation with me. If Play = Movement, and Play = Fun, then Movement must = Fun.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t this some mathematically law of transitive equality or something along those lines? So it must be right.
But if you must ask, if it’s fun, then surely it can’t be exercise. Well, sure. That is, if you define exercise in the conventional sense, being a combination of blood, sweat and tears. I’m unapologetic when I say, bootcamp is all yours my dear.
Now let’s take a quick look at the token ‘problem’ child or in some cases problem children. These are the ‘no-go’ areas in your life that produce anxiety, anguish, distress, you name it. The mere thought of it conjures negative feelings. Each person will no doubt have their own problem child in their life. Maybe you don’t value healthy eating. You despise the exercise. Or you find it so hard to wake up in the morning to go to work. You know you should love these things, but sometimes knowing you should do something isn’t enough to motivate you into action. Even educating yourself by reading every dieting, exercise or motivation book on this planet is never enough to make you change your lifestyle habits. That’s because you don’t understand your own motivations behind these things. Quite often, we can still be motivated but for the wrong reasons and in these cases, change is often not sustainable in the long term.
You need to start asking yourself these questions. 
Let’s use exercising as a case example here.
Why? I want to get fit.
Why do I want to get fit? So I can look good.
Why do I want to look good? So I can feel more confident about myself.
Why do I want to feel more confident about myself? So I don’t have to feel ashamed of myself.
Why do I feel ashamed of myself? Because I don’t love and accept myself.
This, my friends, is as far as we’ll dig for now, but you can see how these questions are powerful! Now, I don’t suggest barraging your work colleagues with all these ‘whys’ the next time they complain about how much they hate their job. The interrogation may not be as openly received as you hope and you may find yourself sporting a freshly brewed cup of coffee all over your front. Some people just aren’t ready to face the facts. They may not be up to where you are right now. Give them time. Who knows, they may even stumble across this blog post all on their own one day. You might even giggle (or roll your eyes) when they then decide to share the link with you via a courteous email with the subject heading, “I found this blog post very interesting and thought of you. Hope it helps!”
Take note though, what is good for you today, may not be good for you tomorrow. Case in point. Just because I would not touch a tomato with a 10 foot pole when I was a 10 year old, does not mean I would not grow to like them. I now love tomatoes. Can’t get enough of them. Give me my tomato.
Our needs change as we learn, grow and mature. Our circumstances change. As do our internal desires and preferences. We need flexibility in our lifestyles for such things. A sustainable lifestyle has room for these things because it’s natural; it happens without you thinking too much of it. It is as close to effortless as Usain Bolt’s effortless cool. That’s some pretty high standards there folks. I won’t push the point too much beyond that. We can’t all be Bolts. But you can be you. And that’s pretty spesh too.
As in the wise words of the lovely Judy Garland, “Be a first rate version of yourself, not a second rate version of someone else.”
So it’s time to dig deep now miners. Time to get to the root of why you do what you do. Is it simply because that’s what your parents taught you? You never bothered to challenge yourself and ask yourself, why do I do what I do? Or are you taking the victim’s path and telling yourself, I don’t know any better? (clearly you do if you dare to question something in your life in this way.) When you feel like you can be doing something better, or you feel you are doing something wrong, then more than likely, you probably can and you probably are. Just saying.
But that’s ok. You’re on the right path to discovering how you can create a more sustainable lifestyle for yourself because by asking these questions, you’re creating opportunities to learn more about yourself. Now it’s time to go out there and start searching for some darn answers! They won’t come knocking on your door unless you’re lucky enough to have Kenny Brooks come by your neighbourhood.
“If opportunity doesn’t knock, build a door.”
-Milton Berle
It’s time to start taking control of your life. You choose what you give your time to each day. You dictate what you pour your energy and time into. These things are finite. Your resources are limited. But your imagination, your options, the amount of joy you can extract from these moments, these are infinite.
It’s time to get real people.
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