Things that enhance your life
I was listening to a 20-year-old interview with Tom Ford—of all people. This was one of these videos that pop up in your YouTube feed from time to time—I guess google is trying to cultivate me, or something like that. Tom was talking about fashion and art, and he kept coming back to the point that he liked to make things that enhanced people’s lives. I personally have never been much into fashion, but I can still imagine that you will appreciate a pair of pants more if they were designed by Tom Ford, than your normal pair—if you are into fashion.
Even though this is not my normal field of interest, the idea of making things that enhance your life resonated with me. Of course, most of us are not designers, or in the business of making things, but the idea of assessing things in terms of their ability to enhance your life is a really useful way of evaluating things, ideas, and our stuff and aspirations.
I heard somewhere that if you own too much stuff it will own you. I guess it kind of makes sense, but it always had a minimalist/anti-corporate feel to me. But if you look at it from this perspective, it starts to sound more meaningful: Look at your stuff—does it enhance your life, or is more like a burden that is holding you back, filling up your apartment, and making you less mobile.
When you assess your aspirations—both for material stuff, and in relation to achievements and goals—this perspective works very well. Why am I aiming for certain things—do I really want that stuff? And why do I want to improve myself? Often it is hard to hear your own authentic inner voice. There is a voice in your head--and it is speaking clearly—but most of the stuff it is uttering is not based on your values or ideas. It is the stuff that you have picked up along the way, or values and opinions that you think will resonate well with the people around you. They say that you become the average of the five people you spend the most time with—and I think this is the reason why. Their ideas and values become yours, and vice versa. To find your own inner voice and inner values, you need a tool that can orient you properly, and apparently, the head designer of Gucci has an elegant perspective on this.
We have both spent a few years training to be competitive Masters CrossFit athletes, and we have enjoyed teaming up with each other for CrossFit competitions. It was not unusual for us to be training six days a week, for 2 hours a day, leading up to a competition. If you add warm ups and commuting time, that’s at least three hours per day. That’s a big chunk of time for two fathers of three kids each. So immediately we’re faced with the assessment—is this enhancing my life? Well, unfortunately, that amount of time puts a strain on our family life. It was hard to figure in that much training time with full-time work, and still be spending a good amount of quality time with our kids, not to mention sharing a fair amount of parenting and household chore workloads with our wives. Was it enhancing our health? Ultimately, no. Nagging aches and pains, low energy after training, and daily doses of pre-workout drinks often left us feeling like zombies at home. All of this we tended to ignore in favor of the “tunnel vision” you can develop when you are obsessively chasing a goal.
Look at your life—your stuff and your aspirations—and assess them well. What will enhance me as an individual, and what will enhance and support my life going forward?
Inspiration and wisdom can come from the most unusual and unexpected places, and deeper ideas have a tendency to transcend the barriers of the specific field from which they came.
That was all for today… Until next time
Scott and Lennart