The Mid-Life Crises Antidote: Finding My Flow Update #6
Newsletter #41
Wahoooo!!! Welcome!
I believe a magical flow exists for everyone’s life.
Not like a preordained destiny.
But certain paths exist that only you could walk due to your unique skills, experiences and circumstances.
I see it as an alignment of what gives you flow internally, with what’s flowing for you externally.
Csikszentmihalyi’s research beautifully articulates the concept of flow state and how to find your internal flow.
But to find what’s flowing externally I believe you need to listen to the universe.
The problem is the universe can’t use words. It uses other means that are easy to miss or dismissed as luck or coincidence if you’re not listening.
I believe the universe's language is ‘ease and resistance’ (which coincidentally makes the acronym EAR).
Resistance as a way to redirect. Ease as a way to say continue.
The crazy 18-month journey I’ve been on since quitting my job has led to an unwavering belief in this.
There’s no other way for me to explain going from popping-up with 13 headsets on a beach on a small island in Thailand to becoming Bali’s largest supplier of silent disco headsets with 350 headsets and running events at beach clubs.
When you find your flow it’s crazy how quickly ambitions become reality.
My desire to write about this is to record reflections of my own journey. But equally to increase “safety” for others who are keen to find their flow. So without further ado…
Update #6: The Mid-Life Crises Antidote
Feeling disillusioned by the traditional corporate career path? I know the feeling…
The sense of loss from not knowing what else to do (and betrayal for trusting and investing so much time and money into a process that didn’t deliver on the promise you thought it would).
The sense of fear of quitting and ending up in a worse situation.
The sense of isolation from others who appear to be happy walking that path.
When everyone around you lives one way and appears perfectly content, but it leaves you feeling empty, it’s hard not to feel like there’s something wrong with you.
However, what if our disillusionment has just come earlier than most?
After all, “midlife crises” are seen as expected in western culture.
Looking at it from a business perspective, if a factory created a product that was expected to be faulty, it would change the process.
Yet the common path for us to walk: school -> university -> job hasn’t changed in over a hundred years. Isn’t it fair enough for us to begin to search for alternatives?
In the midst of my own crisis it led me to ask: what “why’s” lead to fulfilment? What path could I walk instead? What did I wish I’d known?
Three Pillars of Why
I’ve found my answer to be in the “Three Pillars of Why”. Three areas I believe careers bring fulfillment.
Basic Needs
The first pillar fulfills the needs Maslow identified as survival, connection and esteem.
At a bare minimum what does every job do?
It pays you, puts you in a team and gives you a title.
By paying you it gives you the ability to meet your basic needs. By being able to afford food, shelter and clothing we fulfill our desire for safety.
By putting you in a team it fulfills our desire for a sense of connection and belonging.
By giving you a title it provides status fulfilling our desire for esteem and self-worth.
Any job in the world can fulfill these needs. With our desire to fulfil them so strong it can also keep us in jobs we don’t enjoy. This is what kept me in my role for 3 years despite knowing it wasn’t what I wanted to be doing.
Mastery (of a craft)
When you ask someone “what do you do?”, how do they respond?
“Chef”, “Engineer”, “Teacher”.
The craft their career is based on.
By focusing our careers on a craft it fulfills our desire for a sense of accomplishment, progress and mastery, it puts us in flow and brings joy.
The western world views careers through this lens. However, I believe by viewing careers strictly through this lens is what causes midlife crises to be “normal”.
After fulfilling my basic needs and sense of mastery, in the midst of my crisis it left me asking, “what’s all this for?” I was missing a sense of meaning.
Mission
The third pillar is our desire for a sense of meaning and transcendence. I believe this is found in serving something greater than us. A mission.
I believe the “holy grail” for a career is to fulfil our survival needs, using a craft we love, to serve a cause that’s meaningful to us.
But if you’re like me and have no idea “what you want to do”, let alone a mission you want to serve, how do you identify these things?
The Pathless Path
coined the term ‘Pathless Path’ to describe “an alternative to the default path. It is an embrace of uncertainty and discomfort. It’s a call to adventure in a world that tells us to conform”.The need for the Pathless Path stems from how school teaches us the knowledge to work but fails to teach us the self-knowledge to identify what that work ideally is.
The Pathless Path serves as a journey to bring that self-knowledge. Specifically how it uncovers your mastery and mission.
Mastery
Robert Greene in his book “Mastery” shares:
All of us are born unique. It’s marked in our DNA we are literally a one-time phenomenon, our exact genetic makeup has never occurred before nor will it ever be repeated.
For all of us, this uniqueness first expresses itself in childhood through certain primal inclinations.
These inclinations are forces within us that come from a deeper place than conscious words can express. They draw us to certain experiences and away from others.
The problem is we’re also tribal animals. We have a disposition to want to fit in. As hunter-gatherers our survival depended on it. Consequently, one of our greatest fears is the fear of ostracisation & rejection.
Unfortunately our natural inclinations and desire to fit in can become competing forces.
Especially if these inclinations feel outside the norm of culture or the expectations of those around us. In these instances the fear of ostracisation is usually much greater than the fear of not following these natural inclinations.
Sadly, this leads us to lose awareness of them.
The magic of the Pathless Path is how it reconnects us to these natural inclinations. As the name shares it’s “pathless”, there’s no track to follow. The track becomes your natural inclination.
Upon quitting my job to follow the Pathless Path, my best guess was I’d meet my basic needs through an online program empowering people to overcome fear.
I had no idea the real answer would be running pop-up silent disco’s on beaches around south-east Asia.
If you told me within 12 months I’d be Bali’s largest silent disco rental provider and running events with 100+ people at beach clubs I wouldn’t have believed you. But now I couldn’t imagine it being any other way. This is the magic of the Pathless Path.
Mission
However, these natural inclinations don’t only guide us to craft, it uncovers where we find meaning as well.
A sense of meaning and transcendence comes from serving something bigger than yourself. A cause, community, set of values.
What cause, community or set of values you find meaning and transcendence in comes from the emotional resonance you have with that thing.
The resonance comes from a sense of connection. That connection stems from our own experience.
My girlfriend shares that everyone has a flame inside them. This flame is what makes them, them. It is their greatest superpower and blindspot.
Twelve months into our relationship she shared my flame was playfulness.
However, in my early 20’s disillusioned by my path it felt like this flame dulled. I became trapped in a vortex of existential thoughts. My lightness, my zest, my playfulness gone.
Moving to the other side of this experience I now find meaning in connecting people back to their own playful, loving, care-free self.
I do this through creating spaces that empower this essence to be expressed.
Firstly through my disco’s.
Secondly through experiences that gamify life. Most notably the Growth Game. An experience that gamifies accountability to create a life you love.
Six year old Nic wanted to be the owner of a game shop. Twenty years later my natural inclinations led me to be the creator of games.
Setting Yourself Up For Success
It would be negligent of me to simply say to anyone feeling lost to quit your job and embark on the pathless path immediately. Like any journey you need to set yourself up for success.
For me this involved four things:
Savings I could live off
The grind of my job became worth it when I had at least six months of savings available to me to embark on this journey.
Moving to a place to reduce my cost of living
One of the biggest pressures of the Pathless Path is what I call the “runway game”. How long can I live until I run out of money and need to return home? By moving to a place that is cheaper to live you immediately increase how much time you have in the game.
Being in an environment that inspired and motivated me
We become our environment. If you want to live a certain way, surround yourself with people living those lives.
Doing one thing a week that terrified me
Our brains are survival machines, they want to keep us safe. Anything new or unknown triggers a fear response. With no direction, guard rails or strict process everything about the pathless path is unknown and can trigger this fear response. By holding myself accountable to overcome these fears, it ensured I kept taking steps on the journey.
My motivation for writing this blog, sharing the “Pathless Path” and this whole “finding my flow” series is creating awareness of alternate pathways. One of the biggest barriers for me not leaving the traditional path earlier was not knowing anyone else in my life pursuing these alternate paths. I had no case studies, examples or anyone I could speak to and gain confidence from.
So to anyone out there who may be feeling the same way, I hear you, I see you and my dm’s are always open.
What’s coming up?
Vibe Rise - an invitation to start the first 5-days of Feb with a dance. Each day I’ll share one of my favourite uplifting bangers you can wake-up and dance to.
I love that unlike our favourite sugary treats that are bad for us, waking up in this way is endorsed by science 🙌🏼
1. Mentally = stimulates our mind giving a natural energy boost
2. Physically = gets our heart pumping improving circulation
3. Emotionally = the movement releases endorphins that make us feel good
Favourite videos of the past few months:
To anyone keen to learn the neurological antidote to fear:
How I went from the traditional path to finding my flow:
Epic moments of the past month:
Highlights of dancing around India:
Until the next newsletter,
Much Love,
Huzz
Beautiful tale of you flourishing on your unique path. Inspiring Nick! Keep up the smiles and passion for life!