Back in 2012, when I journeyed off seeking a better quality of life, I could not pinpoint what it actually meant. I was 42 and wearing myself at work, I felt circumstances were controlling me. I couldn't create balance in my life and it was apparent that my current way of living wasn’t making things any better. I had a notion that change was possible, that a better quality of life is achievable.
What could I learn from common ‘quality of life’ theories? According to Avraham Maslow's popular ‘Hierarchy of needs’ I had all the ‘needs’ and should have been content with my life. I had the ‘Basic needs’ - We owned an apartment in downtown Tel Aviv, and were progressing quite well on our mortgage returns. I was making a nice salary and we could afford whatever we needed. But it came with at an unbearable price of being minded to work 24/7. As per Maslow’s ‘Safety needs’, though I was performing well and business was good, there was no guarantee it would last. I didn’t own the business and could be replaced on a whim. So, having the position of CEO and making a good income did not provide a sense of security either. Per ‘Belongingness and Love needs’, I had a loving family, our elder son David was four years old, but I was hardly spending time with my family as I was mostly at work, either physically or mentally. Per ‘esteem and sense of accomplishment’ and ‘self-fulfillment’, I had an excellent reputation in my field of experience and I’ve fulfilled every dream and goal I had - ‘been there done that’. My experience showed that the satisfaction of accomplishment is short lived. The next challenge will always be waiting on the horizon.
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| illustration 1: Avraham Maslow’s ‘Hierarchy of Needs’ quality of life theory |
Apparently these ‘needs’ that we must satisfy do not determine our ‘quality of life’ yet we tend to focus on them most of the time. We tend to be action oriented, and evaluate ourselves daily on how much we are doing, producing, and achieving. We have to-do lists and goals and resolutions. We tend to place priority on problem solving and accomplishing tasks (‘do’) so that we can yield some sort of result (‘have’), and ultimately become something or someone in the world (‘be’). This is also known as the ‘do > have > be’ orientation, or rather I should call it the disorientation. It’s quite reasonable to adopt this way of thinking as it is the orientation of our modern consumer economy, our education systems, our corporate culture and political systems.
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| illustration 2: example of a ‘Do > Have > Be’ orientation of my earlier life |
Up until my early 40s, I was living the by the ‘do > have > be’ equation. It was unknowingly, as a habit of life’s inertia. More so, when I looked around me, I found examples of people who did not necessarily enjoy good health, nor financial prosperity or outstanding achievements, and yet seemed calm and composed and generally satisfied with their life. What makes the difference?
As I have learned and experienced through my journey, this somewhat elusive differentiating characteristic of life is known as ‘Being’. ‘Being’, as in ‘human being’ and ‘well-being’, is the subjective way we experience life. It is nature or essence of who we are. The simplest and most practical way to define my ‘Being’ is to ask, “Who do people meet when they meet me?”, or in other words, “What do people sense in my presence?”. For example, safe and relaxed or stressed and alert.
We use the same words to describe “Feeling” and “Being”, but in fact they are quite different. Feelings are fleeting sentiments while ‘Being’ is substantial and enduring. For example, food can make us feel good and compensate temporarily for feeling bored or lonely, but it cannot fill the enduring distress of being lonely or being empty - hence the phenomena of emotional eating. Another example is feeling secure versus being secure - events such as earning a career advance or closing an excellent business transaction can feel great and have us temporarily feeling secure, but it’s just a matter of time until we feel the need for more.
As social beings, we can sense the being of others, and others can sense it in us. We can try to disguise or pretend an alternate being, but our demeanor, body language, tone of voice, eye contact, our vitality and several other subtle signals radiate our true ‘Being’. ‘Being’ is omnipresent, it transcends cultures and languages. Babies can sense others ‘Being’ long before they can understand spoken language.
Our own sense of ‘Being’ reflects upon the quality of our life, moment by moment, with every breath we take. Our ‘Being’ reflects on our relationships and as such it reflects on the long term and enduring outcomes of our interactions. To improve our quality of life is to develop our awareness of our own ‘Being’. Transforming our ‘Being’ is possible by turning our attention inwards, rather than focusing outwards. Attributing our quality of life to circumstances, to other people or to things we have or don’t have displaces our focus and hinders the transformation. This can be hard to accept, especially for someone like me - a rational, science oriented engineer. So I took the time to experience and verify enduring results before I felt confident to publish this post.
To transform my being ‘insecure’ I diverted my attention from my position, my salary, my boss, my age, my assets, my achievements, the trends in my industry, employment vs.age statistics and numerous other exterior distractions. Instead, I looked at what ‘Being Secure’ meant to me. What were my fears and beliefs about life’s perils and difficulties and the gap between feeling secure and being secure. Some of this research was done by intellectual questioning and reasoning, but understanding alone does not invoke transformation. Knowing our boundaries and understanding their origins does not dismantle them, for they are conditioned in us since childhood and teen experiences. We grow to observe and interpret the world through our conditioning, it is like the tinted lenses through which we gaze at the world. Our thought patterns and habits become well established through years of repetition, layer upon layer..
To lessen the conditionings that hinder us, we must reach the events in which they were created. To re-experience them, the imprints they made on our neural system, and observe them from a fresh and compassionate point of view. To do so we apply meditative techniques that focus our attention to the most subtle body sensations, known to the therapeutic world as ‘felt senses’. These revolutionary techniques are worthy of a post of their own.
For me this was, and continues to be, a wonderful journey of discovery. When I look inwards without prejudice, receptive to any outcome, wonderful lessons are revealed. I have learned that being secure is about accepting the transient nature of life. It is about coming to terms with the natural process of aging and my inevitable death. Life unfolds in numerous unexpected and uncontrollable ways, there is no formula for “securing a future”. But this is no source for worry, because it comes with the understanding that life is not hostile, it’s not a challenge of survival. “It's amazing, when the moment arrives that you know you'll be alright” - as in Aerosmith’s “Amazing” lyrics.
With these understandings comes freedom from needing to ‘do’ or ‘have’ various things. Sure, I continue to do many things which I am passionate about - I lead exciting initiatives, I do business, I set goals, I have my success and failures, but life is not centered around them, my sense of being is not dependent upon them. This independence reduces much of the stress and drama in day-to-day dilemmas, because when you are not dependent on things much less is at stake when you let them go. ‘Being’ oriented people are more relaxed to take risks, to admit their mistakes, to reveal their vulnerability, to express unpopular opinions and to stand out from the crowd. When we are ‘Being Oriented’ we are not reliant on a charismatic leader, a guru or a political party to provide our sense of belonging and safety. Because ‘being oriented’ means you know you already have all you really need - the inner capacity to choose who I want to ‘be’ in relations to whatever may come. As difficult as it may get, ultimately I’ll be alright. Viktor Frankl, who developed his philosophy for life out of the ashes of the Holocaust, concluded that “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing; the last of the human freedoms — to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.” Frankl survived more than three years in a succession of four Nazi concentration camps, including Auschwitz.
Learning the ‘Being’ framework confirmed some of my deeply held intuitions and provided a underpinning theory for why I believe them. It gave me clarity on what to focus on as I navigate my life, enabling me to compose a vision for my life - a vision of being. Instead of trying to figure out what I want to ‘do’ or ‘have’ in life, I wrote down who I wanted to ‘be’ based on my values. I composed a vision portraying who I want to be as a partner, as a father, as a son, as a brother. Who I want to be as a businessman, as a manager and as a coach. I carry this vision in my wallet as a compass, and though my life took many turns since I’ve embarked on my journey, the vision is just as relevant today as it was when I set off.
Life goes on, with it’s ups and downs. It is overwhelming and tiring at times, but I have learned that come what may, I can choose how it affects my quality of life. My life is an ongoing process in which every event, especially difficult ones, become opportunities for growth. When in a dilemma what to ‘do’, I remind myself of who I want to ‘be’, and the rest follows.
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| credit: Banksy |
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