Rethinking Truth

So far at RethinkingTruth.com I’ve only written about nutrition. This post however, is something quite different. Here I outline the underlying model from which everything at RethinkingTruth.com originates.

Welcome to the post of posts: “The four most important things in life”.

In the appendix at the end of this post, I’ll briefly explain how I’ve come to my life understanding. Having read that you can decide for yourself if the path I’ve taken might have led to some findings that could be of interest to you.

We move through life…

We all move through life differently. Some prefer to do as little as possible, others live at full speed. What all of us have in common though, is that we spend our time on something. What’s interesting to me is reflecting upon how we spend our time and why we spend it like we do.  Let’s do a mini-experiment here. Ask yourself the following questions:

• How do you spend your time?
• What’s the 5 things you spend most of your time on?
• What are the main reasons why you spend your time in this way?

It takes a while to answer the above three questions and I recommend spending time reflecting upon them. There’s a lot of other questions we could ask too like “What did you do during the different phases of your life and what’s the reasons you did what you did?” These types of questions will increase our understanding of how you have moved and currently are moving through life.

Having said that, why is this at all interesting?

…but, do we know where are we going?

The reason the above questions are valuable is that moving doesn’t mean we’re moving in a direction that’s good for us. Ask yourself the following questions to see if you too find some truth in this:

• Do you know what you want in life and if yes, what do you want?
• Do you sometimes feel you don’t have time to do what you really want to do?
• Do you sometimes do things not because you want to but because of others’ expectations or to fit in?
• Have you ever gone through a mid-life crisis or know someone who has?
• Have you ever continued a relationship with someone even though it wasn’t good for you?
• Have you ever spent lots of time working, exercising, or doing something else that you later realized wasn’t all that important?

The point I want to make here isn’t that we always know or can know what’s right for us and be sure about the direction in which we’re headed. That’s impossible in my view. What I am saying is that moving doesn’t mean we’re headed in the right direction. Even though we can never know for sure what the right direction is we should spend time reflecting upon it, trying to understand ourselves and what we want out of this life of ours. Perhaps we should even dear asking ourselves the question of questions:

What are the most important things in life?

The four most important things in life are….

This tree in Namibia could certainly be the tree of life. It’s about 10 meters wide!

Below I’ll outline the things I believe are the most important in life for almost every human being alive. Yes, we’re all different, but just as we all need air and water there are certain other things we all need to.

Before we can look at the four most important things in life however, we need to define a “life” and to provide the  fundamental assumption I’ve built my life-view on.

The way I define “life” is pretty simple:

“Life is the ability and time we have to interact with the world”

The underlying assumption my life-view is based on is:

“Living a great life means interacting with the world in a way that gives us meaning and positive emotions without causing harm.”

With this in mind; here’s my model of the four most important things in life:

As you can see from the model above I believe health, relationships, values & dreams and a positive self-view are the four most important things in life. Over the next few months I’m going to write in detail about each these. I’ll start here and now though by briefly outlining “why” I think these four are the most important things in life.

Take care of your health

“Health is life. Care for it as you would care for your newborn child.”

Poor health will both reduce the time you have in this world and your capability to live the life you want to live. Therefore, if we want to live for a long time with a mind and body that can take us where we want, we must take care of our health. I’m not saying life can’t be good if we’re sick, disabled or have other health challenges. I’m saying my research suggests that people would like to feel capable of living the way they value and to live for a long time. Health, consequently, is absolutely fundamental.

Unfortunately, most of us only realize the importance of health when its gone. That’s a great shame. The good thing is that we’re capable of influencing our health and it’s easier than most people think. We’ve already started addressing the “nutrition” part of health here at RethinkingTruth.com and going forward we’ll outline a model of what the key drivers of health are and what to do about them.

Invest in your relationships

“Spend quality time with the people you love and the relationships will grow stronger and deeper. Don’t, and they’ll slowly fade away.”

My friend Ivi and I taking care of our friendship at a party!

When talking about life we’re used to hearing ourselves and others say that the most important thing in life is family and friends. It’s hard to disagree and the evidence supporting this is overwhelming. What’s not as fully understood or discussed however is the importance investing in relationships have for their ability to flourish and grow. To be frank; many of us have little knowledge about what “investing” means in this respect and consequently how to go about investing.

The above is likely one of the reasons why we see so many people divorce, why the time we spend with our friends steadily declines as we age and why many of us spend more time in-front of the TV or computer than we spend with our kids. Personally, I don’t think these things happen because we want them to. I think they happen because we don’t allow ourselves the time to reflect on what really matters and consequently we’re not fully aware of the impact small choices we make in our day-to-day lives have on our relationships. In order to have good relationships I believe we need to both spend a considerable amount of time with the people we love and be really present during that time.

Live your values & pursue your dreams

“Reflecting on what kind of person you want to be and what you want out of life will increase your understanding of yourself. Living according to this understanding will give you a sense of purpose, fulfillment and peace.”

Being healthy, having a positive self-view and great relationships is wonderful. But what is the “you” in you? What makes you different to everyone else? What are the things that drain you of energy, positive thoughts and fill you with sadness? What are the things that give you meaning, put a smile on your face and make you jump around of joy?

Reflecting on what we stand for and what’s important to us will allow us to increase our understanding of ourselves and what we want to do with our lives. The earlier we start this process of reflection the better we will become at understanding what’s right for us, what we value and what dreams to pursue.

Spitzkoppe in Namibia is a place where dreams are born

Install a positive view of yourself

“How we view ourselves is the foundation from which our life is built on. Make the foundation a strong one.”

When we don’t have a positive self-view we typically compare ourselves with other people, feel insecure about ourselves and are too sensitive to the opinion of others. We also tend to make choices based on other people’s expectations rather than do what truly feels right for us.

Having a positive self-view on the other hand means accepting ourselves for who we are and what we believe it. It means having the courage necessary to make our own decisions and to live life the way that’s right for us.

Personally, I realized not long ago that I’ve lived most of my life without having a strong enough self-view. Only during the last few years have I been able to understand and accept myself to the degree where I very rarely feel “below” anyone or feel afraid to say things I believe because of other people’s judgment. I still have improvement areas however, especially with regards to dealing better with negative feedback and rejection.

The four most important things in life are highly interdependent

Health. Relationships. Values & dreams. Self-view. All of these influence one another. For example, how healthy you are affects the energy and time you have available to spend on the other three. Your self-view affects your mental health, how you interact with people and to what degree you “allow” yourself to live your personal values & dreams and so forth. Improvement in any one of these areas will consequently not only have an impact in that area, but the other areas as well.

In the coming months I’ll blog about the four most important things in life. For each of them I’ll outline the key factors that most significantly affect them and I’ll provide specific recommendations of what you can do about all of this stuff too. I’m excited about this journey and I can’t wait to get started!

Thanks for reading

Bjarte

———————

Summary

We move through life…

We all move through life differently. Here’s a few questions that’ll increase your awareness of how you’re currently moving and why:

• How do you spend your time?
• What’s the 5 things you spend most of your time on?
• What are the main reasons why you spend your time in this way?

…but, do we know where are we going?

Moving doesn’t mean we’re moving in a direction that’s good for us. Here’s a few questions that’ll increase your awareness of how the degree to which you’re moving in the right direction:

• Do you know what you want in life and if yes, what do you want?
• Do you sometimes feel you don’t have time to do what you really want to do?
• Do you sometimes do things not because you want to but because of others’ expectations or to fit in?
• Have you ever gone through a mid-life crisis or know someone who has?
• Have you ever continued a relationship with someone even though it wasn’t good for you?
• Have you ever spent lots of time working, exercising, or doing something else that you later realized wasn’t all that important?

The most important things in life and why

• Take care of your health:
  • Taking care of your health provides you with the physical & mental capabilities required to live the life you want
• Invest in your relationships
  • Spend quality time with the people you love and the relationships will grow deeper and stronger. Don’t and they’ll slowly fade away
• Live your values & pursue you dreams
  • Reflecting on what you stand for and what’s important to you will allow you to know who you want to be and what you want to do with your life
• Install a positive view of yourself
  
  • A positive self-view enables you accept yourself for who you are and what you believe in and provides you with the courage needed to make your own decisions in life

The four most important things in life are highly interdependent

Health. Relationships. Values & dreams. Self-view. The four most important things in life all influence one another and improvements in one area will yield results in the other areas to.

Appendix: Brief summary of how I’ve gained my understanding about life

I don’t claim to live a perfect life, nor do I claim to be an expert in how people should live theirs. In my view there’s no such a thing as a “life expert”; we all need to find our own way. What I do claim however, is to have an opinion of what I believe are the four most important things in life. Below I’ll briefly mention some factors that have influenced how I’ve come to my understanding.

So far in my life I’ve worked with special needs children , as a paper-boy, as a mail-man, for NGOs and for two management consultancy companies. I’ve travelled the world for 15 months and lived four of my last ten years abroad spending a great deal of time speaking to different people all over the world about life and what’s important to them. I’ve listened to the desires and dreams of some of the poorest and richest people on the planet. I’ve met many people who have had lots of “success” but by their own definitions haven’t “succeeded in life” and vice versa. I’ve spoken to people who had their dear ones taken from them all too soon and I’ve had conversations with people at palliative care clinics about what happens to someone who suddenly is told death is only a few weeks away.

I believe insight can be gained from stories as the above and from general life knowledge. Over the years I’ve created hundreds of models in an effort to represent such insight in a way meaningful to myself and others. Creating models and continually challenging my beliefs through reading and listening to others has arguably become my main interest in life.

Many of the people who have influenced me are authors. Below, in no particular order, I’ve listed some of them plus some other important influencers of mine:

• Stephen Covey
• Siddhartha Gautama Buddha
• Peter Drucker
• Dale Carnegie
• Dailai Lama
• Nelson Mandela
• Alain de Button
• Deepak Chopra
• Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
• Viktor Frankl
• Malcom Gladwell
• Aravind Adiga
• Doug Newburg
• V.S. Ramachandran
• Abraham Maslow
• Stephen Denning
• John M. Gottman
• Carol S. Dweck
• Chip & Dan Heath
• Lao Tzu
• Benjamin Franklin
• Bjørn Bakke
• Bergljot Austrheim
• Ivar Andre Madsen
• Tommy Glesnes
• Ismael Juma
• Jiten Bhagat
• Kristina Kollerud
• Per Jacobsson
• …

If you want more details about my background place contact me through the contact section or Twitter.