Oh man what a spiritual journey this has been for the past two and a half months of traveling Asia. I didn’t expect to find myself again and reconnect with the 19 year old version of me who had that child like joy for life when I was hitchhiking Canada and the US and just living out of my backpack.
One of the big realization I had on this trip was how much I was constantly adding complexity in my life by always trying to optimize everything. And that was sucking some of the fun out of life for me.
It was a form of “Control freakism” that I developed when I was a caregiver to my late partner because I had to be that guy. I needed to provide, take care of and try to save her and it stayed after she passed. But I’m realizing now five plus years after her death that it’s not serving me anymore and making me miss out on the joys of life.
And it’s certainly not how I want to live for the rest of my life. There is control what you can’t control but I was operating on the level of trying to control the uncontrollable and that has taken a toll on my mind and body.
But it was developed out of necessity during a hard time of my life because I wanted to heal her cancer. So I became an over-optimizer and my mode of trying to be in control which added so much complexity to my life.
It sounds funny to say because you would think optimizing things would make things simpler and it normally does but not in the way I was doing it.
And not to toot my own horn but I’m a pretty good darn optimizer. I’ve built a successful company where I only work three weeks out of the month and only work 3-4 hours a day and the first 7 days of every month that had served over 1200 people in just 6 years, I go on complete digital detox (No social media, no work, no email, no youtube, TV, etc…) for 7 days EVERY SINGLE MONTH for almost 3 years now.
I’ve optimized my personal life with Ivy, our living, finances, personal projects, travels, etc… As a proof we are traveling Asia for 3 months right now.
I’m the guy that when I’m in my Uber on the way to the airport my brain thinks about how to unload the car efficiently, that I need to grab a cart to carry our luggage and which luggage to load first to have a strong base because one has a softshell and the other a hard shell, that my passport should be on the outside pocket, ready to grab, that we need to go the bathroom before we check-in our luggage because usually the line is longer and I know I’ll have to pee from the long Uber ride so I don’t have to be uncomfortable, etc…
I’m sure you get the picture, all of that took place in my head on the way to the airport… or at least it used to be like that.
I’ve learned to embrace slow living and non-optimization (which I still struggle with, so not saying I’m perfect with this).
Because I was optimizing so much in my head that I wasn’t living in the present and whenever I was done optimizing I would find the most random shit to optimize.
And on this trip I caught myself as I was writing in my daily journal just like I have for the past two plus years.
When I really boil it down, there is nothing more to optimize, all that is left is for me to… live!
And that hit me like a ton of bricks, I was adding “complexity” through optimization to “do something” and all that was left was to LIVE which is scary.
This may sound weird to some of you, but again I’m human and if I’m going through it, there ain’t no way in hell I’m the only one going through it ahah.
It’s scary to just to live, it’s scary to just…be.
When you feel that your worth is reliant on productivity, on helping others, on “doing things” so you can feel worthy. It’s scary to not do that all the time and trust that the world isn’t going to fall apart or at least your internal world.
It takes courage to live fully as you without having to prove to yourself or anyone that you are enough and allowed to just be. Without guilt of enjoying your life. Without remorse because your life is so good. Without guilt of being happy just because.
I know all my overachiever readers are nodding their heads right now.
So my focus in the past 1 month more specifically has been to simplify my life by cutting projects that didn’t need to exist, by leaning out our back end team at our company, by simplifying our daily schedule to just doing 2-3 things MAX per day versus trying to optimize every single 10 min block there is.
That has freed up so much mental space and I can feel it in my body, my head and I have a greater sense of peace when I’m moving through the world versus being in a rush the whole time.
I know that “simplifying” can be a form of optimization and I’ve questioned myself on that as well and in this case for me my pattern was to add more layers to whatever I was doing so that I would have something to optimize so I’ve removed the layers and am doing less things so that there is nothing left to optimize.
I’m recording less content but being more intentional with my podcast and youtube videos as an example.
I’m taking time to write from my soul once a week for substack. There is no structure to this post. I’m just sitting down and letting my soul write whether 1 person reads it or 0 people read it.
I paused for 5 mins to re-read what I wrote so far
I hope this makes sense. I know I’m just figuring things out as I move along and this blog post is a documentation of that I guess.
The older I’m getting the more peaceful life I want, I’m getting tired of all that chaos you see online with quick and easy steps to success, to happiness or to live your best life.
All those people are just figuring their shit out along the way so I’ve learned to disconnect from that type of content. That’s why I just share what I’m going through and not telling anyone what to do when it comes to life because we are all different, I’m on my path and regardless of how rocky it’s been I’m grateful to be where I am.
I never thought in a million years I would have the blessing to do what I do, with the love of my life by my side and living the type of life I live.
I felt guilty for years of how good my life became post caregiver because I didn’t feel like I deserved it because my late partner didn’t get to live and enjoy that life.
But I’ve healed that and I don’t feel guilty anymore, I worked my ass off to be here, took risk, I sacrificed a lot, I served a lot of people and will continue to.
I deserve all the ups and downs that come from this journey and I’m here for it wherever it brings me.
So all this to say, I simplified my life so that I had less to worry about so that I could focus on being present and enjoying this life journey that I am on with the people I love.
I just want to serve our members, spend time with my wife, with my parents and family. Travel, meet cool people, write, record podcast and do things that fuel my soul which is everything I just listed.
I hope this blog post helps, maybe it didn’t and that’s ok because I wrote it for me ❤️
Have an incredible week and I’ll see you next week.
Maxime
