I’ve been reflecting about what I enjoy doing lately. Trying to figure out what you enjoy is harder than it seems. We’re often influenced by what society tells us we should enjoy… like going for holidays, or shopping, or hanging out with friends or watching a movie. But that doesn’t mean we all enjoy these things. Some people just don’t enjoy traveling even if it’s for holidays. Some people don’t enjoy hanging out with people but rather stay at home.
So in the past few weeks I’ve been really thinking hard about what it is I enjoy and I found the best way to figure out what I enjoy is to take away the things that I thought I enjoyed from my life. So I’ve cut down on the holidays, I’ve limited my shopping to only things I need rather than things I wanted and I’ve only gone out whenever I felt like going out.
What I came to realize was that playing games (something I love), or going on holidays or retail therapy or any of these things create temporary highs that go away as fast as they come. That then creates the life that we have now… chasing one high after another. That whenever we get a bit of stress we’re tempted to feel that we should react by going for some shopping, or drinks with friends or a beach holiday.
Gaming or social media or any applications that were made to be addictive run on the same basis. They all need to be able to give you a high.. and in order to get that high, you need to have points of the game where you have your lows too. That’s why winning feels good only if it’s hard to win.. and if it comes off the back of some losses.
After some reflection, what I found I really enjoyed was learning stuff. Instead of keeping up with what my friends are doing on social media, the things I find myself doing is reading articles on Quora or Googling stuff and getting lost in the world of Wikipedia. I suddenly saw my life as a constant pursuit to learn about different things. My time on YouTube isn’t spent watching a PewDiePie or any funny Youtubers but instead watching documentaries.
I’ve found that I read a lot of books too and funny enough I realize why I enjoy my time with Shorty so much. It’s because she tends to have this natural desire too to learn about random things from the books or articles she reads and she tells me about them. She recently read a book about the evolution of human beings and how human beings were not meant to be monogamous… the studies she told me about from that book were mind blowing.
More importantly though it has changed the way I view stress. We often face stress because we are put into situations that are outside our comfort zone. Think about it though, if we’re constantly in our comfort zones then we don’t learn anything. So to be stressed… is to be learning something new.
That’s changed how I view everything. I now appreciate the stressful challenges I have in life and in business. I see it all as an opportunity to experience more… and to learn more. Suddenly with this new perspective, things aren’t as stressful as I thought they once were anymore.
Timothy Tiah – Co-Founder of Colony, Kuala Lumpur Co-Working Space