Thriving - What I've Learned About Building A Life You Love

What does it mean to thrive? Keys to lasting joy and a life's work.

Jun 06, 2021

I hope this finds all 114 of you well this Sunday! If you’re reading this and know someone that might be interested in this growing community of humans looking to thrive share A&T with them!

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I started this newsletter so I could explore what it meant to thrive. Specifically, having reached a point in my life where I was mentally and physically drained I needed to figure out what happened and how to protect against it in the future. The journey started before A&T officially launched, but that was the genesis for this newsletter - to understand how we can build enduring joy into our lives and really thrive.

I've been reading The Book of Joy by the Dalai Lama, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and Douglas Abrams and I've been struck by how these men have built extremely joyful lives in the face of extreme adversity and hardship. The lessons shared in this book and my own journey over the last two years to answer some of these questions for myself have compelled me to try and synthesize what I've learned about how to thrive. I'm only at the very beginning, it is certainly not complete, but I'm curious if any of this resonates with you :)

What Does It Mean To Thrive?

Personally, it's more of a feeling than something I can necessarily put into words. The way I will describe it is it has felt like a level of tranquility, calm, and satisfaction that I feel deep in my belly. It's certainly not a feeling I have one hundred percent of the time, but today I have it more often than I have had in my entire life.

Life will get harder and offer many unexpected challenges I'm sure (hopefully nothing too intense) and much like physical fitness requires constant effort, I believe the consistency of this feeling is a product of continuous effort and dedication to developing the mind and body.

To me thriving is all about this feeling, this sense of calm, this deep satisfaction, and I think there are some keys to feeling that more often every day.

What Has Helped Me On My Journey To Thriving

The list below is long and this is meant as a brain dump. Hopefully, it's not overwhelming but I wanted to highlight the different areas I've explored over the last year and a half, which I believe have all contributed to how I feel today. I won't dive deep into any of them, but I'll briefly highlight what I mean by them and how it shows up in my life.

Physical fitness and moving my body

We are meant to use our bodies but given the nature of knowledge work + how our society is set up we really don't have to use them all that much. Simply moving around, does wonders for your mental health → reducing stress, improving cognitive functioning, and overall just changing your brain to feel better.

It's been extraordinary how even something simple like waking up and going for a walk before doing anything makes me 10X better before I start my day.

Eating the right food

Real foods, stuff we find outside, and more often than not, plants, nourish the body. They help you feel light, fill you with energy, and keep you satisfied. I eat probably 80% of the time healthy (I sneak chips during the day, I have a tiny bit of sweets after most emails, and I'll eat the occasional fried chicken sandwich on the weekends), but 10/11 out of 14 meals are mostly plants.

I notice that when I eat poorly, consistently, I get more irritated, I lose energy more quickly, I'm less happy, and overall just feel worse.

Fasting

This is a new one for me, but it's unlocked a ton of energy, made me feel much lighter and my body feels healthier and more resilient. The way this shows up for me is I'll typically eat between the hours of 1 to 7 and won't eat before or after. On the weekends I'll sometimes skip lunch and just eat a big meal around 3-5 pm.

Fasting keeps your frame lighter (less weight is typically associated with longer life), but it surprisingly helps with improving your mood, helps you think more clearly, and feel less stressed or angry.

Meditation and observing thought

“If your mental health is sound, then when disturbances come, you will have some distress but quickly recover.” - Dalai Lama

We've grown up in a society (most of us) where non-verbal education and thinking is highly reinforced. If you look at the stats 1 in 2 people will develop a mental illness in the US. There is a ton that goes into that, but a big part of that is how much time we spend caught up in our thought.

One of the basic functions of meditation is helping you become aware of thought as it arises. Practicing this regularly helps me stay in the moment and be less caught up in the random noise the mind conjures. It brings more silence, more tranquility, and I'm far more present, which helps me enjoy moments more, connect with loved ones more deeply, and just have more fun.

Journaling

This is a parallel exercise to meditation for me in that it gets thoughts out of my head and onto paper. This helps me clear my mind and also make more sense of things that are taking up brain space. I usually feel more clear, less anxious, and lighter as a result.

It's also an opportunity for me to remind myself of what's awesome in my life and helps me focus my energy on what I want to spend time doing the rest of the day.

Being in nature

There is something humbling about being in nature, which makes all of our worries seem a bit trivial. It's so vast, beautiful, and indifferent to what's going on with us that it really helps put things into perspective for me - i.e. enjoy the moments.

Being outside affects your brain in ways that reduce stress, depression, anxiety, and increase our attention capacity, creativity, ability to connect with others, and well-being. Before we had all these buildings and cool technology we were outside all the time. We've got a connection with the outdoors and I think most people can feel that when they start to spend meaningful time outside.

Deepening compassion, warmheartedness

“The more time you spend thinking about yourself, the more suffering you will experience.” - Dalai Lama

Thinking of others before you think of yourself has a remarkable effect on dissipating frustration, checking anger, and relieving anxiety. A lot of our suffering happens when our thinking is self-centered - how someone was rude to you, how you have enormous problems at work, or how you can't believe this thing happened to you.

One of the most consistent lessons preached by the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu cover is the importance of compassion and warmheartedness to lasting and enduring joy.

The moment your focus goes from this person was rude to me, to I wonder what is going on with them? Are they okay? Maybe they're in a lot of pain, your focus expands beyond yourself. It becomes clearer that we're all connected and all the same (one out of 7B+ humans).

It's not always easy, but compassion and warm-heartedness lead away from self-centeredness and builds more enduring joy.

Practicing gratitude

“The most important quality to have toward your day is gratitude for what you have experienced, even for what was hard and what allowed you to learn and grow.” - Dalai Lama

Expressing and practicing gratitude regularly is an amazing trick to open your eyes to all that is good in your life. The more you do it, the more you find in your life that is deserving of gratitude.

It's basically teaching yourself how to win the lottery every day. No matter what happens or whatever does not go your way, you've built up an insane inventory of positive things in your life that you can fall back on and appreciate.

Leaning into authenticity

“You are made for perfection, but you are not yet perfect. You are a masterpiece in the making.” - Dalai Lama

Nothing sucks more than being someone you're not. We spend so much time being told that we can be anyone in the world and do anything we want. Frankly, I think better advice is to be exactly who you are today and enjoy figuring that out forever.

It reduces the anxiety of reaching some arbitrary standard of perfection and forces us to look inward for answers vs. outward. The result, I think is it becomes easier and more fun to live life moment to moment, always curious how you will react, what you'll think, and what you will or won't enjoy.

Humility and the joy of not knowing

I feel like the more stuff I do in my life the more I realize how little I know and that gets me pretty excited. I used to put so much pressure on myself to know or to have answers, which kind of sucked because it creates a bunch of anxiety, serious impostor syndrome, and is an extremely arrogant position to take because how could I possibly have the answers to things I've never done or experienced before.

Humility is a superpower to well-being. It quiets the ego, makes it easier to listen, and creates an endless opportunity for learning and discovery. Humility makes every time you learn something new a delightful surprise vs. a reminder of your flaws.

I think it also makes us live a little more lightly - in the face of infinite complexity and unknowing, I think we take ourselves a little less seriously and have a bit more fun.

Being kind and forgiveness

“Without forgiveness, we remain tethered to the person who harmed us. We are bound to the chains of bitterness, tied together, trapped……When we forgive, we take back control of our own fate and our feelings. We become our own liberator.” - Dalai Lama

It’s easy to beat yourself up about not doing something a certain way or saying the wrong thing or not being where you wanted to be by now. While life is extremely short, living each moment can feel excruciatingly long if you’re hard on yourself and on others.

To err is to be human and one of the things that has made my life far easier is trying to be kind to myself when I mess up and kind to others. There’s no advantage to holding onto grudges or beating yourself up, it just makes you feel worse, you’re less open to new people/experiences, and just makes you feel heavier.

Learning to forgive (both yourself and others) is extremely hard, but the more I’ve done it the more I’m convinced its a key component to compassion and living well.

Investing in my relationships

“Wherever you have friends that’s your country, and wherever you receive love, that’s your home.” - Dalia Lama

I'm not perfect at this but I think I've vastly improved here, which is I try to pick up the phone whenever my friends or family call, no matter what and I call my loved ones far more regularly.

It's too easy to be in a rush and get caught up in being busy. Life moves too quickly and talking to my loved ones fills me with energy and joy. It's become a negotiable part of my life and making me feel better day-to-day.

Building a strong relationship with Isabella

I'm extraordinarily lucky to have Isabella in my life. She is my partner in every sense of the word, has challenged me more than anyone ever has, and I think has made me a fundamentally better and happier person.

I have no idea what else we'll go through in life, but I look at our relationship as a never-ending, incredibly fun adventure. Each moment, each challenge, and each win is an opportunity for us to develop a stronger, deeper relationship.

To date, this has been the most fulfilling and rewarding journey of my life.

Laugh a lot and find humor in unlikely places

I’ve found that when that humor is one of the best antidotes to boredom, frustration, anxiety, stress, and it just makes life more fun.

There are people in my life that are extraordinary at this and it’s something I’ve cultivated more over the years. It is remarkable how laughter can completely flip situations and make bad ones enjoyable.

Be generous with your time, energy, and resources

The Book Of Joy outlines three kinds of generosity:

Material giving - time, energy, money
Giving freedom from fear - Solace, counseling, protection
Spiritual giving - Wisdom, moral and ethical teachings, and guidance on how to be happier

There is something strange that happens within us when we lead with -> how can I help? how can I be of service? what do you need? what can I do for you?

In the act of giving and being generous, we are in turn filled with happiness, compassion, strength, and love.

The more I’ve tried to lead with generosity I generally feel better, happier, and more fullfilled.

It also is a clear reminder of our humanity and how connected we are to each other. It pushes us to think about other people and what they need, which in turn makes it clear how similar we are to each other.

Finding community

“You show your humanity by how you see yourself not as apart from others but from your connection to others.” - Archbishop Desmond Tutu

This one extends from authenticity, but I've been even more open to serendipity than I used to be - randomly talking to new people, catching up with others that I have not touched base with, in a while, and following my interests wherever they lead.

This has helped me finding community - like-minded people, with shared interests, and that I have fun with. The more I've done this the more I've realized that in some form or another I am connected to an extraordinary amount of people - whether it’s because we love hiking, enjoy experimenting with new ideas, or really like BBQ'ing - there is something that connects us.

As a result, I feel less and less alone, even when I'm completely by myself.

Let yourself feel deeply

Emotion and feeling are a part of what it means to be human. In a culture that is extremely rational and leans on the pre-frontal cortex hard, it can be easy to be dismissive of feeling and emotion.

Those are some of the most beautiful parts of being human - inspiration, creativity, love, compassion, empathy, sadness, frustration, and the million other emotions that can come up.

It is said that our range of emotions is as complex as the color spectrum and the more attention you pay to them over time the more you are able to pick out their nuances - like the difference between cerulean and blue.

The most important part of leaning into feeling for me has been experiencing more of life and paying more attention to myself. Emotions evolved as helpful signals letting us know that there is something we need to stop and pay attention to. It’s a powerful tool and embracing them helps you feel alive, well, and human.

Finding meaning

“There are going to be frustrations in life. The question is not: How do I escape? It is: How can I use this as something positive?” - Dalai Lama

Every moment in my life has impacted me in some way and brought me to where I am today. What I think could be considered the most "negative" moments in my life, funnily enough, have been the most extraordinary. I would even venture to say they have been the most necessary.

The lessons I learned and what those moments pushed me to figure out are experiences I am deeply grateful for having gone through.

I think finding meaning is a necessary skill to build a life narrative that fills you with joy. Finding meaning in suffering, in adversity, and in hardship is possible I think (not that my life has been hard compared to most people in the world), but from my own life experience and having read those of others that have had it hard (Man's Search For Meaning, The Book of Joy) even in the darkest of circumstances, finding meaning is what keeps us going, and what turns adversity into strength, and eventually joy.

Cultivating purpose

This stems from authenticity as well I think, but there are callings we all develop as a product of nature, circumstance, and life experience. Continuing to pull on the threads that move us, opening and closing doors by jumping into new opportunities, and every day figuring out more about what pulls us forward is one of the things that keeps me alive.

Today, the things that move me forward are the following:

Building a joyful & thriving family
Helping human beings thrive
Being a source of strength, warmth, and love for the people in my life and that I meet

I'm sure these will change over time, but I see my life as an ongoing experiment to refine the above and discover what moves me forward.

Personal goals

Because accomplishing, achieving, and doing things is fun. These are important to me in that they make life into a game where I can decide what prizes are fun to target. It introduces a sense of challenge and fun into my day today. It brings deep satisfaction to pursue things that are difficult and enjoyable to go after and to make them happen.

Meeting or missing goals do not make or break my happiness, but they are a ton of freaking fun and I can't imagine not including them in my day-to-day.

Dis-attachment: Embracing transience & change

This one has been extremely difficult but embracing that life relentlessly moves forward and that change is inevitable makes it easier to flow along with it.

Swimmer, friend, student, son, husband, Brazilian, hiker, pasta lover, etc., etc. we accumulate labels, identities, and experiences throughout our life. When we become attached to any one of them it becomes extremely painful when life pushes us into new roles, takes away things, or moves us in a different direction.

The more I've been able to accept that who I am today changes every single moment and may be entirely different tomorrow I am more open. More open to new ideas, experiences, identities, and life changes. It's tough to get comfortable with that uncertainty and the shifting nature of life, but the more I acclimate to it, the more I enjoy it.

Faith and hope

This is maybe the strangest one of all for me to write about given my aversion to this idea for most of my life, but I think faith and hope are part of the bedrock of a life that brings you lasting joy.

Faith and hope are made of stronger stuff than optimism. The differences between optimism and faith (hope) are explained by Archbishop Desmond Tutu:

I say to people that I’m not an optimist, because that in a sense, is something that depends on feelings more than the actual reality. We feel optimistic, or we feel pessimistic. Now, hope is different in that it is based not on the ephemerality of feelings but on the firm ground of conviction. I believe with a steadfast faith that there can never be a situation that is utterly, tottally hopeless. Hope is deeper and very, very close to unshakable. It’s in the pit of your tummy. It’s not in your head. It’s all here,” he said, pointing to his abdomen.” - Archbishop Desmond Tutu

Faith does not rely on outcomes, it persists in the face of adversity and it does not turn from realism. Faith is made of firmer stuff and it can include things like the belief that:

We’re all human and people are generally good.
We can make the world better, daily
Kindness and compassion unlocks kindness and compassion in others
Things will be okay

There is no way to prove faith or to prove hope, but they do a fantastic job of turning us from unproductive rumination, sending us forward, into the arms of others, and into the world. I can’t think of anything more human than faith and hope - it’s woven into the very fabric of life, the persistence to find a way.

A Life's Work

“Our perspective toward life is our final and ultimate freedom. - Viktor Frankl

This summary was a recap of many of the things that I've become interested in and has deepened my sense of well-being. The more I explore, the more I realize this is a never-ending project, and putting a bow on it will be impossible. Writing this newsletter did more to confirm that.

I'm kind of pumped about that though. There are so many levels, nuances, and things to explore when it comes to building a life that brings you joy, satisfaction, and where you thrive.

If anything that has been the most important realization of all, which is the never-ending work that comes with building a life that brings you joy. I hope these writings have been helpful to your own.

Until next time,

Alvaro