When I was maybe six years old, a strange, out-of-body thought occurred to me: What if nothing existed?
Why must there be matter, people, or anything at all? Why are we here? What is the point?
The longer our species has been around, the more we’ve zoomed out, the more knowledge we’ve accumulated — the more it feels like there aren’t any great answers.
It ain’t legacy.
We don’t need to wait the millions of years for the sun to explode and turn our modern world back into pure star dust.
If current events are any indication, in just a few hundred years our descendants will erase much of the legacy we’re creating today.
And they’ll have far less legacy to judge through futuristic persuasions if extreme weather continues to burn up and blow away evidence of our existence.
(Aren’t you glad you decided to read this uplifting thought piece?!)
So what is the point? What is life’s purpose? How should we spend our life?
To find a modern answer this ancient question, I suggest zooming in.
We do exist. We are here. Maybe our purpose isn’t some complex, cosmic charge — maybe it’s simple. Maybe the point of living is simply to experience it.
Like the Canadian band Trooper sang, maybe we really are just here for a good time, not a long time.
So how does a person have a truly good time? How do we experience living best?
Here is the simple recipe both anecdotal and scientific research recommend:
1. Care for your Vessel
Our bodies are the vessels through which we experience life. The better your body functions – the better you sleep, eat and move – the better your life experience. You feel less pain, you have more energy, you think better and you get more done. And therefore you experience exponentially more life.
There is no better strategy for experiencing life best than tending to our physical health.
2. Care for your Friendships
Even the fittest man alive won’t have the strength to squeeze life for all it’s worth without a healthy social life.
Study after study shows that the quality of our friendships directly predicts our happiness — more than wealth, status, or success ever could.
In fact, the more socially isolated a person is, the more health issues they experience. Meaning our bodies – our experience vessels – are fuelled by high octane human connection.
We don’t need (or benefit much from) the hoards of connections we collect on social media. Just a few dear friends makes the difference between a full heart and heart failure.
We Win When We Move Together
This simple recipe enhances our experience of every day events. What more could we ask of our time on this blue rock? Yet this same recipe can offer us even more: the experience of more extraordinary events.
Very recently, virtually everyone in Canada was dialled in to the Toronto Blue Jays’ extraordinary run all the way to Game 7 of the World Series. We all got goosebumps as we witnessed last year’s last place team narrowly lose to last year’s first place team.
And what did the players credit for their sensational success? The power of friendship.
These seasoned professionals expressed – with great emotion – that the bond they shared was the driving force behind their individually enjoyed experience and collective achievement.
Getting Down to Business
I’m grateful to you who has read this far. I’ll assume that at the very least, you find this topic interesting (and, at most, my writing acceptable.) So I’ll share a secret with you:
My goal for What’s Good Canada is to very intentionally harness the power of the team – of people who move together – and demonstrate just how much more GOOD (health, wealth and happiness) is possible.
After eight years consulting small business owners, I’ve seen how much value – for customers, employees and owners alike – is destroyed from a lack of teamwork.
I understand how it happens: small business owners are subject matter experts who help their customers to make decisions not professional people managers. They’re disciplined do-ers willing to work long hours to ensure the ship stays afloat not organizational psychologists.
They organically grow demand but then struggle to harvest it.
Through this venture I aim to prove that the rewards for business owners who lead their people to move together as a connected team are far greater than those who hesitate to develop systems, delegate responsibility and demonstrate core values.
No, it won’t be easy. No, it won’t be simple.
But leading a team to make moves together will be a far more rewarding experience.