It’s in the how that life is made
SUBTITLE: The secret to changing your life is simpler than you think
By Olivia Geen, MD, MSc, FRCPC
| 5 min read |
Do you remember playing with Lego? Those magical little building blocks that come as kits to build castles, houses, cars, spaceships, and more.
Growing up I played with what’s called “DIY Lego”, otherwise known as a big box of mixed pieces. No instructions. No map. Just a big pile of Lego and your own imagination.
With the same box you could create a city with multiple unique houses, or a fleet of cars, or a luxury liner, or a pirate ship, or a castle with a massive garden.
Using the exact same pieces, the possibilities were endless. What determined the outcome was how you put them together, not what it was made of.
In this article, I’m going to show you that it is in “the how” that your life is made, and why this means you can redesign your life at any moment. You already have all the pieces that you need.
We’ll cover:
1.The building blocks of life (they’re all the same)
2. Wandering Paris on a Saturday (an analogy)
3. Your circle of influence (changing your ‘how’)
Let’s begin.
THE BUILDING BLOCKS OF LIFE ARE THE SAME
At the most basic level, you and I are exactly the same; we’re just put together differently.
You and I are made of the same type of atoms, which are made of the same number of electrons, protons, and neutrons, which are made of quarks (for protons and neutrons), and so on and so on.
This is also true if we spiral up from the quantum world into the world you and I see in every day life.
Just like our bodies, our lives are made up of similar building blocks. Sleep. Eat. Talk. Work. Play. Shop. Sleep. Everything you do can be categorized into those few things.
At every level of understanding the world - atomic to societal - the building blocks of that level are the same. Whether you’re making Hydrogen or Cobalt, you’re using the same ingredients, what differs is how they are combined. Same too with organs - made up of cells - and humans - made up of organs - and life - made up of daily activities - and society - made up of people. It is how these things are combined and carried out that create a unique thing - a doctor vs an artist, American vs French culture. The ingredients beneath the differences are essentially the same.
Why then, do we not all have the same life? Well, for the same reason we don’t all look the same despite being made up of the same atoms.
It is in how these things are combined or carried out that our differences - and our lives - are made.
How you sleep - are you a night owl or early riser? How you eat - home cooked meals, take out, or microwave meals? How you talk - confident, verbose, quiet and reserved? How you work - with people, technology, concrete, etc? How you play - sports, read, travel, art, etc? How you shop - clothes, food, video games, etc?
At the end of the day, no matter who you are or where you live, the basic what that you do everyday is the same. It’s in the how that your life is made.
If we spiral up yet another level to groups of us - society - we see this is true once again. This brings us to my story in Paris.
WANDERING PARIS ON A SATURDAY
I was recently in Paris on vacation. I love the city so much that this was my third trip in a year. One day I’ll be living there (at least part-time), mark my words!
But I digress. What does Paris have to do with living?
Well, I was walking through the city on Saturday on my way to a vintage flee market in the 14th arrondissement. As I walked, I watched the daily life of Parisians transpiring around me.
Checking out Parisian flea market finds on a lazy Saturday morning. Follow @kissa.vintage.paris if you want to know where you can find them (they change every weekend).
Walking a dog. Eating at a cafe. Shopping. Exercising. Talking to friends.
I realized the obvious - there was nothing new here. We did the same things back home. Walk. Eat. Shop. Work out. Talk.
Why then, did I love Paris so much? Why did it seem like I fit in better here (sometimes), than back home?
That’s when the next obvious truth hit me - yes, we did the same things. But it was how we did them that made the difference.
It is in “the how” that a culture is born.
Parisians walk their dogs lazily, taking in their surroundings, not looking down at their phone or listening to a podcast that takes them out of the moment.
They eat outside (even in February), at tables that face out towards the road, rather than in towards the person sitting opposite them.
They buy one well-made item that will last them years, rather than ten less expensive items that will last only a season.
I could go on. The point is, it doesn’t matter what we are doing. People are people and days are days, no matter where you are. What matters is how you do the things. That’s where differences - and lives - are made.
A lazy Saturday afternoon in Paris, realizing it was in how we do things - not what we do - that a culture is made.
So, is it as easy then has changing how we eat? How we talk? How we move?
Yes, and no.
Our ability to do things in a certain way is a product of two things - ourselves, and our surroundings.
Let’s talk about the influence of your surroundings, and the power that you can still wield to create the life you’ve dreamed of.
YOUR CIRCLE OF INFLUENCE
We exist within something else. Everything does. As I’ve discussed in other articles (here and here), the world is made up of nested systems.
Atom <-> organ <-> human body <-> human <-> city <-> country <-> society <-> world and so on.
This means that what goes on in our life is not just up to us. It is influenced by the systems below us - what our body and organs are doing as a result of what’s going on at the level of our genes, transcription etc - and above us - what kind of city we live in, country, society, etc.
This follows the common understanding of micro, meso, and macro levels of analysis used in social sciences like economics, politics, psychology, etc.
The realization that we are impacted by our surroundings (i.e. the surrounding system) is not new. It’s a fundamental concept in social sciences, and what popular author Malcolm Gladwell spends a lot of his time talking about, drawing from behavioural science, neuroeconomics, and other fields.
While there is still a lot we don’t know about this area - in terms of the relative amount that we’re influenced by our surroundings - we can all recall a time when we changed our behaviour based on what was going on around us.
Going to a gala event? I bet you changed out of your sweat pants.
Crossing the road? I bet you turned your head in the direction of oncoming traffic - right in Canada, left in England.
How we do something is impacted by where we are to some degree.
Yet there are lots of other things that influence our decisions - whether we run across the street when someone else might have waited for a larger gap in traffic might be based on our athletic abilities, risk tolerance, judgement, etc; what kind of dress we pick for the gala might depend on our beliefs about ourselves, personal style, and our economic resources.
Thus, even if how we do something (cross the street, dress for a gala) is influenced by our surroundings, we are still in charge of a lot of how that thing actually transpires.
This means that when it comes to designing your life and living the way you’ve always wanted you can have massive influence - regardless of your surrounding circumstances - simply by looking at how you do the daily building blocks of life.
How do you sip your morning cup of coffee - rushed in a to-go thermos while you drive haphazardly to work? Or slowly on the couch for 5 minutes before leaving. The difference is a matter of 5 minutes, yet the impact of “the how” overtime will become your life.
How you drink coffee is much more influential on your life than the fact that you drink it. The difference between people is how they choose to do a common thing.
Change can feel daunting when you believe it requires something entirely new. However, in reality, you’ve already done it all.
Have a career? Done that. You can try another one too. Exercise? Done that at least a few times. You can level up and go to the gym. Talking to another human? You’ve done that too - so what if this human is a stranger?
So much of what we achieve in life depends on what we believe is possible. This itself depends on what we have historically accomplished and our belief in our current capabilities.
Imagine the freedom when you realize you already have the capabilities of every single fundamental building block of life. Doing it differently is the only question now.
Start small. Change your morning coffee routine. See how this small “how” can change your experience of yourself. Over time, you’ll gain confidence to apply this same thinking to changing the big things in life. Have no fear, you’ve already done it all.
Yes, there will be learning curves; yes, you don’t actually know how to do everything yet; but you’ve already done the basic moves.
Think of life like getting increasingly skilled at building DIY Lego sets. You started with a four-walled, 2 bedroom house with unstable doorways. Now you’re building multi-level homes… and next, you’re on to castles.
Same building blocks. Simply change how you put the pieces together.
In Closing…
Our lives are made up of very similar whats - Eat. Sleep. Work. Play. Shop. Etc. The difference between you and someone else is in how you do those things.
If you want to redesign or change your life, feel confident knowing you have already mastered the fundamental skills - now it’s just a matter of tweaking how they are delivered.
In the end, if I want to live like the French, there is nothing new that I need to do - I simply need to change how I do the things I’m already doing.
Bonne chance!
Olivia