The three pillars of well-being are the three elements of your life that act as a foundation to help keep you sane.
A simple way to think about what defines your own foundation is to ask yourself: does this give me energy, or does it drain my energy?
The pillars of your life are the things that give you energy. They put gas in the tank and wind in the sails.
Balance is a tricky concept, but if you are looking to live a balanced life, these are the things that you need to do on a regular basis to keep the scales in check. They lay down the brickwork that we can build a solid life upon.
Foundation activities will be different for everybody. It requires a good deal of trial and error to find your own, but I believe that the three pillars of well-being explored in this post are a great place to start.
How did I Discover My Three Pillars?
For a couple of years, while in university, I forgot how to have fun.
I was in a failing relationship and learning didn’t always come easy. All my time was either spent studying engineering or trying to mend the rift that had grown between me and my high school sweetheart. The transition from teenage romance to adulthood had led us to a fork in the road.
Being a straight B- student and a horrible partner was taking all I had to give. Although I was able to maintain passable grades, I was miserable and barely scraping by.
The end of the relationship was a reality check. It opened my eyes and forced me to take a nice hard look at the state of my affairs. I didn’t like what I saw.
I’d gained 40 pounds since high school, given up all my interests, my outlook on the future was bleak and in the worst of the struggle I had isolated myself from my friends and family. In other words, my early 20’s beat the shit out of me.
Something had to give. I didn`t know where to start but I had to get my shit together.
The biggest obstacle was the story I had made up in my head: I didn’t have any time available outside of school to spend on things that I enjoyed. I believed this narrative to the core. I was spending most of my waking hours studying on campus, working hard for that B- average. I was convinced that I would flunk out of school if I took any time away from studying.
The truth was, I was using school as a hiding place from the issues in my life. No one was going to give me shit for “working hard” on my education. I could hide out from my bad relationship. It was a good excuse for being out of shape and generally floundering in all other spheres of life.
Moreover, being physically at the library or the engineering faculty all the time was an ace in my pocket if I ever failed. Even if I spent multiple hours a day procrastinating on the internet or chatting with friends, I could always say “I can’t believe I failed! You saw me, right? I’m at school until 2 AM each night. What more could I possibly do!?”.
When I was finally forced to challenge this narrative and make time to reacquaint myself with simple things that brought me joy, I was astonished to find that I had more time on my hands than I thought. Despite spending way less time in the library and more time in the world, my grades didn’t go down. In fact, they got slightly better.
More importantly, I got slightly better every day and started to enjoy life again.
In this process, I discovered the three pillars of my well-being.
I’ve occasionally fallen into hard times since then. Again, I threw myself into a noble pursuit like school or work as excuses to ignore the dumpster fire that was the rest of my life.
When darkness inevitably finds its way to me it usually means that I’ve neglected to maintain my foundation. Getting back to work on rebuilding these three pillars always gets me back on track. Each time making the foundation stronger.
Pillar 1: Physicality
I come from a long line of fishermen, trade workers, loggers, and farmers.
Getting reacquainted with the physical self is the main pillar of my life’s foundation. Forcing myself to do something that leaves my body tired and strained is the best thing I can do for my brain.
I am in the first generation of men in my family to become a knowledge worker. I enjoy the intellectual work. Solving engineering problems, managing projects and writing are satisfying tasks. There is, however, a feeling of rightness that envelops me when I am doing hard physical labour.
Last summer, I had to move a large amount of concrete paving stones around in my backyard. This mindless physical task was one of the most satisfying things I did all year. Dinner tasted better while looking over what I had accomplished on that day: moving heavy stuff from one spot to another. I could feel the work in my joints and muscles as I lay in bed for the best night’s sleep I’d had in ages.
If you go back far enough down the branches of your family tree, your ancestors once made a living with their hands.
Even if you are a direct descendent of generational wealth or royalty, this is still true. The first person of that lineage to achieve power and influence had to do something useful in the community to obtain wealth and status.
For many of us today, the physicality of daily life has disappeared. There is no need to even leave the house to go to work or get supplies.
Running, preferably outside in nature, is my principal source of physical activity. The outside part here is just as important as the running. Working out outside, breathing fresh air and feeling the elements on your skin, rain or shine, only amplifies the goodness of physical work.
I also enjoy cross-training and weightlifting, especially with kettlebells. If I had to guess, I would attribute this to the likeness of this type of exercise to hard labour. It seems to trigger my generational memory in a satisfying way.
There are countless scientific studies that explain all the chemical reactions in our body that make us feel good after exercise, or after spending time in nature. It’s also no secret that exercise is indispensable to maintaining health and longevity as we age.
Although I can’t prove this hypothesis, I am convinced that there is an evolutionary reason why our bodies pump all these feel-good hormones into our system when working out: being physically active was once necessary for survival.
We no longer need to build shelter from the elements and run away from predators. We don’t need to track and hunt large animals for sustenance. But we need regular physical work to maintain our psychological well-being.
Do yourself a favour if you are feeling down and out. If you don’t know where to start, go move some rocks around outside all day. Have a therapy session with a shovel and a pile of dirt. If you don’t have a reason or the capacity to do physical labour, go out for a long walk outside.
Pillar 2: Creativity
To be human is to be creative.
If we once again arc back to our evolutionary roots, our advantage in nature has always been the big brain that we carry around on our shoulders. Ancient humans did not have the strongest muscles, impenetrable skin, or the most attuned senses out of the fauna with which they competed for survival. What they had was the ability to come up with tools and techniques that enabled them to thrive.
That is creativity in its most utilitarian setting: taking the assets that you have and finding a way to use them in a new and useful way.
Creativity is most often associated with the arts. While there is no question that artists are in tune with their creative selves, it doesn’t mean that you aren’t creative if you don’t create art.
I wouldn’t want to live in a world without music, or books, or stunning visual arts, but it is not the only type of creative outlet.
The great inventions that have shaped the world we live in are all impressive feats of creativity and resourcefulness. Most of the world’s biggest corporations started from the simple premise of finding a creative solution to a difficult problem and taking it to market for a price people are willing to pay.
The internet is a perfect example. Since its invention in 1989, it’s connected us like never before. It is so ingrained in our society that living without it is unimaginable at this point. The development of this revolutionary tool required decades of creative work from multiple teams of technology and communications experts. They had the same information and resources available to them as their peers, it’s their creative application of those resources that changed the world forever.
Whatever field your work in, whatever your interests, the people at the top are there because they are creative. From the best CEOs, engineers and lawyers to the most capable car mechanic and everyone in between. When they tackle a problem in a unique way, that’s their creativity at work.
I am lucky to have artistic interests in writing and music that I make time for weekly, but these are not the only way to cultivate creativity.
For someone who doesn’t identify as creative, curiosity is a great place to start.
Take time to dive into topics of interest. Pick up a book on something you know nothing about to see what you can learn, accumulating different perspectives along the way. Step out of your comfort zone and try new things. Exploring different skills forces you to be humble. It requires the openness of the beginner’s mindset to be receptive to input from a teacher and accept the process of trial and error that is key to learning.
Getting reacquainted with the beginner’s mindset and letting go of the idea that we must always know exactly what to do is a doorway to creativity.
Pillar 3: Community
Humans are social animals, it’s in our DNA.
Now more than ever, maintaining a sense of community requires consistent effort.
Community is a vast term that can be interpreted in many ways. In this context, I define it as the group of people that are important to me, that share the values that guide my life and with which I can have a relationship of mutual appreciation and respect.
As children, we instinctively join forces with other kids that share our interests and values: George has a Spiderman lunch box. I have a Spiderman lunchbox. We must be friends!
In high school and college, we are systematically bundled with people who share our interests because of the activities that we choose to do and the careers we decide to pursue. The educational system takes care of creating a community around us.
Once we enter adulthood and move out of our parent’s house, maintaining a strong community becomes a bit more complex.
Our old friends moved to different towns, we now need to make time to visit family and although there are interesting people at work, it is nice to have a life outside of our careers.
If I am being honest, I find this third pillar to be the most difficult one to build.
Although I am a sociable person and enjoy spending time with friends and family, my natural tendency is to be introverted and introspective, especially when I am struggling.
I need to consistently step out of my comfort zone and create occasions to connect with others. This means that sometimes I need to put my ego aside to send the first text to a friend I haven’t heard of in a long time. It also means stepping out of my comfort zone to join a new running group or book club once in a while.
I don’t always succeed in maintaining a strong sense of community, but when I don’t tend to this pillar I am guaranteed to long for connection and camaraderie.
The Work Is Never Over
Work on the three pillars of our well-being is never done. Just when you think things are solid and impervious, the waves of life come crashing, slowing eroding the very structure that you’ve worked so hard to build. The more consistent you are with maintenance, the less damage the foundation takes on in the next storm.
There is no one size fits all solution when it comes to a person’s foundation activities. What is essential to me may be trivial to you. The three pillars described in this post are simply the ones that I have found to help keep my head above water.
I sincerely hope that if you are struggling and these pillars don’t speak to you, they might at least give you some ideas on where to start building your own.