What is it about the modern-day metropolis and its subsequent elements that have left the average person so disenchanted with their life. One element that is noteworthy in creating disharmony in our lives is the concept of how integrated we are as people. The modern person exhibits a form of schizophrenia in which they have split their lives into different people for different situations. We have one personality for our work, another personality for our friends, for our partners, for our family, for our leisure time and ultimately we are left in the dark from ourselves, not knowing who we really are.

Not only do we not properly know ourselves but we end up fighting with ourselves about which of these people is going to get the most of our time. The currency for our personality is time and we shell it out often so haphazardly that we don’t really end up investing properly in any of ourselves. Imagine yourself as if you are a point in the center of a page sending out lines of energy to each of the different personalities you are fostering. Each time you give to one personality however it means you are taking energy away from another person. We end up wrestling with ourselves trying to give out to all these elements and ultimately we don’t really give anything authentically or optimally.

“Living optimally” is an interesting idea. What does it mean to live optimally and what does optimally mean to our lives? To live optimally means that we are giving the most to our lives that we can in the shortest and easiest way that we know. We are using all of our resources effectively and efficiently without the waste. In entering the green age of sustainable resource management, we understand that we need to think how to ever increase the sustainability of what we do by increasing the longevity we get out of anything we use and do. We too need to think about how we can use our mental resources as effectively as we can. Many people don’t realize but we actually have a type of mental fuel which we can use up the same as a tank of fuel in our car. In a car we can waste a tank of fuel by riding around not really planning our route to the shop or we can work out the best way to get to our destination and then take the most direct route there. This is the same for our minds. We need to work out the best way of performing our task in order to use our mental fuel most effectively.

One way of living optimally and using our resources effectively is integrating our personalities. We can organize our lives so that we aren’t fighting for resources but instead we can have it so that all our activities are giving to the things which make us most happy. Instead of compartmentalizing your life into many small things, simplify your list of who you are to the things that you most care about in ways that allows you to be able to give more to your life. Which things bring you the most joy?

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RP4abiHdQpc]

Try this as a practice:
1) Write out all the ways that you are creating yourself, all the things you are giving your time to.
2) Cut out all the things you don’t like doing. You may actually find that there are things you aren’t even doing that you now have room for doing by removing things that no longer serve you.
3) Look at the list and see if there are things that you can fit together like friends and work. Here you could create a work environment in which your dealings with your colleagues leave you as satisfied as if you had been hanging out with good friends. In the video, the man is ripping up bills and a rejection letter at the same time as bonding with his child.
4) Finally pick your top 3-4 things on the list. You can know these by thinking which ones would you want to be doing for the rest of your life. It doesn’t mean that you will have to but it is just an idea to help you get moving.

Now that you have simplified your list, give authentically to these for the next month. If a month is overwhelming try 2 weeks and if that seems like too much, start with a week. Only work within the limits that you feel comfortable working within. Change is hard enough and you want to make it as comfortable as possible. By setting a goal that you think is possible to reach, you create a momentum of change that makes it possible. To give an example, when I have exam I would set a goal to clean the kitchen first before exam study. Something I know I could do. This then gave me the momentum of being productive and gave me the satisfaction of completing a task which gave me the momentum to complete another task, like study. You use way less fuel moving a rolling car than you do moving one from standstill.

Create your life as a community of your personalities. Make sure that all your personalities are giving to you and not taking away from yourself. By doing the things that make you happy, everything you do is giving back to you. Every personality is contributing to the whole. It is as a happy whole that you will be most effective in your actions and you will have more energy than you ever knew. Because every act gives back to you, you will only be getting more energy rather than sending out into the world like a space heater you will create a fully integrated system that will feed back into the system and create optimal living. We are a circle, not a dot. All the personalities should be giving back to the center rather than the center having to give out to every point of the circle. This is an inefficient way of living and ultimately unsustainable which leaves us burnt out. Burn out leaves us without enough resources physiologically thus breeding disease, and emotionally leading to personality and relationship distress. Ultimately we can become a full, unified and harmonious person in which all points of ourselves are connected and each giving to the other. You will truly be a unified person. You will truly be YOU.