The joy of a chaos-free life...

and three steps to get there.

Photo by Zhivko Minkov on Unsplash

Improve your life is a weekly newsletter focused on self-improvement through self-understanding.

I write about looking inside instead of outside and doing your own work.

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Also, many of these newsletters become videos right here.

Thanks for reading and enjoy. -Ian

…

I have been reading my older newsletters. They’re soft.

They not 100% me.

They are more “look at this cool thing” when they should be “here’s how to chop firewood”.

They are more what I think you might want from me and less “exactly what I want to say.”

Some of the best creative advice I ever received was from a friend and he simply said “take a position.” I needed to hear that. So, I’ve dialed in the torque wrench, it’s time to get real and tighten this up.

This week I am writing you some advice on a topic that, not only do I think about often, but when taken seriously, can have a very positive impact on your life experience.

Chaos: a universal human problem

We all have individuals in our lives who create chaos (or maybe this is you). This could be any type of chaos; emotional, physical, financial or spiritual (and the list goes on). It’s the partnership that goes completely off the rails for the most absurd reasons and then in predictable cycles, the chaos repeats. It’s the customer who begins as unreasonable and ends with endless negative google reviews of your business. It’s the stranger who needs to lay all of their dirty laundry on your doorstep and asks you to sort it for them. By this point you are likely thinking of at least one person, maybe multiple people. Good, that’s your starting point.

The basic fact is that a small percentage of humans create a disproportionate amount of chaos.

The reason I decided to write this post is that for, hard to determine reasons, I spend a lot of time thinking through how my actions can create less, or hopefully zero chaos.

And I am specifically using the word chaos and not drama. Drama is the word for a low emotional intelligence individual being, for example, very late and not acknowledging it.

Drama is extremely uninteresting, therefore it is much easier to deal with.

Chaos is fascinating, just like fire is fascinating, making it much more difficult to manage.

Chaos is the emotional tornado which start with absurd phone calls or text messages that keep you awake at night and sometimes crank all the way up to the police station and the court system. You know it’s chaos when you are not the source of the tornado but you can see it speeding towards you, dark and unsettling. Our egos want to sit in the drivers seat and watch as the tornado rips towards up - not a good plan.

Western culture has an obsession with the things we DO, not the actions we DO NOT take.

Restraint, that’s what I’m driving at. There’s a lot of power in restraint.

We say “what are you going to do about that?!” instead of

“Maybe you should let that be and cut that person our of your life.”

That’s tough to read, right? That feels a certain way, cool it’s working. All I can tell you is that it’s an approach you might want to try. Honestly, what are the downsides?

You cut out the black mass with no announcement or fanfare and then you go get a beer and some wings.

It is possible that I have this mindset because I am an oldest child and this is simply one of my roles, being the dependable one. It is also possible that I am so turned off and repelled by chaos and people who create it that I will do almost anything to avoid it. Whatever the root, I am confident that at middle age I have a serious appreciation for the joy of a nearly chaos-free life.

If I go to a level deeper, I think this is all rooted in my belief that we do have control over our actions. The act of not creating chaos, being deliberate about keeping the waters of your life calm, is a skill I practice consistently and continually. I can only speak for myself, and you might be thinking;

“yeah, but some people simply can’t help it, and they leave a trail of chaos everywhere they go.”

Yeah, I don’t buy it, I don’t care and it is certainly not my responsibility.

Now that you’ve been fully activated, here’s my simple three bullet list for creating less chaos in your life.

Tactic #1: Avoid becoming involved in anyone else’s problems.

How do we do this?

Is this even possible?

Have we been entangled in each other’s problems since before we had spoken language? It is possible, but it requires series of continuous decisions about how you want to structure your life.

For me this looks like letting go of a relationship as soon as the first sign of chaos creation appears. And I think this is the hard part for most people. This is undervalued because you undervalue how positive it is to not have chaos in your life. The difference between experiencing chaos and not is not 1 and 0, it is exponential.

I believe less people producing less chaos is a better experience than more relationships. Be selective in your relationships for once right, why not?

Life is long and also very short.

You might be thinking, yeah, but I have to deal with people eventually, I can’t cut everyone off. I’m not suggesting to do exactly that, I am suggesting that you keep your circle small and inside your circle you let you people know that you won’t be dealing with any chaos. That sounds harsh, but that’s why you’re here, a position you might not have considered. And this one is going to really benefit your life, trust me.

Tactic #2: Have a schedule and a plan 

This could be summed up as simply, create your own plan or your culture, your employer, your family, your (insert your entity here) will create one for you. You have got to have a plan or your energy becomes diluted and spills out everywhere. And once it spills out, it becomes available for use by anyone. And with a smartphone in your pocket, a plan is even more vital. A plan is a prevention method for not allowing chaos into your life. If you know what you are going to be doing, when, where and how, everything becomes simplified and you can keep your energy in its container and use it for your purposes, no one else’s. This sucks at first and then it becomes vital.

Going from no plan to a plan seems very boring at first, too many rules. But once you lock into your plan and put on some blinders, I promise you will be amazed at what you are capable of.

Test me and try it.

Tactic #3: If you sense yourself drifting- do something difficult 

This means when you feel yourself getting wrapped into a chaotic situation, not of your own creation, step away from humans for a minute and do something difficult.

Go rock climbing and leave your phone in the car.

Go for a run with no music.

Cook your favorite foods from a physical cookbook.

You get the idea.

Honestly, when is the last time you actually did something that was difficult to the point that you were nervously unsure if you could complete it?

That’s where you should go.

When chaos starts to bubble up, don’t move towards it and energize it, move away from it and turn it down. I find the easiest way to do this is challenge yourself with something difficult. If you want to take this to level two, do something challenging and don’t tell anyone about it. This will give you inner self a massive boost, and your ego will be craving that you announce your accomplishment to the world. Don’t do it, instead plan your next grind, and make it harder than the last one.

Quietly grinding away on your own shit is the exact opposite of chaos creation.