The journey to chalantness is different for everyone but it comes down to three steps:
- Having a very clear idea on what you want out of life. How do you wanna spend your days? Where do you find most joy? What do you really value? Where can you meaningfully contribute to the world while also financially supporting yourself? In other words, being clear on your purpose, your ikigai
- What’s holding you back from living that life? this requires deep introspection and understanding of yourself. For me, it was social, anxiety, and lack of confidence in myself. That was the main thing that stopped me from living more authentically.
- step 3 is all about living intentionally and aligning your ikigai with how you spend every hour of your life. you construct your life based on everything you’ve learned about yourself from step one and two. There’s so much noise all around and as a result. It becomes much harder to live intentionally but the more you go through step one and two the easier it is for you to live more intentionally. i’m still not the best with step 3 ngl despite my amazing progress in steps 1 n 2. im realizing step 3 is a whole another beast
i spent all of uni cycling in between 1 and 2. it takes a lot of time and courage. you have to be willing to put yourself outside your comfort zone everyday because that’s how you get to deeply understand yourself. the new term for this is sidequesting. uni is the ultimate place for sidequesting. if yr not then yr wasting yr money. sidequesting is not enough tho. it has to be paired up with reflection/introspection. letting your thoughts out in however way or form (i talk to myself while transcribing the audio). it’s the foundation of self awareness. having self awareness and being able to think for yourself is such a rare skill nowadays bcz of social media and our desire to conform.
that’s my personal definition of chalant. At least for me it wasn’t a switch that could just turn on whenever. I had to go through all these three steps over the past five years to live a more chalant life.
Reflection questions
- do you ever get an impulse to do certain things but then stop yourself because of fear?