Where the Light Gets In — Rediscovering the Opportunity in Every Day
I’ve always been an avid reader.
My reading tends to wander across a fairly broad landscape. Military history. Leadership. Success literature. Philosophy. Stoicism. Psychology. Personal development. Stories of people who have been tested, failed, adapted, learned and found a way forward.
I don’t necessarily read because I’m looking for the answer. I’m interested in ideas.
Sometimes you come across an idea that changes the way you look at something you thought you already understood.
And every now and then, you come across a book where you find yourself thinking:
“Yes. That’s it. That’s exactly what I’ve been trying to explain.”
Recently, I’ve been listening to Ben Crowe’s audiobook Where the Light Gets In: Simple, Playful and Profound Perspective Shifts to Change Your Life.
Ben and I went to school together many years ago, and I haven’t seen him since, but there is obviously a personal connection that made me curious to hear what he had to say.
But quite apart from that connection, this is an extraordinary book.
And the further I have gone into it, the more parallels I have found with many of the ideas we explore through Everyday Bushcraft and what I call the Everyday Way.
Changing the way we see ourselves
One of the central ideas in Ben’s book is that sometimes we don’t need to completely change our lives.
We need to change the perspective from which we are looking at them.
The book explores nine perspective shifts,
including ideas around self-compassion, imagination and appreciation, moving from fear towards playfulness, from constantly doing towards simply being, and from trying to fit in towards developing a genuine sense of belonging. (Audible.com.au)
That resonates enormously with me.
Because so much of what limits us isn’t necessarily the obstacle sitting in front of us.
It’s the story we tell ourselves about the obstacle.
It’s the story we tell ourselves about who we are.
I’m not that sort of person.
I couldn’t do that.
I’m too old.
I’m not confident enough.
I’ve never been good at things like that.
Over time those statements can become part of our identity. But identity isn’t necessarily fixed.
We can challenge it.
We can test it.
And sometimes we can rewrite it.
What is your personal mission?
One of the things Where the Light Gets In
encourages us to examine is what actually matters to us.
Who are we when we remove the expectations of everyone else?
What constitutes success?
What are we trying to achieve?
What gives our lives meaning?
Ben has described the book as being for people who might feel stuck or lost — people trying to understand who they really are, what they want from life, how to remove some of the pressure they’re carrying, or how to rediscover purpose and meaning. (Dymocks)
I think that’s incredibly important.
Because it is very easy to spend years running hard without ever asking whether we are running in the right direction.
That’s one reason I talk about pointing your compass north in the Everyday Way.
A compass doesn’t walk the journey for you.
It doesn’t remove the hills.
It doesn’t stop the rain.
It doesn’t make the pack lighter.
But when you’re unsure where you are, it gives you a reference point.
Your values can do the same thing.
Your purpose can do the same thing.
Your personal mission can do the same thing.
When everything becomes noisy, complicated or uncertain, you can ask:
Which direction is north?
And then take another step.
From obligation to opportunity
One of the strongest ideas I took from listening to Ben was the importance of play.
Somewhere along the road to adulthood, many of us lose something children possess naturally.
Curiosity.
A child wakes up wondering what might happen today.
Adults often wake up thinking about what they have to do today.
I’ve got to go to work.
I’ve got to mow the lawn.
I’ve got to exercise.
I’ve got to study.
I’ve got to cook dinner.
I’ve got to sort this problem out.
The day becomes a list of obligations.
What happens if we shift the language slightly?
I get to.
I get to learn something.
I get to walk through the forest.
I get to talk to someone I care about.
I get to attempt something I’ve never done before.
I get to solve a problem.
I get another crack at today.
That doesn’t mean pretending that life is easy.
It isn’t.
There are hard days.
There is grief.
There is illness.
There is disappointment.
There are bills, responsibilities and things that simply have to be done.
But we can still retain curiosity.
We can still play.
Ben talks about moving from the fearful to the playful, and that may sound simple, but I think there’s something profound in it.
Playfulness doesn’t mean irresponsibility.
It means approaching life with curiosity rather than constantly approaching it through fear.
What happens if I try?
That’s a very different question from:
What happens if I fail?
The Everyday Way
This is where Ben’s book connects so strongly with what we try to achieve through Everyday Bushcraft.
When somebody comes along to a One Day Five Skills course, the objective isn’t really to turn them into a survival expert in six hours.
They won’t be.
We teach five practical foundations:
Self Aid.
Knots.
Shelter.
Fire.
Water.
But underneath those skills something else is happening.
A person lights a fire with a ferro rod for the first time.
I did that.
They put up a shelter.
I did that.
They learn a knot they couldn’t tie an hour earlier.
I did that.
They purify water.
They solve a problem.
They help somebody else.
They become uncomfortable and discover that uncomfortable doesn’t necessarily mean incapable.
They begin stacking wins.
And slowly the story changes.
I don’t know if I can do this.
becomes:
Maybe I can.
And eventually:
I’ve done hard things before. I’ll work this one out too.
That is resilience.
Not believing that nothing bad will happen.
Not believing that everything will always work out perfectly.
But developing enough confidence in yourself to believe:
Whatever comes next, I’ll have a crack at it.
Be where your feet are
Stoic philosophy often returns us to a similar idea.
There are things within our control.
There are things outside our control.
Our job is to concentrate our effort where it can actually make a difference.
Yesterday has happened.
Tomorrow isn’t here.
Right now, there is only the ground underneath your feet.
I’ve written previously about the idea:
Wherever you are… be THERE.
I think Where the Light Gets In approaches that same territory from another direction.
Stop living entirely for the next achievement.
Stop believing you’ll finally be happy when you reach the next milestone.
Stop measuring your worth entirely through what you produce.
Ben describes this distinction as moving from human doing to human being. (Audible.com.au)
That’s worth thinking about.
Because our lives can very easily become one enormous checklist.
Finish school.
Get the job.
Get promoted.
Buy the house.
Pay the mortgage.
Get fitter.
Earn more.
Achieve the next thing.
And somewhere amongst all that striving we can forget to actually experience being alive.
Suck the marrow out of the day
There is a wonderful idea often associated with deliberately living deeply: sucking the marrow out of life.
Getting everything you can from the experience of being here.
Maybe that doesn’t require climbing Everest.
Maybe it’s much simpler.
Walk somewhere you’ve never walked.
Learn a knot.
Sit beside a fire.
Ask someone a question and actually listen to their answer.
Watch the sunrise.
Take your kids somewhere without looking at your phone.
Try something you’re slightly frightened of.
Read something that challenges what you believe.
Be curious.
Be playful.
Be interested.
Look at the day ahead with some of the wonder of a child waking up on the first morning of an adventure.
What might happen today?
There is something incredibly powerful about that question.
Where the light gets in
The title itself is beautifully appropriate.
Because many of the moments that ultimately change us arrive through cracks we never wanted in the first place.
Failure.
Loss.
Disappointment.
Change.
Things not going according to plan.
They can break our assumptions about who we thought we were or how we believed our lives were supposed to unfold.
But a crack can also create an opening.
An opportunity to reconsider.
To rebuild.
To redefine success.
To discover a different version of ourselves.
Ben’s book explores exactly that territory: how relatively small shifts in perspective can change our relationship with adversity, pressure, confidence, achievement and fulfilment.
And that is probably why it resonates with me so strongly.
The Everyday Way is built around a similar belief.
You don’t suddenly wake up resilient.
You build resilience.
You practise.
You fail.
You learn.
You adjust.
You stack small wins.
You discover what matters.
You point your compass north.
And then you start walking.
Totally recommended
I read and listen to a lot of books.
Some entertain me.
Some teach me something.
Some give me an idea that I carry around for a few days.
But occasionally a book comes along that makes me stop, rewind, listen again and think.
Where the Light Gets In has been one of those books.
It isn’t simply about high performance. Despite Ben’s work with elite athletes and performers, its themes are fundamentally human — identity, purpose, pressure, belonging, confidence, happiness and understanding yourself. (Audible.com.au)
If you’re feeling stuck…
If you’re wondering what comes next…
If you’ve spent years achieving things but aren’t entirely sure why…
If you want to rediscover some curiosity…
Or if you simply want to look at yourself and your life from a slightly different angle…
I wholeheartedly recommend it.
And perhaps tomorrow morning, rather than waking up and immediately thinking about everything you have to do, try asking yourself something different.
What do I get to experience today?
Point the compass north.
Take the next step.
Stay curious.
Be where your feet are.
Stack some wins.
And see where the light gets in.
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