What is a Good Life? #162
What Comes After Optimising with Jasper Walshe
Hello and welcome to What is a Good Life? A project exploring the big questions around how we live, who we are and what actually matters.
This week, I am reflecting on a conversation with Jasper Walshe, coach, facilitator and founder of TRIPS Tank™ and The Arena. A conversation that explores one of the most relatable traps in modern life — building our identity around performance, achievement and having the answers. This episode is for anyone who's hit the goals and found themselves asking — is this it?
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Take care, Mark
1. My Weekly Reflection
Jasper and I have more than a few parallels when it comes to optimisation.
I used to journal daily to really try to find out who I am. I used to meditate daily to become more aware. I revelled in the suffering that therapy helped me explore, buoyed by notions of really “doing the work” and a thought, “give me more suffering, that is how I will earn joy.”
I yearned to find out final answers to BIG questions. I can’t be the only one who intermittently found themselves pleading during journalling sessions, sometimes in a repeating loop:
“Please Universe tell me my purpose.”
I was armed with new models and vocabulary, but my judgements felt as pointed as ever.
I recall walking along a stream one day, in the picturesque mountainous setting of the Sacred Valley, Peru, and my mind was consumed with how full of shit the western hippies in the town were (they mostly were, to be fair) and how I had only managed to do five of my spiritual and health processes out of seven that day.
I felt an exasperation by the stream, “is this really my state of my mind and being, after all this effort?”
Missing one practice one morning would apparently be the reason why I was feeling anxious.
Perfectionism and optimisation were still running the show.
Jasper said something that cut to the core of my experience too: “I was always willing to be open and vulnerable when it’s on my terms.”
The daily practices can be wonderful tools if they allow us to notice more. When they become obsessions in and of themselves it becomes a cycle of separation and frustration.
I am not sure when something shifted.
My life feels slower now, less rushed. This project has helped. The act of having deeply connecting conversations each week around what really matters to another human. They both fill me up and continually point to something important.
Rarely if ever do people speak of meditation streaks, perfection, or even what they achieved or accumulated. They speak of moments.
When I started these interviews they were initially private. I often asked people to recall a recent moment of fulfilment. It’s the question that caused the most hesitation.
Then a smile would break across their face. Almost embarrassed by how simple the answer felt.
A sunset. A conversation. A hug. A shared sadness. A bike ride.
I realised the hesitation wasn’t confusion. It was the search for something impressive.
There’s a difference between our idea of a good life and how a good life actually feels.
I suspect many of us walk right past it every day while chasing the idea. The moments are here. We just forgot to notice them.
“How can I live in wonder?” — Jasper Walshe
This happened 18 months ago but some rendition or version of it has become a bit of ritual in my house each week.
I woke up early, as I naturally tend to do. I went to the living room to write something that was begging to be written—the kind of thing you fear might vanish if you go back to sleep and try to recall it later.
Two hours later, I hear my 8-month-old making her sweetest cooing sounds. I feel my heart soften instantly on feeling their vibration.
I clap down my laptop and make my way to the bedroom. There she is, smiling and beaming. She’s standing up, leaning on her mother’s body for support—a beacon of light on this grey, dull Berlin morning.
My tired wife wears a contented grin, looking at our baby and then me. My dog meanwhile is curled up at the feet of my wife, and her tail is whirling around like a helicopter with excitement of seeing me.
I kiss my wife on the lips. I kiss my baby girl on the cheek. Place my head next to my dog’s and scratch behind her ear.
I stand up and glance at them all once more.
I tell my wife, “My heart is so fucking full it could burst.”
I say that irrespective of what our lives become, what finances we need to figure out, or the areas we may need to develop individually and collectively, none of it would bring a greater feeling than this.
My heart was already full.
It took just five minutes to notice and acknowledge it.
There was nowhere to go, nothing to improve. It was simply here already.
2. This Week’s Questions
How have your attempts to optimise your life helped and hindered you?
How can you live in wonder? What comes to mind first for this question?
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Thanks for reading What is a Good Life?
3. Weekly Clip From The Podcast
4. Full Episode - What Comes After Optimising with Jasper Walshe - What is a Good Life? #162
Listen to or watch the full conversation with Jasper Walshe below.
About Me
I am a coach, facilitator, and podcast host, based in Berlin, via Dublin, Ireland. I started this project in 2021, for which I’ve now interviewed over 300 people. I’m not looking to prescribe universal answers, more that the guests’ lines of inquiry, musings, experiences, and curiosities spark your own inquiry into what the question means to you. I am also trying to share more genuine expressions of the human experience and more meaningful conversations.