Ask AltoTRY · 10 MIN
Alive Moments
TAIU
Two weeks of noticing what actually registers.
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Tool 63 · Develop yourself
When do you feel completely in your life rather than merely moving through it?
A guided 14 to 18 minutes conversation, here in TAIU. Look for the real moments, then find what they have in common.
GUIDES
You have named it. Now spend some time on it.
Each Guide gives you a clear way to look at one subject in your own time. Choose where to begin. You do not need to work through everything.
The moments
When you are actually in your life
Gather the times you were completely in your life rather than moving through it.
Where this often ends up: A short record of when you are most in your life.
It may also end with a clearer view of something, or with nothing that needs doing.
Around twenty minutes
The pattern
What those moments have in common
Look for what those experiences share, so you can recognise the next one.
Where this often ends up: The common thread, described in your words.
It may also end with a clearer view of something, or with nothing that needs doing.
Around thirty minutes
Making room
Making room for more of it
Work out what would make room for more of this, if anything needs to change at all.
It may also end with a clearer view of something, or with nothing that needs doing.
Around twenty minutes
This Guide is free, like everything else in The Clearing.
You can see what it covers before you begin.
Start this Guide
What if the thing that makes you feel alive doesn't need to become anything?
Not every source of energy is a business waiting to be found.
Two different examples beat five similar ones.
What you'll look at
- 01A specific moment
- 02A second one
- 03The common ground
- 04Where it already exists
A note from Mark
I know some of the things that give me energy.
Interesting people. A good conversation. Seeing a connection between things that looked unrelated. Getting something moving. Walking into a room where I don't know exactly what will happen.
That's useful for me to know.
But I don't think everything that gives us energy needs monetising, scaling or turning into a mission.
Sometimes the useful discovery is simply knowing what deserves more room in your life.
What you'll get
This will not sort you into a personality type.It will give you answers about your own life that you can test.
01
Real moments
02
The shared conditions
03
Where it already exists
04
What to protect
+
Your TAIU handover: a summary of what the conversation found, written so you can take it with you.
See everything included ↓
- 01The moments
- 02What was actually happening
- 03What they have in common
- 04Where this already exists in your life
- 05What would be lost by making it productive
- 06The rival reading
- 07What deserves protecting
- 08What remains unresolved
- 09Where this goes next
When you finish
Bring it back to your tree.
Your tree is where TAIU keeps a picture of your whole life, in parts like work, money and health.
This session works on the whole of you, not one part of your life. Nothing is scored. At the end, you are asked once which part of your life this touched most. You can answer none.
The conversation writes this summary for you. Keep the sheet, print it or paste it into My Tree. Nothing from the conversation is stored by TAIU.
- Session
- Date
- The part of life this belongs to
- What we found
- The alternative we tested
- What deserves protecting
- What should change, if anything
- Next actions
- What to notice or find out
- What remains unresolved
What now?
01 · Save it
Two real moments, described specifically.
02 · Test it
Put one more occasion of it in the next month.
See more ↓
What I would do
- 01
Start from a real occasion rather than from what you enjoy in principle.
- 02
Find a second example that is genuinely different.
- 03
Look for the condition underneath, not the activity.
- 04
Notice where that condition already exists in your week.
- 05
Give it more room, or leave it exactly as it is.
Test it
- 01
What did the two moments have in common?
- 02
Was it the activity, the people or the challenge?
- 03
What would be lost if this had to be useful?
The alternative
The obvious reading is that the activity is the answer. Test it. The pattern may be novelty rather than lasting interest, in which case a new version will be needed soon. It may be the people rather than the thing. It may be the level of challenge rather than the subject. It may also be escape from something else, which is worth knowing before you build anything around it.
Think about this
- The last time you genuinely lost track of time.
- What exactly you were doing, and who was there.
- Which part of it gave you the energy.
- A second occasion that was nothing like the first.
- What the two have in common.
Take this to Ask Mark
You have done the exercise. Now look again at what it found.
This looks at what you found and helps you understand it. It is not another exercise to repeat.
Take this to Ask Mark →Want to go further?
Recommended by the TAIU community
What helped you?
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We review recommendations before sharing them with the community.
Finished the exercise?
What did this uncover?
Tell us whether it helped and what you discovered. It takes less than a minute.
Next tool
What am I still curious about
If the pull is towards knowing rather than doing
Further thinking
Flow
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Why We Do What We Do
Edward L. Deci with Richard Flaste
A Wandering Mind Is an Unhappy Mind
Matthew Killingsworth and Daniel Gilbert
See the thinking ↓
Book
Flow
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
The original work behind absorbed attention: the conditions are a clear task, immediate feedback and difficulty roughly matched to skill. Useful here as a discriminator. Attention that absorbs you and attention that merely holds you feel similar in the moment and leave you in completely different states afterwards.
Book
Why We Do What We Do
Edward L. Deci with Richard Flaste
The readable account of self-determination theory, written by the man who spent forty years testing it. The finding that matters here is that rewards and approval reliably change why people do things, and that behaviour which survives without either is telling you something the rest is not. It gives you a usable test rather than a feeling.
Article
A Wandering Mind Is an Unhappy Mind
Matthew Killingsworth and Daniel Gilbert
Sampling thousands of people at random moments, the study found that minds wander around forty seven per cent of the time, and that people were less happy when their attention was elsewhere than on what they were doing, almost regardless of what that was. Where the mind goes when nothing demands it turns out to be worth looking at.
Article
The Hedonic Adaptation Prevention Model
Kennon Sheldon and Sonja Lyubomirsky
Why the best parts of a life stop registering. Adaptation is efficient and it is also why people trade away arrangements that were working, having quietly stopped noticing them. The prevention research is more useful than the treadmill headline: variety and continued attention slow it, and pure acquisition does not.