I would like to be a little boat, peacefully bobbing upon the ocean of life. Drifting with the flow, seeing where I end up, and having little adventures along the way. Escaping the mindless hustle, endless competition, and tiresome hostility of a restless world. Where everyone is so busy doing nothing, and dissatisfied with the stuff they spend all their energy acquiring.

I’m not a boat. And even if I was, this is not what happens when we drift. I would more likely end up shipwrecked, flooded, or out in the middle of an ocean without any sense of where I am.

Life's Drift

You never drift to the destination you have chosen. It’s through deliberate momentum in the right direction, that you get to where you want to go. If you want to be in better health, to clear your debts, or to have stronger relationships, you wont drift there. You’ll need to pick up the ores, and start rowing.

In this episode of the podcast we explore how drift takes us away from ourselves, and what to do when we look up to see we’re not where we want to be.

Where Do We Drift?
Career
It’s easy to get caught drifting within the current of a job, industry, or career. Even if you don’t have any passion for the work you do.

Relationships
Our friendships, families, and partners often become victims of drift. We take them for granted, and fail to do the work necessary to keep them healthy.

Health
We drift with our health. Through the small habits we engage in regularly. Often this leaves us drifting towards crises moments, which we only realise when it’s too late.

Finances
We drift into debt and patterns of mindless spending. Even when we earn more than we used to, we still struggle to make ends meet.

Self-Improvement
We can get caught in the drift of self-development, carrying the belief that we are not good enough. So we drift in search of the secret.

Politics
We tend to ignore things that are important but not urgent. Things that we can sweep under the carpet. This happens in our lives as individuals, as well as our collective life in families, communities, and wider society. Drift creates the cracks where the toxins get in.

Values
Over time we can become numb to the things that once mattered to us. We drift from our deep values, and start to tolerate, excuse, and even pursue things which we know are not good for us.

Why Is Drift Dangerous?
You end up in places you have not chosen to go
Your sense of control disappears
You become dissatisfied and full of regret
It leads to ill health (both literally and figuratively)
What Causes Drift?
Belief in Your Own Immortality
Palliative care nurse, Bronnie Ware, recorded the thoughts of patients in the final 12 weeks of their lives. “When questioned about any regrets they had or anything they would do differently,” she says, “common themes surfaced again and again.”

All 5 of the biggest regrets are underpinned by drift. Where the person has not been deliberate in the pursuit of things that actually mattered to them. This happens when we don’t appreciate the fleeting transitory nature of the life we’ve been given.

Lacking Purpose
We submit to drift when we live without perspective and appreciation for what good we can do in the world. When we carry no sense of meaning beyond ourselves. When we only live for our own hedonistic experiences and what we can get out of life, rather than what we can put into it.

Defence Mechanisms
Donald Meltzer calls defence mechanisms “the lies we tell ourselves to evade pain”. According to Joseph Burgo (author of Why Do I Do That?), defence mechanisms are “unthinking and reflexive; they aim only to ward off pain this very moment and don’t take into acco...