How easily our minds can trick us into not-doing and how to get ourselves back on track
I had it all figured out, I have a clear direction, clearly knowing what I want to do, what my next steps are. And then? my perfectly crafted daily routine that I set myself to do each day fell apart. I had to do some activities that were off, there were different. No problem, I am quite adaptable. I handled them. But then? Something happened that I did not take into account: my brain was not so easily swayed to go back to my initially formed activities for that day. Instead. It had other ideas of what to do.
Do you know that? It took me a while to break that pattern and realize what happened. I deviated from my plan, I had to do activities that were draining to me but I had to do them anyways. They took out all of my energy, they made it difficult for me to get to work. (You can read the full article here.). But instead of directly going back to my initial plan and the activites that I enjoy, my brain had other ideas. It felt like almost that it saw the slight loop of my focus being swayed and the loophole to get into the thoughts of its own.
“Oh, I feel so sad, I don’t have friends. I want to people now”, would it tell me, or “Are you sure that this path is the right one for you?”, or “Oh, I have some other great ideas of what we could do: let’s research and read and find out what others care about so we can adapt” and “do you know that it is fucking cold in here? Let’s go bathing!”. And then I did that. I researched, I read, I thought, I took a bath. I did all these activities instead of focusing what I enjoyed, what gave me pleasure and a feeling of proudness. And the more I did these activities, the more I felt drained and unhappy. I realized how I lost confidence in myself, how I felt insecure, how I started to act fear-based and impulsively instead of out of my foundational core.
I gave in into these patterns and they drained me. I never saw it that clearly. That there is this part in us that is seeking the comfort, the things it knows, the things that allow to do nothing, to feel good (in a weird sense of good) and to be detached. It is like immersing fully and then waking up and realizing that during that time there was nothing gained: no memory of beautiful moments, no understanding despite circled thoughts, no growth despite mindless scrolling. These times are lost times. You won’t get them back and nor do they bring value. They are there. But that’s it.
The only thing you can do is, to get yourself back
And this is the only thing you can do. Get yourself back. realize the pattern, realize how your mind wanders and loves to move into mindless, numbless activities, and the moment you realize it, get it back.
Does that mean you should never take a bath? No, of course not. It is not about taking a bath or scrolling the phone or making your bed, but it is about your brain thinking, and distracting, and immersing you in activities that you do without even clearly realizing you do them, simply because you are on autopilot and one day and moment you wake up and realize that you do not even know what you did and why you did the things you did the last 3 days. This is it what I am talking about. You do activities and actions, you do think in circles, and you do stuff not because you deliberately chose to do them, but simply because your mind found an open door to go through and build this world and the activities for you but you yourself never wanted in the first place. When this happens, you act on autopilot. You do not know why ou do it, neither does it gives you any real pleasure and proudness nor does it help you to grow and live your principles and values. It simply let’s you numbly follow whatever the brain comes up at the moment. Running from one side to the other, being a feather in the wind, maybe this, maybe that, maybe something else, thinking and thinking and running and running and stressing and stressing. Calm down. Focus. And get back to what you deeply enjoy, gets you a bit unomfortable and makes you happily proud.
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