Am I battling or being a fraud?
Lack of Progress
One of the central ideas behind Strong99 is to implement long-term changes in our lives to thrive as we live longer. Right now I’m all talk and no action: there’s a lot of Do as I say and not a lot of Do as I do, and that makes me feel a little like a fraud. How can I keep writing about making changes and not make any myself? In this battle to get out of The Great Stuckedness I’ve had some glimmers of things working but effective long-term changes are still noticeably absent.
I think the answer lies in the “long-term” part of that statement.
I often find myself in this headspace of “everything’s broken, I’m overwhelmed, I have to make huge changes and fix this right now”. In returning to the discussion about the space between stimulus and response, I’m stuck in a pattern of jumping into short-term thinking as a response when something isn’t right, never pausing to put things into perspective. Some examples:
I look in the mirror → I need to go on a crash diet
I work out → Have to do more, it’s not as much as I used to do
I look at my newsletter subscriber count → This is never going to work
I look at how much is on my To Do list → I give up
I look at how little I got done today → I go numb out with food or TV or Twitter, think about how I wish I was more disciplined
The wolf you feed
Responding with a short-term fix or giving up is an attitude that serves the wrong masters:
fear
limbic system
how other people perceive me
the scarcity of ignoring all of the good things
low self-confidence
Needless to say this is self-defeating. Stephen Covey spoke of something similar:
Most of us spend too much time on what is urgent and not enough time on what is important.
— Stephen R. Covey
Back to Basics.
I don’t have one solution, but working through this makes me feel less like a fraud and more like a battler. My biggest battle right now takes place in the space between stimulus and response: until I can start being aware of that I’ll remain one of those spending too much time on urgent things instead of important ones.
Meditate.
It goes without saying that a life-long meditative practice has tons of benefits but in this context it will make me more aware of what’s happening in my head. It’s a lot easier to pause after a stimulus when I’m already used to observing my thoughts. Meditation encourages a practice of noticing.
Slow down.
I haven’t always been good at patience. I often feel the need to rush through something brought on by the overwhelm of an abundance of other things to do. An active practice of unitasking and working more methodically, in effect Deep Work, will help dampen the effects of overwhelm.
Stop.
When I do it right the pause after stimulus is like a full body sigh, a letting go. It’s the observing of emotions and judgement rising, stopping long enough for their spark to extinguish. The stop is long enough to allow some rational thought and mental discipline to provide input on the desired response.
Now let’s see if I can do as I say.