Disclaimer: I’m not a psychiatrist or a doctor, and the advice here is general - not specific to individual circumstances or needs. If you are struggling with your mental health please please speak to a professional!
As much as I love the “focus on what you can do, instead of what you can’t do” and “find a way forward” way of thinking, it’s not the only way to think or even the best for all scenarios all the time. Just like there’s no one perfect bench program, there is no one perfect philosophy or one flawless answer that is applicable to absolutely everything all the time for everyone - the present lockdown situation included. So, instead of “mental toughness” or “how to move forward”, I thought it would be fun to try thinking from a different perspective and see where it leads.
Getting any real depth may be beyond the scope of a wee blog post, but it’s something I can always come back to or think more about at a different time. For now, I’ll focus on 3 areas - accepting our situation (instead of trying to improve it), what really matters (do we need to improve/make progress?), and time is running out (life is short and our potential).
Maybe it will be helpful, maybe it won’t, maybe there’ll be no answers and just more questions. Whatever happens, it’ll be a wee journey into unfamiliar territory, and I’m always down for adventures - so let’s dive in.
ACCEPTING THAT THIS SUCKS
First off - yes, things could be worse, we’re not being sent to war, suffering a famine or the end of the world. People have been through much worse and survived, so going off the rails is a bit unnecessary. Looking through even recent history, lockdown is not such a bad deal - but that doesn’t mean it’s not a jarring experience. Routines lie in ruin, uncertainty and outrage all over social media and the news, livelihoods displaced or put on hold until who knows when.
Change has happened. Unplanned and unwanted change. We’re not robots, of course we’re going to feel something, great or small. Denying emotions, bottling stuff up or suppressing how we feel might work in the short term to get through a situation, but long term might end up doing more harm than good. So maybe this is a time to just feel, sit in the emotion and see what we’re actually experiencing, and experience it. Accept the situation for what it is, and that what we feel is what we feel. Instead of keeping busy moving forward, distracted, just sitting still for a bit and getting our bearings.
Interestingly, sometimes the relentless push forward is just a distraction from something that does matter but is uncomfortable - like staying late at work to avoid an issue at home. Maybe we would do better to pause for a moment and see what we actually need to do or confront, instead of keeping busy with something that can, in reality, wait.
The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek - Joseph Campbell
How long should we sit? How long will it take to accept or process what we’re feeling? This will be different for everyone, some might take a few moments to think “this sucks, I feel frustrated, ah well where to go from here” and some will take a bit longer - and that’s OK. Obviously we can’t just sit around forever, sooner or later we need to do something (eat, go work, wash, etc), so we’ll need to find some kind of balance between thinking and action. What this balance looks like will vary from day to day, situation to situation - another “there’s no one perfect answer”, just gotta trial and error and learn our way through it all. The faster we can do this (through practice), the quicker we can start to improve our situation or gain a different perspective on it, but that doesn’t mean we need to rush all the time.
Thinking might not be enough, maybe we’ll need to talk to someone or express these emotions somehow - creating something or using them to do something positive or helpful.
As much as we feel angry, it’s ultimately a pretty destructive emotion and acting on it in a negative way in normal daily life - like attacking someone or adding more hate into the world - is rarely going to help a situation. If we can’t channel it into doing something positive or productive, and we’re angry because we care, maybe we should focus on doing something caring instead of doing something destructive - easier said than done of course.
While we’re thinking about how we’ve become restricted or things have changed, it will be easy to focus on what has been taken away - forgetting about what we still have. To stop ourselves falling down the slippery slope of doom and gloom, we should remember to think about all the good things we have, practicing some gratitude even if it’s something super small or a creature comfort. For perspective, if you’re reading this you’re in the top 5% of wealth and education in the world right now - in some countries less than 30% of the population can read, and many jobs pay less than a few pounds for a long day of hard or unsafe labour.
Once we’ve gotten some feelings processed and analysed, is it time to get to work on that new project or activity that everyone else is doing? Maybe, maybe not.
WHAT REALLY MATTERS?
When it comes to thinking about “doing something”, do we really need to be “doing something” in the first place - using the quarantine time to build new skills, do more exercise, etc? Once we’ve fulfilled our basic needs of survival (air, food, water, shelter and sleep), and survival in the modern day/lockdown sense (income, replenishing consumable resources, social distancing, etc), why should we spend time and energy on more work - whether that’s exercise, education, career or just adding new skills to your roster. We’re doing what we need to do in order to survive, and reducing the rate of infection in the population - helping others to survive. Anything else is just a bonus, yet we might be feeling we’re failing if we’re not pursuing more, or guilty that we’re not doing as much as others.
Comparison is the thief of joy - Theodore Roosevelt
This kind of guilt or unhappiness most likely comes from comparing ourselves with others - which is only more pronounced with social media, as it’s easier than ever to see people’s highlight reels, and compare our random or bad moments with a stranger’s “best of” moment. This can lead to the thought of they’re doing “better” or “more”, therefore I am “worse” or “less”, or just a knee jerk “I could have done that, but didn’t, there’s something wrong with me”.
In reality, this isn’t true - just because someone else is doing great doesn’t mean we aren’t doing well (finishing 5th in the Olympics might be gutting, but it still makes you faster or more skilled than 99.99% of people on Earth). Reality is much bigger than this frame we’re looking through, the ecosystem that we’re judging our worth on.
Using “ecosystem” the Jocko Willink way - as the hierarchy of a large or small group of people who are pursuing the same individual goal/interest, such as cool cars, big bench press, wealth, etc.
For example: the fitness ecosystem right now is all about home workouts or putting together an improv home gym - who’s still getting after it in lockdown, who’s got the most creative workouts/challenges, or most motivational quotes/posts. If you’re not doing any of these trending things and you enjoy fitness, chances are you’ll feel like you’re failing or at least doing worse than those that are. However, If we step outside the fitness ecosystem, and take a look around another area, no one cares about how many home workouts we’ve done. A car person will fall asleep listening to our detailed glutes routine, and the musician isn’t going to write a ballad about how much we can bench. Turns out, our whole life isn’t going to waste because we got less than 5,000 steps in today.
In the context of the ecosystem or the specific goals we’re pursuing, yes these things are important if we want to progress. But zoom out of this aspect of our lives - this one teeny part - and it’s not all that big a deal (unless we put the blinders on and focus solely on it, making it a big deal). So we’ve lost some progress from a few weeks off, we can always catch up when things are back to normal - a few weeks out of the decades (thousands of weeks) we’re alive isn’t going to make a big dent.
What if we are trying to do something, but others are doing more or better? Shouldn’t we try harder or be more creative to also do more? That’s one route, and can help us make progress - but can also just become more/unnecessary stress. Instead, in the theme of accepting, we can just accept that there are people better than us at something - but remember that there are also people worse than us, whether we focus on them or not. We’re all at different levels in all these different areas. Sure, Dwayne The Rock Johnson is incredibly successful and cool, but he’s also pretty low on a list of people who can perform successful heart surgery.
Unless we’re at the top, the best in the world (out of over 7 billion - 7,000,000,000* - people), there will always be someone out there that’s a bit more skilled or stronger than us in some area or another. So if we’re making the judgement we’re failing because someone is doing more or better than us in some regard, we’ll always feel like we’re failing. However, if we can remove the comparison, detach ourselves from this emotional knee jerk reaction, we just have different people at different levels. What someone else is doing is no reflection on us. If we want to work on an area or approach it a different way, we can do so. If we don’t, we don’t. The sun will still rise regardless of our decisions.
*want to know a mind blowing fact to show the scale of a billion? There are 86,400 seconds in a day. One million (1,000,000) seconds is about 12 days. One billion seconds (1,000,000,000) is over 31 YEARS (closer to 32 years). An odd sidenote, but it’s my post and I’ll do what I want.
This doesn’t mean it’ll be easy - we all need a little challenge in our life to stay engaged and fulfilled, and struggle is a key part of growth - but if we’re doing it for reasons that are important to us, it’ll make it worth it in the end. If we do it for reasons that aren’t that important to us, it’ll be a pretty hollow and “meh” feeling once we’re done. Comparing ourselves with others or doing more just because other people are seems to be a flawed strategy - instead we should focus on what’s actually important to us, and work on that.
It’s a matter of preference - are you happy with what you’re doing or where you’re at? Some will want to push themselves, and some will just want to make it to tomorrow. Some will want to learn a new instrument, some will want to sort out the attic, some will just want to get by - once again there’s no right answer here, it comes down to what matters to you and what you want or need to do. As always, this doesn’t have to be a permanent state or decision - we can choose to change our minds at any time and adapt or go in a new direction. Just gotta be true to who you are in this and any moment.
What if amongst all this thinking and surviving we’ve missed an opportunity? This pandemic can serve as a reminder that none of us will live forever, so shouldn’t we maximise every moment?
TIME IS RUNNING OUT
One day, we’ll take our last breath and that’s it. Done. No more time to do the things we wanted to, or make up for things we shouldn’t have done. Normally this would be a rallying cry for “do the thing”, “don’t reach the end with regrets” and “look back on memories not dreams” - and in general I agree with all these sentiments, but once again - does this one thing REALLY matter? Or is the push to do absolutely everything just extra pressure?
If we’re already enjoying what we do, living the life we want, then why should we do even more just to “reach our full potential” in one area? Yes, we can all do more than we think we can, but is it something we truly want or just something that sounds good at the time. If we work and sacrifice until we’re making £100,000 a year, will all the extra work and stress it takes to get to £150,000 be worth it for the time we have left - or would we be better off deciding to be happy with what we have, and spending that extra time and energy somewhere else?
Regardless of how we feel about it, the journey to the top of anything is never an easy one. For every level there’s another devil - so while there are definitely perks to having a more important job or some extra money for example, there will also be drawbacks. Better job often means more responsibility or time pressure, more fame means less privacy, more gym gainZ means more work is required to keep them (and exponentially more work to build upon them). Not to mention putting more time into one area means sacrificing it from somewhere else, so while we might be making progress in one direction, it could be at the expense of something else we care about.
If we decide to pursue even more, develop that hunger necessary to get to the upper echelons of our chosen field and beyond - where does it end, how much is enough? We’ll either run out of things to accomplish, or things will get so demanding we’re forced to stop - through health issues or injury. For those that do reach the top - world champions, Olympic record holders, multi billionaires, etc - motivation often dissipates, as there’s no more to accomplish and only things they can lose now. The only options are to switch lanes and try something new, or stick around and ultimately start to fall apart.
We’ll reach a similar situation - maybe not on the world stage or the peak of human performance, but the same scenario - working hard to progress and improve, and reaching the point where we must choose between changing lanes or sticking with what we’re doing. However, we don’t need to wait until we’ve reached a certain milestone to switch things up, we can make that decision at any time:
immediately after trying something (deciding it doesn’t help us that much or we don’t enjoy it)
after a short amount of time (gaining what we want from it and moving on)
after a long time (accomplishing what we want to accomplish or just doing it because we enjoy it and it’s time to move on)
Or we might just decide to continue, in the same fashion or with a different approach. It’s OK to change our minds, as long as the decision makes sense to us that’s all that really matters.
Of course, improving or wanting to be the best is not a bad thing in itself - it can help us and the people around us live a better life, and make the world a better place. If we’re truly passionate or have a strong “why” or drive for pursuing such goals, the process and suffering will be worth it in the end, but if we’re doing it for the wrong reasons - because it’s what someone else is doing/done, the ecosystem says so - it’s going to be a whole lotta stress and time spent for little meaningful return.
There’s nothing wrong with wanting to be the best, we just need to understand the sacrifice of time and other pursuits that is required to get there. The opposite is also true, there’s nothing wrong with not wanting to be the best, as long as we understand the sacrifice of potential outcomes and dreams that is required to get there. That might sound a bit sad, but by giving up on becoming the best at something, we can also give these great expectations of ourselves - if we’re not aiming to become an Olympic champion or master of something, we can forgive or at least not be so hard on ourselves for slip ups and “not being perfect” or optimal each day.
Another way to think of it is summed up as “happiness is reality minus expectations” - or giving up how we think things should be (including ourselves) and just accepting them as they are.
Naturally, there is a middle ground: improving our skills, knowledge, career, etc at a manageable rate that fits with the rest of our life, focusing on the things that are important to us. A happy medium between focusing on one thing, and spending time on many things. What this looks like, and how we approach it will be different for everyone - just know what you want and be realistic about what it takes and what you are willing to put in. There’s no shame in saying we do or don’t want to be the best, that we just want to improve a little or that we’re happy where we’re at - we just need to be real with ourselves. There will always be the temptation to compare ourselves with others, and set unrealistic and even unwanted expectations of ourselves just to fit into an ecosystem, or compete with/ impress someone - we just need to be mindful of this and make sure it’s not influencing our judgements or actions in a negative way.
WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE? DO WE NEED TO GO ANYWHERE?
So, here we are, what now?
It’s OK to feel a certain way, and to take some time to understand where it’s coming from, and process it.
It’s OK not to do what everyone (or some folks) are doing.
It’s OK not to maximise the productivity of every situation and our life.
It’s OK if we do, or find some middle ground between maximising nothing and everything.
We’re all a little different in how we think/feel and what we need/want, and that’s OK too.
Life is precious and short, so as long as we’re surviving we’re doing enough. What we do or don’t do is up to us, and whatever we choose will no doubt annoy or be in conflict with someone - staying where you are will annoy people who want to move forward, moving forward will annoy people who want to stay where they are. Equally, whatever we do or don’t do will be a joy to those who think the same. Trying to think through all the possibilities and judgements is enough to boggle the mind, and leave us in paralysis by analysis. So instead, just remember that life is a lot bigger than this one decision/period of time/ecosystem, find what is important to you, and do it. Don’t let some social media post or ecosystem decide what you want to do or how you should live your life.
That includes me, if you read through all this and thought “what a steaming pile of sh*te”, that’s OK. This has been a look at just one approach, there are plenty of other ways of thinking that might be more useful to you right now.
With regards to the lockdown, it’s been put in place to help as many people as possible to survive (old, young, healthy and unhealthy), so as long as you’re following the rules and surviving, you’re doing enough. There’s bound to be people doing new things, having some kind of adventure or creating something, and that’s grand. If they want to do so, that’s cool. If it’s something you want to do, that’s cool too. Use this time, or get through it - both are fine, and far better options than winding up stressed out or bullying yourself because you’re not doing what someone else is.
POST SCRIPT - TOO MUCH ME TIME?
Something that kept coming up while thinking/writing this blog post: does all this thinking about ourselves and what we need or what we’re feeling/experiencing make us selfish? What is the line between self care and selfishness?
To keep it short: we can’t pour from an empty cup, but we also don’t need to wait for the cup to be full before we pour - so once again we’ll need to find what works best for us, according to what is important to us, our needs and the situation. There’s going to be all manner of perspectives and opinions on the matter and we’ll go bonkers trying to figure out a way to please all people and ways of thinking. There’s also going to be all different levels of people being selfless or caring, and just because we might feel someone is doing or giving more than us doesn’t mean we’re totally selfish or stone hearted. If we can help someone, that is cool and a good thing. If we can’t help with a certain problem or cause, that’s OK - we don’t need to be experts or givers in all things. A little good put out there is better than no good at all.
Maybe that’s where the distinction lies - have we put any good out there for all the thinking we’re doing? Thinking is important, but if it’s ALL we ever do - staying cooped up in our head all the time - we might be able to get into a snug comfort zone, but we’re not putting any good in the world. If we can get out of our head and DO something, anything, we stand a chance of putting some good out there - sooner or later, big or small. We can put some good out in different ways, not necessary directly doing something for someone. Maybe it’s helping people around you as you go, inspiring people to do more as they see you overcome your struggles or stay committed to a pursuit, improving your skills/resources to better help people in the future, leading by example, saving up for a big donation (money or time), donating a little over a long period of time for a big grand total, or a mix of all these and more.
Even then, we’ll need to be mindful that what we’re doing to help is actually helpful, and not just some empty action that makes us feel better. If our friend is in the mood for fish and the shops are closed, then giving them a fish will be more helpful than giving them some money. If our friend lives next to a river/lake and there are no shops nearby, then teaching them how to fish might be a better option than giving them some money or have them rely on us to bring fish for dinner. Or maybe fish has nothing to do with it, and the real problem is that they’re a bit lonely - so the most good we can do is spend some time with them somehow.
At the end of the day, it’s all a big guessing game, and there’s always more we can think about or do. For now: don’t let some strangers, famous people or social media dictate how you should live your life or set up expectations that let you bully yourself for not meeting them. Find a good balance between thinking and doing, what is important to you, what you can do, and do that.