These days, being “productive” is no longer a mark of significance.
I’m not a fan of emotional denial. It’s never been sustainable for me to “get over myself” and “just do what I gotta do.” When that was my mantra, I was 50 pounds overweight from stress-eating and smoking cigarettes 5x a day. I could’ve dropped dead any day from adrenal failure. I don’t know for sure because I never had time to see the doctor. 😅
These days, being “productive” is no longer a mark of significance. If I don’t feel like doing it, I’m not doing it. And quite frankly, these standards of society that attempt to make us feel bad about “not producing” is the reason why you can’t get yourself to log off when your day’s done.
There’s no one in this world who doesn’t feel sorry for themselves at some point in their lives, often for prolonged periods of time. No one who’s never experienced feeling trapped, hopeless, or alone in the problems they’re attempting to solve. And “sucking it up” just adds an obstacle that’s neither practical or useful, in my opinion.
I think specifically of the scene in the Pursuit of Happyness when the main character gets evicted from his apartment and spends the night in the subway bathroom with his kid. The reason why that scene is so powerful is because every single one of us can relate to it.
Of course, there’s some aspect of dusting yourself off and getting back up again that’ll always be in play. But that comes after acknowledging the way you feel. During certain phases of life, it’ll feel like all you do is fail. And denying how you feel about that is for sure not gonna help you.
Do this instead:
Play out the worst case scenario all the way to its sorry end
Be in the story. As in, feel everything you would feel there
Notice how everything you feel *there* is the same thing you feel now
This is a moment by moment thing. In every relationship, especially the one you have with yourself, it’s the frequent, small, and positive interactions that build trust. Once you’ve built the capacity to be “in the suck,” you’ve also built the capacity to get yourself moving again.
The falls won’t take so much of the wind outta you anymore.