I Always Seem to Believe that there is One Thing that is Holding me Back

If you were to read through my blog posts back-to-back, you’d probably come across a general theme.

I always seem to believe that I’d be performing better, if only I fixed this one thing.

That thing, of course, changes. It might be drinking, it might be my sleeping habits, it might be my relationship, the way my business is set up, nutrition, fitness, or other self-imposed limitations.

But I always seem to believe that my true potential – not just for accomplishment but for performance – has never actually been realized.

Almost all of the things mentioned do impact my performance. And I believe I am much better for having tried to optimize all of them.

But at the end of the day… I hate to say it, but I think this is kind of it. I’m never going to be a bottomless well of energy and I’m never going to magically start performing way better than I did before.

I think at this point I basically need to accept that, and take pragmatic steps forward.

All the building blocks are there. I’ve established time and again the importance of building habits and systems that can ensure that I’m performing day in and day out.

And I’ve had lots of successes. I’ve developed lots of great habits that have, indeed, carried me through many hardships and on to various accomplishments in other areas.

But overall, I feel that there’s still a huge ebb and flow of productivity. I get motivated and I go crazy, but then I go through a rough patch and I tell myself I need to relax and take it easy because I just need to recover.

Maybe I’m just trying to do too much at once. Maybe I need to ensure that I never add on more than one thing at a time. That I just add small little things to my day that will help me move forward with various projects.

I’m not sure exactly what the answer is, but I do think that it’s important to just acknowledge that this is more or less as good as it’s going to get, and then plan accordingly.

To Know is to Love

As documented in earlier posts, every time I move to a new city there is a period where I’m really anxious and uneasy and just struggling to enjoy my time there.

And then over time, as I explore the city more, learn what’s around and where I should go, and establish a route, I eventually relax and even grow to love the city I’m staying in.

The thought came to me on this trip that “to know is to love”.

It came to me in the context of cities, of course. Every restaurant I try, every street I go down, and every person I meet contribute to an increasing knowledge of a place and, with it: an increasing affection.

Upon further reflection, I feel that while the unknown may be enticing, you don’t love the unknown. You can only really love what you know.

So if something is new, you must learn everything you can about it and get to know it well in order to love it.

Nobody really loves anything or anyone they know nothing about.

But when you get to know someone or something, the love seems nearly perfectly correlated with your knowledge and familiarity with them.

This is somewhat related to a portion of dialogue from the movie Lady Bird:

Sister Sarah Joan : You clearly love Sacramento.

Christine ‘Lady Bird’ McPherson : I do?

Sister Sarah Joan : You write about Sacramento so affectionately and with such care.

Christine ‘Lady Bird’ McPherson : I was just describing it.

Sister Sarah Joan : Well, it comes across as love.

Christine ‘Lady Bird’ McPherson : Sure, I guess I pay attention.

Sister Sarah Joan : Don’t you think maybe they are the same thing? Love and attention?

 

Besides being a brilliant piece of writing and possibly the most important and moving scene in the whole film, it’s a similar point to what I’m making.

When you pay attention to things – when you get to know them – you come to love them.

So assuming that these things are all true, I feel like there are a few key insights to be considered:

  1. You can’t really love something you don’t know
  2. If you want to love (or even like) something, you have to take the time to really get to know it
  3. The depth of your love for something (or someone) may be limited by the depth of your understanding or knowledge of them

So in the context of visiting new cities, I think that it’s important that I put a lot of effort into understand how it works and exploring everything.

Perhaps I’ve always understood this on some level, and that’s why I’ve always prioritized meeting people and building those relationships over doing touristy stuff when I travel, which I perceive as being superficial and not great for really getting to know a place.

But I think it certainly applies to relationships as well.

You can’t truly love someone you just met. You have to really get to know them first.

And then to really get to know them, you have to pay close attention and really see them.

I have a friend that is incredible at just noticing what makes people special. I’m pretty sure I’ve written about this before. But if you ask him about any of his friends, he’s always ready with, “What I love about this friend” and then will follow up with the perfect story demonstrating what he means.

I’ve had him tell stories like that about me, and oftentimes it’s not even something I remember. To me it wasn’t important. But he noticed.

And that comes off as love.

You should always be looking for these things in other people. I’m sure I’ll never reach the level that he is able to do it, but I strive to really pay attention to others and notice what makes them special.

I’m sure these general concepts apply to a lot of things. This is really just the underlying concept.

But I want to keep this in mind and look for more examples of it in the world.

 

People Who are Struggling at Least Have a Clear Sense of Purpose

This is sort of a weird thought with possibly no discernable value, but still interesting to think through.

People who are really, truly struggling just to live – like people who can’t even afford to buy food or shelter or those in war – have a very clear sense of purpose: survival.

Coming from a first-world country and a middle-class family, I’ve never had to worry about whether or not I’d have food to eat or proper shelter (although much of my childhood was spent in a home that would aggressively leak water from the ceiling when it rained).

When you come from that, the possibilities are endless. I’m guaranteed to have food and shelter, so then… What exactly is my purpose?

Obviously I’m not the first person to question this. Watch any movie from pre-9/11 America and the themes always involve a lack of purpose and rebellion against consumerism since, seemingly, those were the biggest problems facing all Americans at the time.

It’s incredibly silly, but a part of me envies that level of clarity in purpose. You don’t have to question your motivations for anything, you may not have to think long-term because you’re only focusing on surviving another day.

Now obviously, I’m romanticizing a terrible situation and I absolutely do not want any of that. And while I’m describing it as “freedom from the burden of unclear purpose,” it could more accurately described as “not having the privilege of choosing a purpose.”

I’m not a psychologist, but I assume that this envy of that component of things just comes from a more general unease. With unlimited options, I don’t feel like my environment pushes me towards anything.

I think many of us are now faced with the timeless question of, “what do I do with my life?”

I’m not sure we evolved to be equipped to answer that question. And it causes problems.

Part of me thinks that’s the real reason people still have kids. When you care for another life, you feel like you have purpose.

And from what I’ve read, parents are actually less happy than childless individuals, but they do feel more fulfilled. Maybe that purposeless void gets filled for them.

Maybe just having someone that needs you quiets that unsettled part of your mind that’s overwhelmed with a level of opportunity it isn’t equipped to comprehend.

I feel like I know people who are totally content to just be, and I envy them, too (to an extent). They just enjoy what they have and don’t seem to be bothered by any perceived lack of purpose in their life.

I think I’m someone who needs to have some kind of purpose. I need to be working towards something. But as my stretch goals and dreams have slowly become reality, I guess I find myself feeling a little aimless.

I was under no illusions that meeting goals would solve all my problems or suddenly make me fulfilled.

But perhaps I wasn’t fully prepared for what it would feel like to not have a lot of tangible goals left.

Sure, I have financial goals and some personal goals, but whereas in the past I felt like I was seeking an entire “life” that I didn’t know, I now sort of feel like… I have that life.

And like… It’s cool. But what now?

Where do I go from here?

I’m Constantly Judging Experiences Which Lessens my Enjoyment

This an extension of a thought I had recently which was that I am way too focused on my own enjoyment of things instead of just enjoying them for what they are.

This new thought is related and very similar but distinct.

When I watch a show or read a book or experience just about anything, I feel like I’m still judging it. If I think something is corny, I’ll think about that and judge it. If I think it’s unoriginal or just bad, that’s what I’m thinking about.

And I think the underlying problem is that I’m not allowing myself to be fully invested in it. How can I get lost in an experience if I’m too caught up in my own experience to really enjoy it?

I’ve really been enjoying reading fiction books in Spanish for a while, and to a lesser extent, TV shows as well. And it took me this long to realize that I think it’s because I’m not judging anything.

I’m not asking it to be anything for me. It doesn’t have to be deep, or meaningful, or exciting, or thought-provoking. I only need it to be in Spanish.

And as such, I become much more immersed because I’m not judging it at all. I don’t care how “good” it is or any of the rest. Even if it’s terrible, I’ll still get my Spanish practice in.

As I’m writing this, I realize that this concept is extremely similar to one I noted years ago when I switched from dating with the intention of finding “the one” to dating more casually without any preconceived notions of where it would go.

I found myself enjoying it a lot more and able to just enjoy the other person.

In a regular relationship, I feel like there are all these expectations and you’re always searching for things you don’t like about the other person so you can ask the terrible question, “could I live with this forever?”

Now, I fully acknowledge that this mindset is problematic even if marriage is what you’re after. But I think it’s what pretty much everyone does. I would hope they’d realize this about themselves or, at the very least, stop asking questions like that and at some point simply accept their partner fully along with all their flaws.

But when I wasn’t dating with marriage as the “purpose”, things got a lot simpler.

I became far more patient of things that I didn’t like or would have deemed “incompatible” in the past. Because in the end, what does it matter? Nobody is perfect. And I probably wouldn’t have to deal with that problem forever since we won’t be getting married.

Once again, there is probably more to dig into there and my general attitude could certainly have been improved, but the important thing is the mindset shift.

Instead of focusing either on how the other person made ME feel or some nebulous concept of the future, I became someone who was able to just enjoy the company of another person without judgement.

To finally take the focus off of myself, and focus on someone else.

In my experience, it generally solves or even prevents almost all petty fights or even times where you’re just kind of annoyed at the other person. I learned that many (most?) of those are really just a judgement about the way the other person is. And that the thing they are doing, in isolation, isn’t even the problem.

It’s that the thing represents how they are, and the belief that this thing will keep happening over and over again.

Bringing it back to the original discussion at hand: it involves a shift from focusing on myself to focusing on external things.

I think that, as long as you maintain some level of focus on yourself and how you are feeling, you can never be truly invested in anything around you.

This means movies won’t be as exciting or moving, books won’t transport you to another world, and you’ll never fully enjoy the company of those around you.

Perhaps this is part of the appeal of some drugs; in particular: alcohol. Probably by way of simply decreasing the bandwidth of your brain (i.e. making you too stupid to focus on more than one thing at a time), you can stop focusing on yourself and instead focus entirely on something (or someone) external.

This could allow you to invest in and enjoy things much more.

I’m not entirely sure this is actually true but it seems plausible, at the very least.

I have heard that psychedelics completely dissolve the ego. This may allow you to completely immerse yourself in external things. I know this sounds counter-intuitive since they are usually used to go deeply inward and rework how your brain works.

But if you think about it, they seem to do it from a sort of third-party state. Like you’re looking in as a neutral party.

I’ve heard anecdotally that watching movies or playing video games, for example, is a pretty wild experience because it’s like you are in them. You become so invested that you truly experience everything as if it were real.

Which seems to lend credence to the idea that if you can just turn off the self-focus, you can become much more invested in everything around you and, hopefully, enjoy it a lot more.

And I think that I have increasingly lost the ability to do that and need to put in active work to get it back.

In general, I think I just sort of need to focus less on myself.