Category: Psychology

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Perhaps Periods of Low Mood are Critical

In my post yesterday, I commented how there is seemingly a natural cycle of lower moods and higher moods, and that it’s totally to be expected – even during very happy times – that sometimes you’re going to feel introspective and sad.

And perhaps that’s absolutely critical.

I’ve described how it sort of feels to me like maybe I haven’t processed any of the negative emotions or difficult situations I’ve experienced for a long time. I’ve written that perhaps it’s because historically I would just drink something or distract myself with entertainment or other things, and that maybe that just totally shuts down your natural ability to process these emotions in a healthy way.

But maybe it’s these times when you’re alone and feeling low-energy and possibly sad that this type of processing really happens.

It’s also the time when most people immediately seek a distraction, whether it be their phone, alcohol, drugs, food, or anything else.

Maybe just sitting with those negative emotions and putting some work into thinking about them is key to actually processing them, moving on, and staying emotionally healthy.

I’m not a therapist or a psychologist or a neuroscientist so obviously I don’t know for sure. But it seems like a pretty plausible possibility.

It would also explain why people are more depressed than ever and seemingly more emotionally crippled.

Maybe the key is to seek out those moments where you are feeling kind of down and just sit with what you’re feeling and process it in a healthy way.

Maybe then you can get past it and recover better than ever.

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Willpower & Motivation are Resources to be Cultivated and Used Strategically

We’ve all heard that you shouldn’t rely on the nebulous idea of “motivation” to get things done or achieve success, but I think that’s a very facile precept that should really be expounded upon.

In general, I think it’s a good idea, but we need to clarify a few points.

Note that I’ll basically use “willpower” and “motivation” interchangeable here, but I’m really referring to the same thing.

I think motivation is like a superpower that you have, but it’s not inexhaustible.

The reason people say that is because some people tend to only get things done when they have large amounts of motivation, and then they have no discipline or structure in place to keep going once it inevitably runs out.

And so yes, I agree with the statement that motivation should not be solely relied upon to get things done.

So how should it be used?

Just like any other resource.

It should cultivated, fostered, and spent or used strategically where its impact will be the greatest.

There are many implications of this paradigm, so I’ll go through them one at a time.

First, willpower must not be wasted. 

This could mean a numbers of things; you shouldn’t use it to accomplish pointless things, it shouldn’t be underutilized, and most importantly: I think that you should set up your day-to-day life to minimize its use.

The most obvious way to do this is what all the self-help and productivity “gurus” tout, which is to establish habits and routine. And this is, in fact, great advice.

Not only will these things keep you productive during extended periods where you have no motivation, they will also amplify the impact when you are motivated.

Think of it like a discount. The same task takes much less motivation because it’s already a habit.

And once you’ve finished your habits, you have much more motivation leftover to tackle additional tasks.

Building habits is, by far, the most important thing you can do for productivity and for maximizing the impact of your motivation and willpower. I’ve talked a lot about it in the past, though, so I don’t need to go into much more detail here.

But in addition to habit-building, it’s also important to plug any obvious willpower “leaks”.

So, for example, let’s say you’re trying to eat healthier. You could buy all the same things at the grocery store like junk food, and then leave it lying around your house every day.

The end result would be that throughout the day, you are constantly seeing the junk food and having to use up some willpower to avoid eating it. You won’t have much of it left for other activities, and you may even run out at some point and give in and eat the junkfood.

So what’s the solution? Easy!

Just stop buying it to begin with. Grocery shop right after eating if you have to, and only buy healthy things. You won’t have any unhealthy options left in your house to be tempted by, and the net effect is that you aren’t using up your willpower on something stupid.

This same concept could apply to lots of other areas, too. Besides obvious ones like not having alcohol lying around if you’re trying to quit drinking, you can also do things like blocking distracting websites on your computer, uninstalling unproductive apps on your phone, and removing activities from your life that you greatly dislike.

The net result is that you’ll have much more consistent motivation leftover to use in areas where it makes the most sense.

The next concept is that you should do everything you can to maximize production of willpower.

Entire books have gone into detail both defining what “willpower” is and also how to maximize it. But in general, I think you need to get the basics of a healthy lifestyle right.

Eating right, sleeping well, avoiding excessive stress (even though short-term stress can help you power through things), and keeping yourself happy are all important to maximizing willpower.

If you’re unhealthy, chronically stressed, or depressed, you probably are going to be severely lacking in motivation and willpower.

Next, you need to use your motivation and willpower on important activities that will have the greatest impact.

You could use it all on tedious tasks that probably could be automated or outsourced. Or you could even do nothing with it and just give in to entertainment even though you’re very motivated.

But instead, you should be using it primarily on high-value activities that are likely to improve your long-term earning or productivity potential.

At the start of this year, my motivation was fairly high. I was being productive in basically all areas. I’d finish my normal work for the day, and then I’d proceed to make great progress on my long-term business goals and some personal ones.

And that was basically every day.

But then, starting at the end of Spring, all of that motivation seemed to dry up. I’ve discussed and speculated on the causes of that at length in other posts, but the important thing now is that I got to see first-hand what the difference was for me between being very motivated and having no motivation.

And it was stark.

Basically all of my efforts beyond just the regular day-to-day stuff completely dried up. I never did any of the business initiatives nor the personal ones. And it has been a little depressing.

This goes to show just how important it is. With it, things go so much better.

It showed me that while it is important to have habits in place (which kept me generally on-track), willpower is still incredibly important and can greatly amplify the impact of your efforts.

It’s starting to come back now, I think, and I have big plans for it. I’m really hoping to make the most of it and get all of my other initiatives back on track.

I want to focus hard on my long-term growth initiatives in my business and really focus on acquiring other companies. It will probably require a lot of manual effort but I suspect that it will be worth it in the end.

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I Think I Really Do Need to Relax

So I’m starting to just generally feel better, and my sleep has improved, and in general things are just better. And I think it’s just because I’m finally relaxing and don’t feel like I have to just keep going nonstop.

I think that for several months, I pretty much just felt a constant stress and anxiety. I had a bunch of projects going simultaneously with aggressive timelines and constant issues, and I always had the looming problems of half-planned trips that not only required urgent planning attention, but would also take me away from being able to address everything else.

And I just felt it, constantly. I couldn’t truly enjoy anything because in the back of my mind I was constantly worried about the other things.

It was a physical reaction. I assume that it was just the regular stress response, but spread out over months without any breaks. As we know well, that leads to chronic inflammation and other problems. It’s definitely not a good long-term state.

But I’m finally starting to feel better.

I think I do really just need to relax. Obviously the solution isn’t to just “relax”, since that may be nearly impossible depending on the circumstances.

But I need to be careful about my circumstances to make sure I CAN relax.

I certainly need to be careful about what projects I take on, and especially the timing of them. I had some overlap and that proved to be a problem.

They also overlapped with trips in which I had no internet and wouldn’t have time anyway to manage them, which is far from ideal.

Going forward, for projects that need constant management, I should only ever take them on if I’m going to be fully available with plenty of wiggle room on either end.

And if I’m burnt out, I need to be okay just taking a break from traveling or whatever else I’m doing. I think that the next month and a half will be quite restorative.

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I Need to be More Open to Feedback and Criticism

A friend was giving me some suggestions on some of my marketing efforts and part of my website, and I realized that my natural reaction is to get defensive or dismissive.

I’ve created a business over the years in which I don’t need to rely on anyone and rarely have any genuine discussions with anyone about how to run it. I’m in charge and I decide pretty much everything.

But I wonder how much of that is just sort of a defense strategy to avoid facing any criticism? Perhaps in my quest for total independence, I’ve gone too far and now dismiss all external suggestions.

And that’s a bad thing.

Many of his suggestions were good. And I really should be actively seeking advice from others if I want to keep growing and succeeding.

I’ve never liked feedback or criticism but I feel like that’s something I should probably address. Because I need that feedback. It is extremely helpful.

This might just be a personal thing that I need to focus on and work on over time. Hopefully I’ll eventually start actively getting feedback from others in some way and make improvements based on that feedback.

It may be the only way forward!

Especially since I had a major disappointment yesterday. I had been in talks to acquire a fairly large website host and it looked like an excellent fit. I found out yesterday that they decided to go with another buyer, which was a huge blow.

I feel like I need to channel that disappointment and do better all around and improve. I need to get tactical with my efforts and really start hammering home my efforts to acquire other businesses.

It’s nice when they come to me, but I don’t think I can count on that every time. I need to start aggressively seeking them out, I think.

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I Should Focus on Opportunities, not on Worries

I was feeling pretty good this morning; better than I have in a while. And I realized that I had basically spent all morning thinking about positive, future opportunities.

A project I was excited to get started, some growth possibilities in my company, potential get-togethers with friends.

And it left me feeling good. I was also focused and productive and felt more motivated than usual.

In contrast, I feel like lately I’ve almost exclusively focused on worries and concerns. I’ve been super busy with a bunch of different things and stressed because of some projects. My mind has been focusing on what could go wrong and how I should address it and never on things that could go right and what a difference that would make.

I feel like I used to always focus on opportunities and positive things, but somewhere along the way, I switched.

I just read an older blog post where I was super motivated. I’ve come across a bunch of these. My energy, excitement, and enthusiasm before the pandemic seem to have been unstoppable.

Despite the fact that I wasn’t in as good of shape and still drank and generally hadn’t gotten my life together as much, I still seemed to have a motivation that I have never been able to match since. And I’ve commented on it while going through old blog posts.

Maybe that’s when it happened.

Maybe it was the fear and worry and general anxious atmosphere surrounding the early days of the pandemic that flipped some kind of switch in me. I started focusing on the negative rather than the positive, and maybe I’ve never come back from that.

And that’s a shame.

But more than just being a shame, it’s really counter-productive.

I think about where my head has been at, and it’s silly. I’m wasting all my time worrying about a small, one-time project I have going on. More than likely it will end up fine, but regardless: the long-term difference between the most positive and most negative outcome on my life is quite small.

This is the case for virtually everything I worry about.

Conversely, I am currently in talks to acquire a hosting company with hundreds of websites. The positive impact this could have on my business and my life is massive. Long term, we’re talking maybe 3 orders of magnitude greater than the project I’ve been worried about.

And now that I’m thinking about it: it’s absolutely insane. I’ve been giving the negative thing more space in my head than the positive thing that’s potentially 1000 times more important.

I need to totally rewire myself to think almost exclusively about opportunities. Because the aforementioned opportunity is just one opportunity I have right now. There is no limit to others I could have. I just need to be focused on opportunities and how I can achieve everything I’m looking to do.

Honestly, even writing this out, I am getting a bit of a tinge of excitement realizing what I could be doing and how much I’ve been missing out on. I’ve gotten the fundamentals right in so many areas of my life, and I feel like I’m poised to make some big moves if I just focus on the big opportunities and implementing all of the initiatives I think of.

After all, most of the things I’ve tried have worked up until this point. Some have taken longer than others, and some have obviously led to more success than others.

But I’ve had very few abject failures, and most things have worked out in the end if I have put enough work into them.

So from now on: I just need to focus not just on being positive, but on the big picture, on growth, and on the opportunities I have.

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I Need to Approach Time Like I Approach Money: Commit to Way Less Than I Have

I’m (hopefully) on the tail end of about a solid month where I’ve just been overcommitted and really haven’t had much unplanned time available to myself. With trips and other commitments, I’ve just felt like I’m drowning a bit and don’t have time to just breath.

And it occurred to me that I should really be spending and planning my time just like I would with money. If I spend it all ahead of time, I’ll feel like I don’t have any.

Instead, I should only commit a smaller percentage and, then I’ll feel like I have all the time in the world to dedicate to whatever I want.

It’s been established in the past that I tend to value freedom over almost everything else. And one way you can rob yourself of freedom is by over-committing.  Flexibility is freedom, and if all of your time is already planned, you have no flexibility.

This also means that if, for example, things come up in work that require way more time, you’re in trouble. You can’t simply give it a little more time until they calm down. Instead you just sort of suffer all the time.

And that’s basically what has happened. I’ve been over-committed and we’ve had a bunch of projects overlap simultaneously. And I’ve just been insanely stressed out.

I think it’s had a seriously negative impact on my mood and well-being. It’s just one of the contributing factors at the moment, but it’s still been pretty impactful.

If I had more time, I would be fine. But I’ve been too committed.

I actually told a friend yesterday that I couldn’t meet them like we had planned. It was going to require a lot of driving and time, and at that moment I just felt like I couldn’t possibly handle it. I felt like I would explode from the stress.

In the end, I didn’t even fully cancel, I just had the friend come to me instead. And that small change actually relieved a huge amount of stress. It wasn’t even huge: just gaining a little bit of extra time made me feel so much better.

So even a small amount of gained, unplanned time can have a huge impact.

I hope I learn going forward to always leave plenty of time free. I’ll feel much more relaxed and “rich” in my life.

After all, it’s one thing to be rich with money. But it’s considerably harder, in my opinion, to be rich in time. Almost nobody is. I’ve noted here in the past that we tend to just fill our schedules up until there’s no more time, and then we struggle. Come to think of it, that’s exactly what people do with their money, too.

In the end, they actually are somewhat interchangeable, and they should be seen as such.

I want to be rich financially (not necessarily a lot of money, but having the financial freedom to do the things I want and retire when I want), but also rich with time. And right now I’m failing that second metric.

It’s just something I need to be cognizant of and work on going forward. Because I think what I’m experiencing right now is quite bad for me.

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Not Drinking has Changed my Self-Image and With it: Self-Confidence

It only just occurred to me recently that my self image has changed somewhat dramatically since I stopped drinking. As documented elsewhere in this blog, I think I sort of saw myself (or imagined that people saw me – which may effectively be the same thing) as sort of a clown, a loose-cannon.

While I spent most days not drinking and, of course, working and generally being responsible and productive, many people only ever saw me at parties or other events where there I would be drinking.

And I guess it formed a core part of how I saw myself, too. Not as someone that’s always responsible and knowledgeable and collected, but as someone that’s reckless an occasionally irresponsible.

But when you take away the drinking… How often am I irresponsible or reckless?

Well… Never, really.

I still like to have fun, let loose, be silly, and occasionally boisterous. But it’s always in good fun, I’m not risking anything (including my mood the following day), and there’s really no chance of hurting anyone. I’m always completely in control and basically always make good choices.

And I’ve realized now that not only am I seeing myself totally differently, it also manifests itself as confidence.

I trust myself and my instincts a lot more, and I stand up for myself more when it comes to it. I certainly don’t want to stop being pleasant and easy-going, but there are times when others are, for example, being unreasonable or lightly manipulative, and I have the confidence now to call them out.

I feel like there’s just kind of an inner-strength there and self-assuredness that didn’t exist before that allows me to approach situations with way more control.

Funny enough, right this moment it just hit me that the other blog post I wanted to write was something along the lines of “historically I’ve always looked to others to how I should behave and what’s acceptable, but that doesn’t serve me anymore”, and I’ll probably still do that. But I’m realizing that it’s… Sort of the same thing.

I think there was a sense in my life, for so long, that there are unwritten rules about the world that others understand better than me. Maybe it started way back when I was homeschooled.

But since then, I’ve approached the world – and especially social situations – with a sort of apprehensive and flexible approach, as if I were an outsider that didn’t understand and just wanted to fit in.

But for the first time, I really don’t feel like that anymore.

In fact, maybe that’s even what brought me to enjoy drinking so much. Maybe it quieted that part of me that felt like I didn’t actually belong. Or, at the very least, like I needed to go along with everyone else told me to do because I didn’t quite grasp what was happening.

But I don’t really have that sense anymore. In fact, at this point I genuinely feel like I understand most social situations better than most. I’ve spent so long carefully paying attention to how people behaved and especially trying to determine how they were feeling at any point that I think I’ve actually developed fairly robust emotional intelligence and now have no trouble navigating just about any complex social dilemma.

All of this is likely connected.

I also don’t want to be closed-minded or unopen to new ideas or understandings of the world or those around me, but I feel like I finally have a confidence in any situation that I didn’t have before.

And that feels good.

 

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I Suspect It’s Actually Both Sleep AND Leanness

I posted recently about how I think the cause of my lack of energy and motivation, as well as my relatively poor mood was probably caused by a lack of sleep.

While I still believe it was a contributing factor, I am now thinking that my initial theory was probably correct. I’m simply too lean.

It’s annoying, because I’m not that lean. Sure, I have very visible abs etc., but I’m not even sure I’m below 10% bodyfat. I sort of assumed, having grown up very skinny, that I could naturally handle much lower bodyfat levels than most. I know it varies wildly by person, but I figured I’d be able to handle 8% or even 6% without issue. I now suspect that’s not true.

My symptoms seem pretty consistent with the experiences of others who have been particularly lean. I don’t seem to have the hunger that others experience, but I guess that’s not universal.

So now I’ve been trying to eat a ton and gain wait back, and I think it’s starting to work. My energy and motivation seems to be slowly coming back, and even my weight training performance has started to improve.

I lost a fair amount of strength when cutting, and after that I’ve basically just stalled for months while maintaining weight. I’ve heard that if you’re too lean, it’s almost impossible to put on muscle, and I think I’ve been experiencing that.

So I’m going to just keep eating at a surplus and see how things progress. If I continue gaining strength rapidly in addition to having greatly improved mood, focus, determination, discipline, and energy in general, then I’ll know I’m on the right track.

It’s a bit disappointing to think that the cost of being relatively lean is so high, because I was hoping to stay that way for lengths of time. But I’m not sure it’s worth it. I can’t afford to have all of those things drop so much.

Perhaps every once and a while I can do it for fun, but in general, I need to maintain my energy and discipline. Otherwise everything kind of lags and I don’t get anything done.

I’ll report back with findings going forward.

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I Really Have Come a Long Way in the last 10 Years

I was just thinking recently about past events and behaviors and how far I’ve come since them. Particularly just in the time span of the last 10 years.

I think about my interactions with business contacts and clients, and I just cringe. I cannot believe that that’s who I used to be.

I would regularly do things that I now consider to be either wildly unprofessional or just… Bizarre.

The point of this post isn’t really as a list of examples, but some might be worth giving.

I remember when I first branched out on my own, I struggled to get anything done. I had one single client at one point, and the website still took months to build. I’d just procrastinate constantly and not make any progress.

For many years, basically everything I did was just a massive amount of procrastination. Any recurring task, I would push off until the last moment or later.

I remember realizing, the night before a presentation at my BNI group, that I knew nothing about the AV setup. I had just assumed the projector was always there and available and that somebody would help me with it.

I decided maybe that was a bad assumption, and emailed the chapter member in charge of it at like midnight the night before. He would later tell me that he saw my message and decided, “this isn’t my problem” and didn’t respond or worry about it.

And that was an important lesson for me. Though it did work out in the end.

When it comes down to it, I just don’t think I would see any potential in my younger self if I met him. Everything was sloppy and I had no discipline whatsoever.

I also made almost no money, and it’s no surprise why.

I feel very fortunate that I somehow improved over the years and am now doing a ton better. I’m also a person I actually like and people trust to get things done.

Sometimes it’s just so hard to see the progress, and I get frustrated. It’s also easy to just focus on one metric, like income, and not see everything else that has improved.

Even if income was the most important thing, I feel like it’s actually a lagging indicator. Developing myself pays itself off in all areas of life, in addition to also being the primary method to increase future earning potential.

But overall, it’s just nice to take a step back and see the progress. I’m actually embarrassed thinking about what I was like just 10 years ago, both personally and professionally. I’m not perfect now clearly, but I’ve come so far in so many ways.

And I think that’s a good thing. If you’re not embarrassed by what you were like in the past, are you even improving?

None of the changes came overnight. Much of it has been described in this blog, which I believe I started in mid 2018.

I think it points to the power of gradual improvement, and always taking steps in the right direction. Improving just a little bit at a time compounds into huge changes over time.

It would be fun to actually ask some of my friends if they’ve noticed any of the change. If it’s obvious to me, I wonder if it’s obvious to them.

The point is: I think I’m going in the right direction. There are setbacks, of course, and lately I’ve felt fairly discouraged, but as long as I just keep progressing, it’s all good.

The hard times will pass, and I’ll be all that much better for having strived to keep making progress even when it was really hard.

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It Appears to be Sleep

I’m now something like 5 days into my efforts to sleep at least 9 hours per night, and it would appear that it probably was, in fact, the issue that was making me feel unmotivated and generally unhappy.

And it really shouldn’t be surprising. Sleep affects so much, and obviously can impact all of the things I brought up. The only reason I didn’t think of it right away was that I was generally sleeping more than 8 hours per night, and I didn’t think it could possibly make much of a difference beyond that.

But I was wrong! It seems that it can and it did.

I only even thought of it now because I had the thought, “if I’m starting to run a lot… Should I be sleeping more as a result?”

I outlined this in a previous post I think, but the answer is: yes. You should be sleeping a lot more.

So since I had this thought, I’ve been sleeping more than 9 hours each night, and the results do seem fairly impressive. Overall, I feel a lot better and in a better mood.

Motivation and focus are way up, as is productivity.

I also had an interesting result with my running. Usually once or twice a week, I run a very similar route that comes out to about 2.41 miles. Yesterday I completed this route in 20:07, which I didn’t think much of at the time, especially since it didn’t feel particularly challenging.

It wasn’t until I reviewed my other runs that I realized that this was way faster than my other runs. The previous record (for this year, anyway) was 20:53. I shaved off 47 seconds on a relatively short run. That’s huge.

I’ve also been struggling to improve my mile time (which is my ultimate goal), and set what I thought to be an ambitious goal for my run last week of 6:40. I ended up flying past that goal and finished in 6:33.

I now believe that lack of sufficient sleep has been significantly affecting my performance. I was starting to lose hope that I’d be able to get my mile down to below 6 minutes, but now I’m once again hopeful that I’ll be able to do it.

So one final thought I had today regarding my sleep is this: if all this time, I simply haven’t been sleeping enough, how does this pertain to drinking?

You see, in the past, after drinking, the next day I often felt unmotivated, generally bad, and just didn’t perform very well. I assumed this was just 100% directly caused by the alcohol.

But the symptoms were always almost identical to what I’ve been feeling recently due to a little bit less sleep (and to be clear: I’m not drinking at all right now).

To what extent did lack of sleep play?

Most times that I drank, I’d stay up later than I should. Given that I usually had commitments, I’d generally still get up at the same time, meaning I was sleep deprived.

Additionally, alcohol greatly impairs the quality of that sleep. Even if I slept “long enough”, it likely still affected me greatly.

So what do I do with this information?

I think that when/if I go back to drinking, it’s important to be especially careful around my sleep. I need to not stay up too late, and ideally I’d be totally sober by the time I went to bed. If not, I’m killing my productivity and mood.

This is great, too, because the whole point of me taking a year off is to gather insights like this. I’ll want to figure out if alcohol needs to be eliminated entirely. If I can figure out in which situations it is really damaging, I can reduce the incidences of them.

I’ll keep posting back here with the long-term results of my “increased sleep”. Currently, I’m struggling a little bit because it’s hard/impossible to keep up with all the sleep-related habits I’ve developed and still maintain 9 hours each night. So I may have to alter what is required as I go along.