Everyone, no matter their level of success in life, struggles with their inner critic.
It’s just how it is.
Most of my twenties were controlled by the debilitating beliefs that are often the side-effect of a too harsh inner critic. I was often paralyzed by fear. Wrecked by insecurity. I struggled with high-functioning depression, anxiety, and low self-esteem.
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“Don’t ask for guarantees. And don’t look to be saved in any one thing, person, machine, or library. Do your own bit of saving, and if you drown, at least die knowing you were heading for shore.”
Ray Bradbury
Even though it doesn’t feel like it, we spend most of our lives waiting. We find ourselves at one end of a dark tunnel and we wait for someone or something to take us by the hand and lead us toward the light on the other side.
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“Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”
Steve Jobs
Charles Bukowski almost didn’t become the writer he had always dreamt of being. He worked in a post-office until his fifties, even though he tried and often failed to earn enough from his writing so he could quit his job.
Abraham Lincoln failed time and time again. He lost his bid for State Legislature when he was 23 years old. Six years later, he lost his bid to become Speaker in the Illinois House of Representatives.
In 1848, at the age of 39, Lincoln failed to become Commissioner of the General Land Office in D.C. Ten years later, he failed to become a U.S. Senator.
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Goals are essential to our happiness. Working towards a worthy goal ensures that we live a life that is meaningful and fulfilling.
If so, why do we fail at most of our goals? Why do we struggle with motivation?
If our vision of the future is so compelling, if we know why we want it, if we know how to get it, then why do we struggle to do it?
I believe it all comes down to the fact that we never ask ourselves this simple question, a question that perhaps you don’t even want to think about, let alone answer.
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“Most of the challenges that we have in our personal lives come from a short-term focus”
Tony Robbins
The Stanford marshmallow experiment was a series of studies conducted by psychologist Walter Mischel in the late 1960s and early 1970s. In these studies, a child had to choose between receiving a small reward immediately or two small rewards if they waited for a short period, during which the tester left the room and then returned.
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You are supposed to be so good they can’t ignore you
If I had a dollar for every time someone told me how lucky I was to be doing what I love…
Look, do what you love, love what you do, follow your passion, all of it is terrible advice. It just is.
We often struggle to figure out if we truly love doing something or we just love the idea of it or the rewards we imagine.
And that’s why it gets tricky.
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“Do or do not, there is no try.”
Yoda
This is one of those clever quotes that get passed around quite often.
When it’s do or die, most people tend to do.
But what if it’s not? What if you won’t die if you don’t write the blog post if you don’t send the e-mail?
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The obvious issue with self-help is this: its ultimate goal is to reach a point where you no longer need it.
Think about it: The whole goal of personal growth is to build yourself to be the person you’ve always wanted. The whole point of pursuing happiness is to reach a point where happiness no longer has to be pursued.
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I only ever experienced real writer’s block once in my life.
March 2014 was the worst month of my life. My grandfather died, my girlfriend broke up with me, my father decided to never speak with me again, and I had to struggle with quite a few serious health issues.
Not the end of the world, but the closest thing to my world ending I had ever experienced until then.
When it comes to writing, my mantra is, “Punch the damn keys.” I once wrote that, “if done right, tears turn into gold.”
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“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”
C.G. Jung
Here’s a fun experiment for you to try: write down every single thing you do during an average day. In half-hour increments. But be honest with yourself. Can’t write down: “from 9 AM to 5 PM — work.”
Be brutally honest.
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