Today I understood a concept that gives me immerse calm and freedom: There will never be a point in time that I will feel that I’m in complete and fulfilled. That moment would mean that I died. Beeing okay with constant strugle, doubt, uncomplete deadlines, unfinished tasks, unanswered emails… Understanding that its all okay. Feeling comfortable with feeling incomplete, questioning decisions, plans, fighting with your own assumptions. Its all the part of life and its only your mind trying to do the best it can for you.
This post is inspired by the talks of Oliver Buckman in WakingUp. I will quote some of his books:
“Who says you need to wait until you ‘feel like’ doing something in order to start doing it? The problem, from this perspective, isn’t that you don’t feel motivated. It’s that you imagine that you need to feel motivated. If you can regard your thoughts and emotions about wheather you’re procrastinantin on as passing weather, you’ll realise that your reluctance about working isn’t something that needs to be eradicated or transformed into positivity. You can coexist with it. You can note the procrastinatory feelings and act anyway.“
He also writes that productivity is a trap because clearing the decks, answering all the email and finishing all the tasks will only bring more emails, projects and tasks. The better you get in your work the more work you will get. Its never ending constant flow and expansion. It does not mean that you should do less or not to be productive. Its simply breaks the spell that overall its a good idea and direction to follow.
Buckman writes:
True security lies in the unrestrained embrace of insecurity – in the recognition that we never really stand on solid ground, and never can.”
This is the key. Understanding that its okay not to feel okay. Simple, powerfull and liberating:
“Choosing curiosity (wondering what might happen next) over worry (hoping that a certain specific thing will happen next and fearing it might not) whenever you can.
I’m going to end this post with a quote about happiness: The one thing that we are all chasing but maybe not really understanding the concept of it:
“Ask yourself whether your are happy’, observed the philosopher John Stuart Mill ‘and you cease to be so,’ At best, it would appear, happiness can only be glimpsed out of the corner of an eye, not stared at directly.”