Hit a Slump? Get Over the Hump!
Despair, Drama Queens, and Doing the Ugly Thing
Every few months, without fail, I go through some sort of fake existential crisis. My business, writing, relationships, finances, and realistic optimism overwhelm me to the point where I have the sudden urge to punch kittens. I’m incapacitated and dumb for what seems like days.
Really, these crises last less than an hour. And they’re usually because of stupid reasons that I blow out of proportion.
But 50 minutes of thinking “What the hell am doing? I should just go get drunk until I can’t feel feelings anymore†is 50 minutes too many.
I’m sure you’ve felt it too. But some friends (the generally unmotivated ones) have no idea what I’m talking about.
If pressed for a comparison feeling, I usually say it’s a lot like losing your car keys while in a hurry to get somewhere important and then being suddenly kicked in the stomach by a really weak guy. Oh, and you just realized your girlfriend cheated on you. With your landlord. And your rent’s past due.
Yep. That’s the feeling, all right.
For us that are goal-oriented, I think this comes up more often. So how do we turn the tables and get our lives back under control?
Here’s a tip that helped me:
Quit being a drama queen.
The next time you’re agitated, overwhelmed, or anxious, I want you to ask yourself why you’re feeling that way. If you’re like me, chances are good that the particular negative emotion has been programmed into your automatic response system. Chances are also good that it’s not a big freaking deal.
Look for the cause of your emotion and think through it logically. Is there really any reason to get upset? How can you fix this and feel better?
Give yourself solutions.
Feeling overwhelmed is usually due to a lack of priorities.
In some cases, the most uncomfortable action or conversation on our to-do list triggers our anxiety. Do yourself a favor and take care of the ugliest one first. (No, I’m not talking about dating.) As my friend and mentor Dan John says, “If you’ve got a plate of frogs, you’ve got to eat the big one first. After that, the rest will go down easy.â€
So what kind of things do you do to calm down and pull yourself out of a downward spiral?
Comments for This Entry
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I don't really have any tips but I'm sure as hell going to steal yours.
I'm a drama queen and a half, man. My girlfriend makes fun of me all the time for it.
thanks!
greg -
This is a good question Nate.
I think that you are correct in surmising that this type of frustration occurs more with people who are goal oriented (and thus, usually more driven and, dare I say, "Type A").
I'm pretty focused and driven and about at Type A as they come (I admit the latter not with pride, but because it is the truth. Having said that I am working on it and it is getting better).
I hate being stymied in the pursuit of my goals (which are often very specific and pursued with a single mindedness of purpose that, at times, can be disturbing to behold). I've been that way for a long time - but wasn't always. I went through a period of my life where I was desperately looking for shortcuts. A number of years ago, life found me with a B.Sc, LL.B., called to a provincial Bar and way, way under-employed. I was desperate. I was humiliated. During the worst part of that period, I took to buying scratching and win tickets hoping for relief, release a restoration of my dignity (I say this with great shame because, as a Muslim, gambling is forbidden for me and, moreover, had I won anything it would have been unearned and thus would have provided neither relief, release, nor a restoration of my dignity).
Now, things are better. Much.
But the seeds of that better were sown long ago.
In the moment that I stopped trying to avoid hard work and started looking for ways to make hard work easy.
There is, as you are aware, an inverse relationship between intensity and volume - the more intense the effort, the less volume can be performed at any one point in time (without slowing of speed, degeneration of form and, ultimately, cessation of the activity). The key for me has been and is to make hard work easy by trying to live life in short, frequent bursts of intense effort (Think 10x3. Think Pavel's frequent practice). I note that I seek to pursue my career, reading, training, spiritual development, writing, cooking and reaching out to others in this way).
The deadlift.
I love this exercise. But, for all my love of it and the time and attention that I lavish upon it, it is stalled at just above double bodyweight and the actual weight, in absolute terms, is pathetic (why mince words? As I'm fond of say "al haq, w'al haq" - loosely translated from Arabic, this means "what is true, is true".).
I recently sustained pretty severe lower back injuries from deadlifting. Correction, from not listening to my body's need for rest and from ignoring, long-standing bio-mechanical issues that will no longer tolerate being ignored. I've been told by my highly competent and well-intentioned chiropractor that once I've been realigned and rehabbed, I can go back to deadlifting, but not with the intensity that I used to, as my body can't take it.
I think of the deadift as perhaps the ultimate in compound movements. I marvel at its efficiency and how it trains more than 75% of the musculature of the body at once. I remember how good and powerful it used to make me feel.
I remember that I hate being stymied in my goals and, of course, the chiropractor's statement is wholly unacceptable.
But, I haven't addressed your original question yet, have I?
What do I do calm myself and pull myself out of a downward spiral?
In my best moments, I ignore me and try to find someone to reach out to, to give to. Somewhat paradoxically (and selfishly), taking the focus off of helping myself and seeking to help another, invariably makes me feel empowered, stronger and worthy as a human being. This lifts my spirit and brings clarity to my thinking. Raise the head and the body will follow.
I try to take the focus off the thing that is troubling me and seek to see myself as a totality - I am someone who loves to train. But I am also a lawyer and someone who loves to write poetry, short stories, slice of life pieces. I am someone who enjoys dabbling in cooking and loves reading and the investigation and development of my intellectual. intuitive and spiritual side. Seek, in your darker moments, to get yourself reacquainted with the whole you. Balance, kenjiro, balance.
Ask yourself: "What is the most meaningful and enriching thing that I can do with the next 10 minutes of my life?" And devote yourself to the doing of that thing - adopt the "ice-cube tray" philosophy of looking at time. What's that? Well, that's a good question, allow me to elaborate. Go get an empty ice cube tray and a jug of water. I'll wait. Now, pour water into one cell of the tray and when it's full, continue pouring water into that one cell. What happens? Water spills on the ground. Yes. But it also spills over into the empty cells. If you were continue to pour water in this way, the spillover, would, eventually cause the whole tray to become full.
The problem that we humans have is that we seek meaning in those big and infrequent milestone moments: when I get that degree or job, marry that girl, buy that car, buy that house, achieve a certain prominence within my discipline.
The space of life between these milestone moments we often regard as nothing more than distance to be traveled. Something to be endured or gotten through. So, because we seek meaning in the bigger moments, we fail to realize its presence in the smaller moments. The more frequently you look for a thing, the more of it you will find. Thus, train yourself to seek meaning in smaller increments of time and you will find it. The positive consequences of seconds spent meaningfully will "spillover" into meaningful minutes, meaningful hours, meaningful days, meaningful weeks, meaningful months, meaningful years, meaningful decades, a meaningful life. Life is short and, moreover, uncertain in duration. Lived in this way, one can make the most of whatever time they have.
I would say it better, but it has already been said beautifully, so I defer:
Katsumoto: "A perfect blossom is a rare thing...You could spend your life looking for one. And it would not be a wasted life."...But then I come to this place of my ancestors, and I remember. Like these blossoms, we are all dying. To know life in every breath, every cup of tea, every life we take. The way of the warrior...."
Nathan Algren: "Life in every breath".
Katsumoto: "That is...Bushido".
(The Last Samurai)
Don't point the finger. It's pointless - you know it as well as I do. Look inward. Blame you, then change you. Do not seek a way around. Seek a way through.
Return and refocus. Come back to the beginning and get brilliant on the basics. Again, from my favourite movie:
Algren [narrating]: "They are an intriguing people. From the moment they wake they devote themselves to the perfection of whatever they pursue. I have never seen such discipline.".
Ask yourself this question: Is the voice that you hear in your head yours or the voice of another person/other persons that you have internalized? You will always have other people saying that you are just lucky and genetically advantaged, too uneducated, too young. These people do not count or matter until you can hear them when they are not present and when what they say starts coming out of your mouth.
I am presently re-reading Mushashi Miyamoto's the Book of Five Spheres (which is most often improperly translated as the Book of Five Rings). I offer these precepts:
Be inwardly calm, even in the midst of the most violent chaos. Seek to pursue everything with a deadly (life and death) earnest (while being inwardly calm). Fixity is the way to death, fluidity is the way to life. Related to the latter point and from the companion book: pre-occupation with attack is sickness, pre-occupation with defense is sickness, preoccupation with use of the martial arts is sickness. All obsession is sickness (I observe, not without humility, that I could benefit immensely from adopting this latter piece of advice).
In addition to all of the above, and being a man of faith, I seek big picture clarity and refocus in my spirituality. For me, this is not a way to seek to escape hard work but rather, a way to recharge by re-connecting to source.
All of which is respectfully submitted. -
I think I'm in one of those slumps right now.
I don't necessarily feel like my whole life has gone wrong, but I'm finding it harder and harder to get motivated to work. This seems to happen to me every few months, and at its worst it's lasted almost a month. A month of being too tired/bored/busy/whatever to work is especially hard for those of us who work from home (or, in my case, from the coffee shop) because we don't really have any external stimuli keeping us on task.
So, in reading this, I'm going to stop letting myself stall and just do what I've needed to do for the last week and a half: I'm going to take a nap, clean my apartment, watch a movie, and go to bed early. Then I'll wake up tomorrow with a knife in my teeth and get back to work.
Jeff
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Greg 7:46pm Apr 24, 2008