Long before there was Instagram, you would see these lines on bumper stickers, mugs, and Hallmark cards. Now it is also TED talk blurbs, and in the “you do you” captions with tons of likes. They are supposed to be like your swallow one a day moral vitamins that make everything fine.
Try doing them for a week, however, and you will discover that that simple phrasing hides something problematic (and human): the struggle against fear, habit, memory, and ego.
We will quickly get to the bottom of why each of these pieces of advice is deceptively hard, but how slowly but surely you can inch toward it.
1. “Stop overthinking it.”
It is easy to say and quite desirable too because people love neat solutions, and overthinking looks like a character flaw that you should simply turn off. The only thing is, your brain evolved to simulate threats and rehearse outcomes.
Overthinking is like your way of trying to keep control in a world that feels uncontrollable. Plus, thinking is free and endlessly available, while actually doing takes energy and risk.
It is said that instead of endlessly ruminating, it helps if you timebox your worry by giving yourself exactly 5 minutes a day to think it through, then write down one sentence (the decision or your next action).
You probably will never be able to eliminate having anxious thoughts, but you can stop letting them rule your days.
“Most misunderstandings in the world could be avoided if people would simply take the time to ask, ‘What else could this mean?’” — Shannon Alder
2. “Forget the past and move on.”
Move on, close the chapter, etc., but it is hard to do because memory is sticky. Your past shapes who you are (trauma, shame, regret, and all).
Thankfully, actually moving on doesn’t require deleting your past, it just requires changing the relationship you have with what happened. So, you can reframe it and file it away. You can even write it down, including what you learned, what you would do differently, and then put that physical writing some place . Should it reappear in your head, simply take out your note, read the lesson, and close it.
This makes moving on a revision process, not an act of deleting something that is a part of you.
“The past is in your head. The future is in your hands.” — Brian Ford
3. “Stop worrying about what other people think of you.”
In theory, who cares, right? You get to be the main character of your life! However, in reality, we are social animals, and as such, our sense of belonging and status affect our wiring.
Think of it this way: worrying about others’ judgment is a feature of your operating system and not a bug. The real problem arises if you let that feature become the operating system for all your choices.
If you take stock of the decisions you make because of other people, for a day, and ask yourself which actually mattered to you and which felt like just giving away my time, you will be able to keep the ones that align with your values and let the rest die a quiet death.
You will always notice judgment, but you can get choosier about whose opinion you let matter.
“Worrying is like a rocking chair, it gives you something to do, but it gets you nowhere.” -Glenn Turner
4. “Say ‘no’ more often”
We all feel this is necessary. I mean, boundaries are self-explanatory, and it is just one word. Then why is it hard to do? It is because saying no risks conflict, disappointment, and the “I should be helpful” guilt, so for many of us, the reflex is to say “yes.”
In fact, for some of us, saying “yes” is tied to our identities as the dependable one, fixer, caregiver, toxic handler, etc., and identity also feels valuable, so we protect it, even at personal cost.
Now, the first few nos may feel awkward, but those who are truly your people will adjust, and those who don’t were never meant to be your people anyway.
“Say no more often. Half of the troubles of this life can be traced to saying yes too quickly and not saying no soon enough.” — Josh Billings
5. “Live in the moment.”
This has become more or less a universal tagline. Your biggest problem is that living in the moment collides with your planning for the future and dealing with the unprocessed past (kind of overlaps with #2).
Also, we humans find meaning through narrative, so it is like we are either in preparation mode or memory mode, not perpetual present mode. All is not lost, however, if you practice a form of micro-presence.
My favorite is my first cup of coffee (sometimes tea, if you can believe it), and I always try to savor it without multitasking. I notice the taste, the aroma, the temperature, and all the small sensations. It is a kind of presence that you can practice without needing to become a monk.
So, treat presence like a muscle and those micro-practices will build it without making your life unnecessarily dramatic.
Let everything happen to you
Beauty and terror
Just keep going
No feeling is final.
— Rainer Maria Rilke
A common thread:
I believe that in reality, small habits beat harsh pep talks. Every item on this list tends to be a great challenge because it is framed as a binary fix: either we do it perfectly or we fail.
Feels like a trap too, doesn’t it?
The fact is, work is incremental and tiny wins stack. They may not cure all your problems overnight, but they will gradually rewire the default settings of your brain.
Nobody is going to master all five, and the point of life has never been perfection anyway. If you can change one small pattern in the next 30 days, you have already moved further than most people who only read listicles and feel inspired for a day.
“The fact is, work is incremental and tiny wins stack.”
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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Photo credit: Naail Hussain On Unsplash
