Although we are conscious creatures with the evolved privilege of not having to worry about our survival every waking second, it’s still necessary for us to direct that life-saving energy…somewhere.
The conveniences of modern living have developed in such a way that most of the actions we take are no longer obligations of tribal necessity, but are personal preferences for how we individually decide to spend our time.
We make plans for our lives, we create schedules and routines to stick to, and we try to work our way towards our desired outcomes. Some of us are better at it than others, but most people still do what they can to manifest their own destiny.
However, a lot of us are misguided or get confused as to how to properly move closer to the things we claim to want. Unless you’re the kind of person who’s content to opt out of the game of personal growth and accomplishment entirely, which is a completely valid and understandable option, you most likely fall into one of three types of people:
You’re either running towards something, running away from something, or you’re running in circles.
Some of us know what we want and make a conscious effort to move closer to our goals.
Some of us know what we don’t want and are determined to avoid that fate at whatever cost.
Some of us keep ourselves so busy with a never-ending list of tasks that we never even take the time to consider the first two options.
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We are emotional beings
It’s as much a part of who we are as a species as the logic that keeps us from walking off a cliff or shaking hands with a grizzly bear.
Being such emotional creatures results in us also being dreamers.
We can’t help but fantasize, romanticize, visualize, and idealize the future. It’s in our nature to daydream and run mental simulations of possible scenarios we may encounter. That very quality has led us from being just another meandering meal to holding the gold as reigning champ in Earth’s Top Predator for a few thousand years running.
It’s a skill that’s kept us alive and facilitated the progress of modern technology, but it’s also the thing that keeps so many of us returning to the crossroads of indecision and can perpetuate an inability to trust our instincts.
Being able to see so many different perspectives while thinking about what we want, it’s no wonder so many of us have a hard time feeling confident about the choices we eventually do make.
It can be an infuriating process trying to rifle through our emotional baggage as we attempt to decipher what we truly want versus what we’re drawn to out of convenience, comfort, and habit. With so many hands grabbing at the wheel it can feel impossible to determine which one is trying to steer you in the right direction.
When you think about what you do on a daily basis, do you consider yourself or your life to be moving towards a specific destination? Or maybe you’re more concerned with not falling prey to lifestyles and habits that you know will only hurt you.
Are you just trying to keep up? Do you feel perpetually stuck between survival and destitution?
It’s a useful practice to ask yourself these questions periodically just to get a read on where exactly you think you stand with yourself and the choices you’ve made up until this point. And as we’ll see, it’s not always easy to come to a concise conclusion.
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Running forward
A lot of you reading this right now are writers yourselves, so let’s use that as our guiding light.
Many of us, myself included, indulge in the dream of “making it” as a writer. The definition of which can vary from person to person.
To use my own, I would consider “making it” to mean that you are not only recognized for your work but are being compensated to the degree that you can support yourself financially. This isn’t to say that if your writing doesn’t pay your bills that you’re not accomplished or talented by any means, only that the idea of financial independence is the directing principle for many aspiring writers and artists.
In the pursuit of this ideal, we can find ourselves sacrificing not only the authenticity of our art, but time spent pursuing other interests, activities, and relationships.
We convince ourselves that we’re running forward, that we’re moving towards a goalpost.
We tell ourselves that in order to arrive at this ideal future we’ve conceived for ourselves, we need to keep ourselves in perpetual motion. We put on blinders to the distractions pulling at our attention from the sides, and we do everything we can to not look backward.
Working towards a goal can be a healthy and productive thing to do, but sometimes we don’t realize that our original intentions are coming from a place of avoidance and irresponsibility.
I personally have put off the search for a steady, well-paying job for years because the idea of eventually making a living from my writing has prevented me from taking other areas of my life more seriously. I wouldn’t allow myself to simply admit that this was a productive hobby while also looking for stable work that would support me financially.
I was convinced that I was running towards the goal of calling myself a working writer while neglecting the reality of the real-world circumstances I was running away from.
We can have whatever goals we wish as long as we acknowledge when our pursuit has turned from healthy aim to desperate distraction.
The shift can be subtle. You may not even notice it’s happened until the neglected parts of your life come back from the dead to eat you alive.
That’s why it’s best to occasionally take a step back and evaluate where you are, where you still want to go, and whether or not there are things that this goal of yours has become an excuse to run away from.
Moving forward and making gains on your goals is great as long as you’re maintaining a healthy balance in the other areas of your life.
And if you do evaluate your position and feel confident about how you’re allocating your time and the direction you still want to move, then hey, more power to you! Keep on truckin’.
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Running away
As I just pointed out, it can sometimes be difficult to determine whether you’re running toward something or away from something else.
Plenty of us can fall into the habit of living a life of avoidance.
We’ve grown up around parents we don’t want to turn into, we spend years hanging around people we don’t want to associate with anymore, we work jobs we never want to return to and leave relationships only to seek out that person’s opposite.
We start to base our lives around all of the things we don’t want instead of pursuing the things we do.
You see this a lot in addiction recovery programs.
Some people are so desperate to get clean — and rightly so — that their entire personality becomes nothing more than the avoidance of substance abuse.
Before you say anything, I get it. Whatever a person has to do to shake their addiction for good, go for it. Make it your entire life if that’s what it’s going to take to keep you alive. Eventually, though, try and return to the world as a person with their own character and identity again.
Some people make sobriety so much a part of who they are, that they lose all the good parts of the person they use to be. Their friends, activities, conversations, and sense of self become so enmeshed in the idea of sobriety that they cease to acknowledge that they even have other interests.
These same people can be the ones that lean so heavily into their new sober lives and put so much pressure on themselves to be this shining example of thriving sobriety that they end up being one of the first ones to relapse.
Instead of taking things slow and working through their impulses day by day, they project themselves into a state of absolution where they are finally and definitively free of their burden. The romance of achieving this sort of perfection through sheer willpower becomes a monument with shaky scaffolding — hastily built and destined to collapse.
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The whole idea of living your life in the avoidance of something ties in perfectly with self-fulfilling prophesies.
Think about how badly you or someone you know is trying to not turn into their parents.
They try so hard to avoid any and all things that will shift who they are into what they want to avoid that the very traits they’re terrified of developing start to creep into their behavior in unexpected ways.
As long as we can prevent ourselves from acting unconsciously and leaping into action without thinking about what we’re actually avoiding, we’ll be able to see our behavior and thought patterns for what they are instead of what we want them to be.
You can’t just live your life in opposition to things you don’t want.
That’s no life at all, that’s living as a reaction. That’s letting the thing you’re trying to avoid so desperately have just as much control over your life as you were worried about, only now it’s in more subtle and insidious ways.
Don’t simply live as a walking contrast to what you see as bad for you. Look inward, and be honest about what you do want and what comes naturally to you.
Don’t fight that nature.
Accept it, then shape it accordingly.
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Running
You’re always busy.
You never take time for yourself.
You’re always distracted, and your attention is always on something new or novel.
You feel like you’re being productive because you’re doing so many things throughout the day and you’re getting so much done.
You never stop for a second to think about what you’re actually doing or how you’re actually using your time.
You’re cycling through the same routine day in and day out without so much as a thought as to whether or not you’re even in control of your actions.
You probably wouldn’t be able to tell if you were running away from something or towards something else because you just…keep…running. It doesn’t matter what direction you’re going as long as you don’t stop. You can never stop.
This state of unceasing productivity so many people find themselves in these days is keeping them in a spiral with a pull so strong that it’s hard to climb out of it.
They feel like they’ve found a routine that works and so to suggest they dismantle what they’re used to in favor of something better feels invalidating to all of the progress they’ve made.
I’ve been this person too.
I filled my days with constant movement. If I wasn’t writing, I had to be working. If I wasn’t working, I had to be making money some other way. If I wasn’t making money, I had to be doing something productive around the house. And if I wasn’t doing that I had to at least be listening to an audiobook or lecture that I could learn something from because every second of my day needed to be filled with creation, accumulation, or absorbing information. I wasn’t allowed to simply, you know, be a person.
I was running as fast as I could to nowhere. I wasn’t making much progress in any of the areas I was so desperate to keep up on because my focus was so split in so many different directions. I thought that I couldn’t stop because it would negate all the progress I made and confirm the reality that I had no idea what I was doing.
So, I just kept running.
Nowadays, I know when I’ve reached my creative limit. I know when I need to pump the brakes on money hunting. I know how to tell if I’m being productive or just distracting myself from other responsibilities. I can tell what it is I’m trying to move towards instead of just moving for the sake of it.
Understanding the distinction between these things is paramount when trying to organize your actions and positively change your behavior.
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These three states of productivity from which we try to run our lives aren’t necessarily specific and distinct.
They shift and expand and evolve as we gain experience and perspective. Our desires change over time, and we may not want to keep running in the direction we’ve been going for so long.
Maybe we realize that we aren’t so scared of turning into our parents anymore because we can see the benefits of some of the ways they acted. We can try to lean into the positive things we’ve learned from them instead of only trying to avoid the negative.
That’s why it’s so beneficial to continue questioning yourself about what you’re moving towards, whether or not you’re acting out of avoidance, and when you’re simply spinning your wheels.
Are you only running towards something because you’re avoiding something else? Do you actually want what you think you want? Or are you just keeping yourself busy and calling it progress?
Take a step back.
Trust your instincts more and your expectations less.
Follow the thing that gives you peace of mind and let it guide you in the direction you know you need to go.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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You may also like these posts on The Good Men Project:
 White Fragility: Talking to White People About Racism |
 Escape the “Act Like a Man” Box |
 The Lack of Gentle Platonic Touch in Men’s Lives is a Killer |
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Photo credit: Shutterstock.com
