"To be satisfied does not mean that you no longer wish, but that you are grateful for what you have and patient for what will come." ~ Tony Gaskins
There is a thought I want to share with you that kept me awake at night.
It is a poisonous idea that caused me stress and burnout and actually impaired my productivity and creativity (and especially my luck).
Nevertheless, I stuck to it and finally realized that it wasn't just me. It was actually common in many developed societies.
The thought went something like this: If I accept who I am, where I am and what I have, I become unproductive and lazy.
Unconsciously, this resulted in the following misunderstanding: acceptance = satisfaction = laziness.
A few years ago, I may not have admitted to you that I believed it, but I certainly pretended that it was true. I was by no means lazy; I was self-motivated and self-employed and worked day in and day out. But at the end of the day, no matter how much I "accomplished", no matter how many things were removed from the to-do list, I would still be sitting at home with two thoughts.
I haven't done enough today.
I have to do more tomorrow.
These thoughts never allowed me to really relax, and this created a cycle of fear and tension. Like many of us, I came across the idea and practice of self-acceptance at some point. But no matter how hard I tried to tell myself that everything was fine, I just couldn't feel it was true. I couldn't get rid of the thoughts of not doing enough, not being enough, not being satisfied with the moment.
It was not surprising that this was terrible for my mental health.
Finally, I talked to a friend about it and they casually asked me the following question.
"How would it be for you if you had done enough?"
And then it dawned on me. I had absolutely no idea. In truth, there wasn't enough – it was a constantly moving target. "Having done enough" was just a vague idea to fuel this myth of fearful productivity that I bought myself into.
I didn't have to be careful to be productive, I didn't have to be productive to be satisfied, and being satisfied wouldn't make me lazy.
I even realized that the opposite was the case. If I accepted whatever happened, I was happier, and if I was happier, I had more energy and confidence, which led to more productivity.
Humans are creatures of habit, and it was ritual and routine – not fear and fear – that determine what I have achieved. The worry that had driven my life for years was a complete lie!
I learned that it is possible to be both content and productive – no fear required. That's how it works.
5 Ways to Be Satisfied and Productive
1. Start small.
If you have a habit of never doing enough, don't try to challenge everything at once. Let go of your attachment to a few ideas and see where it takes you. For example, you might feel that relaxation is something you only deserve on days when you've completed your to-do list. You could rephrase this so that relaxation is something on your to-do list that has priority over bonus.
2. Perform an experiment.
If you are convinced that feeling satisfied with a particular aspect of your life can be harmful, why not give it a try?
Why don't you try it in a week when you're not stressed out about eating clean, going to the gym, or working on a nonessential project? Write down what you do anyway, then compare the difference in the result between weeks when you can feel satisfied, regardless of whether you meet all your expectations, and weeks when you are anxious. You may find that without the internal pressure you are doing more than you expected.
After a while, you may also find that your feeling of satisfaction does not depend on your daily success. However, if this is the case, you may have to deal with reward-based motivations rather than punishment-based motivations.
3. Concentrate on the process and not on the result.
This is proven wisdom, but it is not always easy to follow. Think of it as a value that you have, not something that you do or an ability that you acquire. To evaluate the process of outcome, you need to focus your attention on what you are doing rather than the reason you are doing it.
The fixation on the end result or result makes it easy to be caught in cycles of future-oriented rumination. Not only is this uncomfortable, it also absorbs energy that you can use for the task at hand. On the other hand, if you concentrate entirely on the immediate task – the what and not the why – you are more likely to fall into a state of fluidity and less likely to worry and chatter.
4. Less desire, more trust.
There are two ways we can look at the idea of hope. One is the hope you have when you want or want something. For example, if you are hoping for a promotion or a bigger car. The other is a more general and vague feeling of trust that you have. I hope that everything will be fine.
If you can reduce the first kind of hope, the desire for something else, and at the same time increase the second kind of hope, trust that everything is fine, then self-acceptance becomes a habit and not just an ideal.
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5. Approach targets indirectly.
The economist John Kay calls this process skew. Sometimes when we aggressively strive to achieve a goal, we can trip over our own feet. For this reason, some goals such as happiness can best be achieved indirectly.
Instead of saying, for example, "This year I want to meet my soul mate", one could say: "This year I will meet more people and be curious about what they all have to say." Instead of saying, "I want to be happier this year," you could say, "This year, I'm going to schedule 30 minutes a day for things I enjoy – like writing songs – and devote 100 percent of my attention to them Things for thirty minutes. "
If you feel like you have to do more, but that feeling never disappears, maybe it is time to experiment with the feeling that you can try to do less?
How did you struggle with the feeling of self-acceptance and the belief that you never did enough? Let us know in the comments, we'd love to hear from you.
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