Day-to-day life is challenging. Each of us internally perceives the meaning behind “challenging” to be extremely different. One person may lean into the “challenge” of the day and thrive within the demands and expectations. While, another person may crumble and succumb to the pressures and stresses of it all.
In addition to the internal challenges we are also bombarded with an overwhelming number of external challenges delivered in the form of cultural norms, societal messages, influences, forces, etc. Both, internal and external, challenges are constantly in flux within each of us. It may feel as though you are tugged or pushed towards and away from what really matters to you.
Due to the overwhelming amount of information and stimulus that we experience day-to-day our minds can become cluttered. The clutter can block out facets of our life that truly matter. First and foremost, our curiosity can become muffled. When we are overwhelmed, with the challenges of life, we fall into a state of survival. Maybe you’ve been overwhelmed and thought to yourself “If I can just get through the day…”
While it may seem the likely problem is the external influences from something or someone else nudging us into a spiral the real opposition may be closer than you realize. The true culprit may just be the person in the mirror. You…
The pattern of “go go go” and “work work work” are fuel to keep us forging ahead, hustling, and over-extending ourselves to limits we didn’t anticipate. Leaving us in a constant state of sleep deprivation. When we are in survival mode, we most often keep our heads down and easily lose perspective on the bigger picture.
Most likely, when you’ve had your head down, and in “survival mode” you’re not in an alert state, where you can pause and contemplate in the moment how you were doing? What you’d rather be doing? Where you’d like to visit? Etc. etc.
By keeping our head down constantly we drift away and lose touch with our curiosity. We may even drift so far apart from our curiosity we begin to spiral into a state where we can’t even project ourselves into the future, see ourselves doing anything else, or check-in to the present moment.
We get stuck in the pattern of just surviving the day. We may begin to believe the story that we “just can’t.”
Additional consequences from stifling our curiosity is that we can constrain our ability to express empathy towards others. If you struggle to take care of yourself, it can be even more difficult to have the capacity to express empathy for others and their experiences.
To combat against the internal and external forces pushing and pulling on us. We must cultivate a belief that “Yes, we can.”
- Yes, we can influence the situation we are in…
- Yes, we can make different choices…
- Yes, we can compose a different narrative…
Which means, the current person experiencing the challenges, responding to the challenges, composing that narrative, and ending up with the same results might need to get out of the way. That person could be you…
While we are strong, vibrant, dynamic, and capable of managing our own life. We can also be a terrible critic of ourselves, we can get stuck in a feedback loop with an unproductive self-narrative, our self-talk can influence our life choices continuing the self-fulfilling prophecy, we can become overwhelmed when we might not need to be, or we may have fallen down a rabbit’s hole and can’t find our way out.
A step to consider is to reach out to a neutral party. Someone such as a Counselor, Therapist, Psychologist, Mentor, Life Coach, etc. who can be a resource to support your efforts in building an understanding where you may be getting in your own way, who can support your efforts in understanding your blind spots, or someone who can support your efforts in composing and editing a new narrative that enables you to thrive versus “just survive.”
The one piece of self-talk you might want to consider – Get Out of Your Own Way!
