I’m really slow with this. Can’t think of anything to write about, can’t focus. I just keep thinking about things that make me anxious. About my life savings disappearing, about my hair disappearing, about job insecurity. All those things add up to create a stressed, anxious guy who can’t let his mind roam free and create. I keep reading that a creative person should be like a receiver – receiving the art from the Cosmos, letting it speak through him. I am not receiving. The cosmos only seems to be sending me worries.
I can’t even decide which self-development book I should read next to help me out of this stagnation. One about productivity? Creating good habits? Maybe something about writing? Or maybe about business, entrepreneurship, marketing? Maybe that’s what I should be focusing on, instead of chasing pipe dreams about writing? Just focus on running my small business, that sucks life out of me and doesn’t make me any money? Maybe if I only focused on that? I have so many questions keeping me from doing anything. Maybe I should fix my head first?
How do I get myself from this lethargic state that I’m in. Yep, there are self-help books for that! I should probably go to therapy instead, but… in this economy? That will have to wait. Now I can only afford the public library. “Why has nobody told me this before?” by dr Julie Smith. I get a feeling that is is addressed to young adults and not balding guys going through midlife crisis, but I guess the advice is pretty universal. So, doctor. Why am I feeling down? Why can’t I do anything? The things are getting worse and it doesn’t give me any motivation. It just makes me freeze.
She writes that “feeling down is (…) likely to reflect unmet needs”. I have food and shelter – all my other needs are unmet. So it checks out. But what exactly triggers my low moods? Which of my many unmet needs is the one that gets me down like this? Dr Smith writes that I should identify what happens right before the low mood starts.
I’d like to be successful at my job. I’d like to achieve my goals. I’d like to be respected. Yes. But those things are the very top of Maslow’s pyramid. I think in my case it’s something a lot more basic, that gets me down. It’s the social needs. It’s being far from my family. Not having a support group around me. Not feeling part of the group, not belonging anywhere. Not having enough human interactions. They say lonely people die younger, and I can see why. Loneliness can cause depression, anxiety, stress. Especially if you pair it with a sense of insecurity and lack of control. Uff. That’s tough.
That’s it, dr Smith! That’s what keeps me in bed until noon. I’m unable to pursue my higher needs like the need of increasing my social status, or the need to express myself creatively, when the thought of losing my job is paralysing me, and I have no-one to talk to about it. I don’t feel like I have control over my life, and I don’t have the support system around me. Bummer.
And then that’s how it goes down in practice: I get a boost of energy, I decide that I will be more active on social media and promote the shit out of my restaurant. That I will come up with three new great dishes and take great photos of them for instagram. That I will learn more about hospitality and customer service, and train my staff better to give customers a better experience. And after that I will still have time and energy to read a bunch of classic literature, get inspired, start writing myself!
But then – I get a shitty slow week at work with low sales. Self-doubt starts sneaking in. What’s the point? What was I thinking? That I’ll post a few reels and customers will start flooding in? I can’t compete with big chains. It doesn’t matter what I do. The market is shit anyway, people don’t have money to eat out anymore. etc. I feel the lack of agency. I have the feeling that things that happen to me are out of my control. I can only wait and see what happens. That’s why I have no motivation to get out of bed in the morning. I don’t feel like things depend on what I do. I don’t feel in control. I don’t feel like I write the script. I don’t know what will happen next and it stresses the shit out of me, tbh. And I’m facing it alone. How to write sonnets under those circumstances?
OK! Well, that’s something. At least I have identified something. Yes, that’s likely the trigger of my low moods. Loneliness, lack of security, lack of agency, helplessness. What now? What normally happens next is that I waste loads of time watching youtube, or scrolling. Dr Smith: “We numb and distract ourselves, and push the feelings away.” It can be scrolling, watching TV, eating, drinking, getting high. Whatever works for you. Those things of course make things worse in the long run, because they don’t solve anything, but they do add the feeling of guilt. So what’s the right thing to do?
Dr Smith advices to watch out for thought biases: the sort of tendencies to see things as much worse as they are. For example: focusing on the negative and ignoring the positive in your life. Or generalising: thinking that if one thing went wrong, then means everything in your life always goes wrong. Or interpreting your feelings as objective facts: you feel lazy, so you ARE a lazy person, etc.
She recommends one very interesting thing that I will for sure start using in my journaling: put your thoughts and feelings on paper, but use a language that distances your self from the feelings. So: instead of “I’m useless” , write: “I’m noticing those negative feelings again, that I’m useless”- this way you don’t present those negative thoughts as facts. (Sort of in line with that book “The Power of Now”- you are not your thoughts etc. Basically the whole mindfulness relies on this notion: observe the thoughts and let them pass by.)
Oh yes, theres also one more thing she highly recommends: practice gratitude. Write down what you’re grateful for every day, to focus your mind on the positive things. Today I’m grateful that I wrote this. It’s nothing special and it’s unlikely that anyone will read it, but I got my 1000 words in today, which is more than I usually write. I could’ve been rotting in bed and scrolling for the last 2 hours, but instead I did this.
What have I learned so far from “Why has nobody told me this before?”: My low moods are likely triggered by the lack of security and the feeling that my life is out of my control. It’s all amplified by not having enough human interaction. I use scrolling, youtube and TV as distractions form those feelings. I use them to numb myself.
What I should do instead is identify those feelings, address them, realize that they are not objective facts about me (because I do have control over my life and I should stay active!) Be mindful, be grateful.