Finding Motivation: Tackling Anxiety and Stagnation. Advice from Dr Julie Smith’s “Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before?”

| April 16, 2025

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.

Dr Carol S. Dweck “Mindset: Changing the way you think to fulfil your potential” (2006)

| September 12, 2024

Which statement do you believe to be true: that your personality, talents and abilities are something you’re born with, and they remain pretty much unchanged throughout your life; or that you can develop them, work on both your talents and weaknesses, and become better? Dr Dweck says that your answer to this question has a profound meaning for how you deal with obstacles and failure in your life! 

If you believe that you are the way you are, and that’s just the cards you were dealt – you have what dr Dweck calls Fixed Mindset. And that’s problematic, because you may have a tendency to always try to prove how smart you are, instead of identifying your shortcomings and working on them. You may hold a belief that if you have to work hard on something – that means you weren’t good at this to begin with. That if you don’t understand something – means you’re too stupid to understand it. That if you don’t succeed at something at first try – means it was just not for you.

If you, on the other hand, love a good challenge and enjoy constantly learning – also from your failures – you represent Growth Mindset. You recognise that you have to cultivate your talents, hone your skills, identify your weaknesses and work on them. And that can make a big difference, especially when you face setbacks and failures.

People with Fixed Mindset feel like they always have to prove themselves; like they’re always being measured and judged, and whatever the judgement is – that’s what they are (and likely always will be). And because of that they are very sensitive about making mistakes and failing at things. They would rather not attempt difficult tasks in fear that they will fail, and their shortcomings will be exposed. Their need to always succeed leads them to only doing things that come effortlessly to them.

For people with Growth Mindset it’s almost the opposite: they love a good challenge, because they know that when they perform a difficult task – that’s when they learn. They’re good at identifying their strengths and weaknesses. For them success is not about proving how smart you are and never failing, but rather about learning and improving. If they fail on a test – that’s a valuable feedback for them. It lets them know where they are on their path to mastering something – rather than a judgement of who they are.

A perfect example of the Fixed Mindset in action (and one that sounded too familiar to me) is what Dweck calls “Low-Effort Syndrome” in students transitioning to junior high school – the work gets a lot harder than it was before,  much more effort is required, suddenly it’s not so easy to be a straight-A student. For those with Fixed Mindset a very common response is… to stop trying. They fear that they might still fail, even if they put in a lot of effort, and that will expose them as not being smart enough. If they don’t put any effort – they think – they can’t be measured and judged.

Fixed Mindset can also be observed in the world of business. One way it can manifest itself is a “genius with a thousand helpers” model – leaders who don’t want a great team around them. Don’t want talented people around them, who could steal their spotlight, or who they would have to share the credit with. They want to feel better than the rest, so they have to surround themselves with mediocrity. They don’t allow dissent, they only want to hear praise. If they fail – they assign blame and look for excuses. They may have good intentions, but “at critical decision points, they opt for what would make them feel good and look good over what would serve the longer-term corporate goals”.

And it can get even worse! Since those people love to compare themselves with others who are worse off than they are, AND they are the ones in charge – they “have the power to make people worse off. And when they do, they feel better about themselves” – says dr Dweck. Doesn’t that sound familiar to many of us? The whole toxic bosses culture, workplaces where everyone feel miserable and no one is allowed their own opinion, dissent is punished etc. That may also be a result of insecurities stemming from the Fixed Minset.

Dr Dweck offers many great examples of both Fixed Mindset and Growth Mindset in the world of business, but also many different areas of life: sports, parenting, school, relationships. You would be surprised how many of the mistakes we make in our lifes can somehow be linked to how you answer this very basic question: am I just the way I am and that’s final, or do I have the ability to develop? If you only believe in the former: you’re basically screwed. But there’s some good news: in reality most of us have a little bit of both of those mindsets, and we sometimes lean more towards one or the other. In other words: if you think you have the fixed mindset – that also isn’t fixed forever and you can (and should) work on it! It’s important to be aware of the pitfalls of Fixed Mindset and learn what triggers it.

The main idea of the book is: you can change your mindset. And as everything else in life: it will require a lot of work and effort. You can’t just flip the switch. You can just start the process, and maybe you will never even achieve a full success – but that’s not the point. Starting the process is the goal. Making a concrete plan to improve – and sticking to it! – is the goal. The learning, the development, the improvements – are the success.

The lesson from the book for me is: do difficult things. The things I hate doing, things I know I’m bad at, things that terrify me – I can continue avoiding them forever and never get better at anything, OR I can force myself to start, plow through the initial pain and awkwardness, and get better and better, a little bit at the time. Try things, identify what works and what doesn’t, try different approaches, seek advice from people who know better, don’t avoid people with more knowledge and talent.

Dr Carol Dweck is a Stanford University psychologist specialising in personality, social psychology and developmental psychology. Here’s her TED Talk about “Mindset”