Changing Mindset by Examining Its Structure
You know that I have a philosophy of life: every moment in my life is a perfect indicator of my state of development, and within it contains the information I need to know to improve my situation.
But I am also stuck.
I don’t think simply being patient is going to be the cure.
I need something else. But what are they?
Is this really because of my 9-to-5?? Or is it because of the psychological deadlock from debt?
Uncovering the Contributing Reason
The backdrop of my story is that I am in transition. I want to quit the rat race. I want my freedom. And I don’t want to get more pay with a sacrifice of more responsibility. And there are days that I feel I am at the verge of leaping, but the rational part of me knows that it’s not quite time to do it.
This is because I have a small amount of debt that I need to pay off. The presence of debt is not a welcomed sight.
When I say getting close to quitting, I am in fact referring to the concept of quitting from the rat race. I have lots of ambitions left — I want to build my own: my own business, my own practice, my own projects. In other words, I want to build a personal world that is not so attached to a company, and a world that I can call my own. I have dreams and aspirations, and I am full of ideas. When I think of them, I am beaming with energy. I don’t want to stop.
And I want to divert all my energy, ambition, and inspiration to building them.
With that in mind, I finally understood the underlying cause of my perception of the deadlock: the weeks and months before I can devote myself fully to them EQUATE to being stuck in a position that I don’t like. And when the debt isn’t going down fast enough, it really feels like I am in a deadlock.
Adjusting the Perception for the Contributing Reason
Since I realized that I am eager to spend my time and energy to build a world I can call my own, and that eagerness contributed to the perception of a deadlock, I had to ask myself: is any of my projects so extremely urgent that it requires my full-time attention?
The honest answer is, no.
I just didn’t feel like dealing with the stuff that isn’t on my list of favourite projects.
But can having exposures to all the other stuff bring a richer perspective?
The answer is a resounding yes.
This is huge — this means that my perception of deadlock is psychological! At least in part!
Recognizing something is psychological doesn’t make it less real. In fact, it was my personal reality and all that I can think about. But knowing that it is psychological also means that there IS something I CAN do to change my thinking around it.
This is an improvement.
Discovering the Real Reason
In analyzing the factors contributing to the deadlock, I realized that my level of procrastination on the less attractive tasks was through the roof. I am typically action-oriented, and the revelation of my own procrastination frankly surprised me. The tasks don’t take much time, but it is the psychological distance that is so vast that it takes so much energy to traverse the space.
In other words, there is a disconnect between how hard these tasks are and what I made them out to be in my mind.
And isn’t it possible that I preferentially decided to emphasize certain projects at the expense of others? And in fact by doing so, creating information flows of different velocities and charge within me. On one side, it is positively emotionally charged, and on the other side, it is negatively emotionally charged. And over time, the aspect that is negatively charged became so overwhelming, and when I procrastinated, it is essentially adding more fuel to the negative energy.
Action Plan: Start Small and Finish Big
I need to change the structure of these flows, by de-energizing the negative flows by stop feeding more fuel to it. In practice, I can start small by taking an action without procrastination.
I will give myself one hour: in that hour, I will pick one task and complete it quickly, to the best of my ability. And often, just by starting one task, I would have gathered enough momentum to finish yet one more task.
The benefit of a day with reduced procrastination is that there is less emotional pain because we feel that we are more in control of our day through our activity.
Every moment in my life is a perfect indicator of my state of development, and within it contains the information I need to know to improve my situation.
