To make a long story short, I’ve always been inclined towards inertia in my life. I prefer to stay still and save effort; this plus a habit of impulsiveness and a general problem with motivation has caused issues in various forms in my life. Now it’s brought about an incident that has confirmed some fears I had about how certain coworkers think of me and my ability to do my job. While I don’t (yet) seriously fear being fired, being awkward and on tenterhooks is almost as bad to my psyche; besides which, I have a longstanding fear of “the other shoe dropping” and being the reason I can’t hold onto worthwhile things in my life.
But if I wanted to change, to really absorb some fundamental things I should remember by now, I would’ve done it before now, wouldn’t I? That, at least, is the immediate thought I have, especially with everything having gone down very recently, so I thought I’d ask all of y’all, who tend towards having more life experience around here, what a middle aged person like myself can do to make fundamental changes in habits and mindset and make them stick. For reasons already mentioned, I tend to fall back into comfortable patterns that take less effort, and/or simply not even think of doing things differently when I’m in the middle of doing them. But seeing as how this most recent incident will probably weigh on me for the rest of my time at this company, I figure it’s as good a time as any to try.
So any thoughts, experiences, and/or resources that have helped you do something similar would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.
One advice I once read is that we often mistakenly believe that motivation has to come first before action, but oftentimes it’s the other way around - action leads to motivation. Otherwise we can be paralyzed by inertia for years or decades, waiting for the time when we will finally want change. So, taking the first few steps to do something then sparks up the motivation to continue.
Another more drastic approach that’s popular these days is to use psilocybin. Basically, do a safe shroom trip and use its newly-created neuroplasticity to do all the big changes you couldn’t previously. There’s a somewhat legendary Reddit instance of it. From what people who’ve tried it say, it gives a temporary window of days or weeks where all your usual mental barriers fall down and you can sort of brute-force-will yourself into change a lot more easily if you want to - which is why a lot of smokers are suddenly able to quit smoking after having done shrooms, for instance. I have never tried shrooms myself, though, since I have a bipolar-2 sibling and lots of sleep deprivation and it carries a risk of mania or psychosis if I do it.
This is a repost of something I said in a different thread in May. It was something I tried then that has had lasting effects for me; I hope it helps you.
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I’ve been on a positive jag lately. A couple weeks ago, I got fed up with feeling bad all the time, both physically and mentally. One morning, I said to myself, “Self, I’m going to do everything different today.” During every step of that day, I asked myself, “what am I supposed to be doing right now” or “what is a good thing I could do right this second” or “what could I do that’s better than what I usually do”, and then I did that thing. It wasn’t hard, because I was just doing an experiment.
Well, that was a good day, so on the following day I tried it again. I’ve been doing it ever since. Not perfectly, but that’s okay, because I make the rules and I can break them if I want to.
Result: I’ve been eating healthier food. Walking dogs every day. Drinking more water.
Listening to only happy music.
I got organized at work, which obviously has had some good knock-on effects of me being able to get some shit done. It’s also kept me from hovering over the news all the time.
I haven’t had any alcohol since last Saturday. I’m planning to have some tonight, if I feel like it, but for me that was a long break.
I’m pleased with the experiment so far and might continue to the end of May.
A couple of cliches that still hold some truth: (a) The difference between a groove and a rut is the depth. (b) The best time to [make a change/start something new] is [some random time in the past]. The next best time is today.
Changing habits is hard. Remember to congratulate yourself on incremental changes, no matter how small.
I have found David Cain’s stuff very helpful. He comes from a place with similar psychological traits to folks like you and me and understands why normal productivity advice doesn’t work for us. There is a link in his August post, My Best Advice for the Productivity-Challenged, that leads to https://howtodothings.co/ where you can a get a free pdf with some straightforward advice. He sells a more comprehensive course that I haven’t done but I have found all his stuff useful.