Imagine for a moment, you have absolutely nothing to do. It’s quiet, and you’re quite alone. Think about how you might feel in that moment, or the next, or the even next?
Do you feel comfortable listening to the voice in your head, and being within your own skin? Are you able to feel relaxed and calm in the hustle and bustle that makes up your average day?
Or, like many, you feel guilty, because you shouldn’t just be doing nothing.. , but that you really should be doing something, like going to the gym, finishing a book you started ages ago, attending to something around the house, walking the dog, up dating your CV?
Do you feel pressured you should be doing something for someone else or be the person they want you to be? Are you trying to be all things to all people, pulled in every direction?
Perhaps you feel that it is in some way ‘bad and selfish’ to give yourself time for you, to chill and take things easy.. just do ‘nothing’. Are you conditioned that you’re supposed to be doing something, that there always is something to do? and that you’re lazy, useless or less of a person you if you aren’t?
I certainly did for many years until I realised why?
Many of the people I help are immobilised (perhaps like you) by this idea of “should”. It’s not just the haunting, agonising, intrusive feeling that you should be doing something, but also the feeling that you should be someone else and you may know that whatever or whoever that is, it’s not the person you are right now.
If you are like I was, you are convinced that somewhere there is a better version of you; certainly, the kind who would never be sat around doing nothing or not be someone for others?
After all, this better version is clever, strong and always does the right thing, right? This someone is never self-indulgent. Indeed, this person is a paragon of virtue, right?
The painful lesson I learnt was that the difference between the person I perceived myself to be and my better, idealised self, was in my imagination. Where else could it have been?
So if you resonate with the above, keep in mind, no matter how close you feel able to get to that ‘better’ self, your ideal remains constantly and frustratingly just beyond your reach. You are in fact, fighting a perpetual and losing battle.
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