Is life really too short? Or are you just a restless saboteur”?
Life is too short…
I must do everything hurry, there is no time to waste.
And I want to live fully.
I once thought there was nothing wrong with this mindset. Isn’t that what productivity and living the fullest life are supposed to be? Stay busy, be slay?
Not until the beginning of my gap year after high school
When I finally get the free time, I do not follow any rules or timetable made by anyone.
To fully design my life.
To take a “break”.
I realize there is no such thing as a break for me.
When I get a full free day, the first thing that ever comes to my mind is to get what to do. If I don’t tick 5+ of my to-do list, I’m a failure. The thought of not having a worthy thing to do is not fulfilling, I always have to seek the next alternative opportunity. Burden myself with multiple tasks from being a deputy director at an NGO, to looking for new global volunteer opportunities, looking for jobs, and everything new thing that excited me.
I have been like this for my whole life, having a full day for myself, an unknown journey just exaggerates the anxiety of being in the mediocre present that my restless self never feels satisfied.
Taking an unstable and unconventional path made me realize that I have been using this “productivity” excuse as a way to escape dealing with unpleasant feelings.
I have also observed that people around me, who seem to be very successful with their college life, or those who are entrepreneurs, or even my older relative who seem to also be successful fall into the same trap.
Where we could never live in the moment.
Scatter on opportunities and new activities.
From observing them, observing me, doing more research about positive intelligence, and the “self saboteurs” idea, I came up with some reasons why we are restless.
It is our survival function
In the positive illegence, self-saboteur test. It is stated that
The Restless is a strategy to find constant new sources of excitement, pleasure, and self-nurturing. This could be associated with early life experiences with inadequate parental nurturing or painful circumstances. Restless indulgence not only provided substitute selfnurturing, but also an escape from having to deal with anxiety and pain.
This is a very self-explanatory reason. We use more activities to escape from dealing with anxiety. We fear missing out since there was something in the early-life that wasn’t fulfilled. But I don’t think this explanation is fully holistic.
External validation
Well, as a restless person wanting to escape internal emotion, what is the easiest way to escape without doubting oneself?
Well - get more external validation
Then you don’t have to go through internal crisis, facing and talking to yourself over and over again.
Sensitivity + trend in workaholic, grinding culture?
Well, as you are already sensitive, what else could increase your restless behavior more?
Oh.. some capitalist motive
Work more, gain more. High-risk, High reward
Life to short, you have to learn everything.
So what?
Subscribe to part 2 for solutions and explore another saboteur, a psychological trait that one might have. And Kudos to Thao Vi, from the WTON 6 course for sharing the test, reminding me of that issue that I had.
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#WOTN6
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