What’s Wrong With You?!
Whenever I feel uneasy, or left behind, I come back to a thought-pattern that grounds me. The following exercise is a structured form of said thought-pattern shared in case it helps anyone who finds themself here.
This is (highly) introspective and brings more responsibility to self and less blame on external variables. It is meant to be a collection of self-proven exercises that helped improve a specific or multiple aspect(s) of my life.
You’ve completed higher education, you work hard, you can think critically, communicate clearly, maintain good energy, focused, and a people’s person. People seem to want to have you around. You are invited to events, to important meetings, and interesting meetups.
Yet, you don’t find yourself on a sure path to realize your potential. You don’t find yourself doing work that you love. You don’t find yourself doing things for yourself. You find yourself stuck in a rut that lasts for what seems like an eternity. Everything seems great on the outside, but deep down, it just doesn’t feel right.
What is wrong with you?!
There are a lot of external factors — systemic barriers, economic constraints, or workplace culture – beyond your immediate control. These will limit you from reaching your potential.
But I digress.
It is much better to work on what you can control. On your deathbed, it’s much better to look back and remember that you have tried, than to wonder what could have happened if you did.
What’s wrong with you?
You don’t have clarity
Clear thinking requires courage rather than intelligence. — Naval Ravikant
In all aspects of life, you have to know – or find out – where you are going. This is obvious. But brings with it a slight misunderstanding. You expect yourself to see till the end of the tunnel in order to take a single step. How do you expect to see a fully-formed image without knowing how to decipher the form itself? Or without understanding the weather in the tunnel?
Let’s not stretch the analogy further.
“Finding clarity” implies an expectation of seeing a clear picture from the beginning. A better replacement is finding what catches our interest and asking questions. This is directional clarity.
With directional clarity, you see the beginning of your path, but the end is foggy. The questions you ask become the vehicle. Curiosity becomes your fuel. The end becomes clearer as you drive towards it.
What is it about [insert topic of highest interest here] that makes me feel [insert emotion(s) felt].
The statement above helps you find a way to follow your curiosity. A way that relies on time, and methods. This is granular clarity.
Directional clarity helps you find the what, granular clarity gives you the how. Granular clarity helps understand how you will follow your curiosity. It takes the high-level understanding you found in directional clarity and helps you formulate a plan.
Granular clarity sets you up to consistently follow your curiosity by mapping the time, and methods that suit you best.
Time has two components:
- Frequency: measure of repetition of action item
- Deadline: end of repeated action item
I will [insert action item] for [insert frequency] till [insert deadline].
You could use different method(s) to follow your curiosity. For simplicity, it boils down to 3 components.
- Read: absorb knowledge about your interest.
- Write: disperse knowledge about what you’ve read in your own words.
- Do: with enough knowledge observed and dispersed, participating is a natural next step.
You don’t know who you are
I’ll start with a truth. You don’t know how to know who you are because you are scared. Self-awareness brings a lot of responsibility. Self-awareness requires discipline as you interface with the world. Contrary to what many believe, discipline leads to freedom.
Let’s change that
A way to cultivate self-awareness is to pick a life event, good or bad, and ask yourself why 5 times.
[This] happened when I was [this years old]. I felt [insert emotion felt]. Why did I feel that way?
Consider a personality test
MBTI test, like many personality-defining frameworks including astrology, fails to address a lot of nuances found in human behavior.
Another shortcoming of MBTI is that it uses answers provided by the user, which requires a level of self-awareness the user may not yet possess.
I still suggest you take the test. But be selective about the answers you’d like to integrate into your work.
Observation
Simply observe yourself throughout the week. We are our own worst critic. Refrain from making any judgement. The objective is to simple observe.
Note how you spend your time. You want to note the thoughts that cross your mind.
[Date]
[Thoughts] – a braindump of thoughts that went through your head all day
[Actions] – Actions taken throughout the day that encouraged or discouraged you
Test yourself
You will keep underestimating yourself until you begin to see, in tangible terms, how far you can go. You are unaware of your self-imposed limits. You are unaware of your preferences, or interests. You are unaware of your beliefs or lack thereof.
What drains you because you are yet to prove yourself to yourself. You have seeds of doubt in your mind that keep you away from self-awareness.
Taking action toward a goal is the only way to test yourself.
Start small
Discipline is important, yet misunderstood. When first starting out, consistency is more valuable than intensity. You’d rather walk a km daily for a week, than one intense burst of a walk 20km one day and calling it quits. or “resting”.
You want to make discipline accessible. You want to make it easy to get started with. You want to reduce the friction between thinking about the action and taking action. Starting small is important if you want to strengthen your discipline is important.
Focusing on consistency starts with defining what “small” means to you – a single task sitting between the hardest thing you can do, and the easiest. This gives you some difficulty in execution but not too much that it discourages you from doing it repetitively.
You definition of “small” should you of difficulty that makes you want to do it daily.
What do I do from morning to evening every day? How can I make time for this new thing I am going to do?
Start by writing down your daily activities on an hourly basis. This knowledge helps you find time for this new activity you are trying to pursue. Once you find the time, pin the activity, execute, and report back to yourself.
Keep a tracker
A simple checkbox-time graph helps you view and understand your progress. It is a simple way to keep yourself accountable.
Keep ticking the boxes after executing, review your performance after a longer time horizon (weekly, monthly, quarterly, etc.).
It is human nature to simultaneously find sources of encouragement and move away from social humiliation. Another method for holding your actions accountable is by telling someone about it.
Create and stick to a deadline
Deadlines give definiteness to your pursuit by creating a sense of urgency. Be strict about your deadlines.
You can have multiple sub-deadlines in addition to your main one. Eg: I will finish this challenge on the 4th week, with evaluation every 1 week.
Review what you’ve accomplished
Reviews should be done at longer time horizons or after a set of tasks have been accomplished. After each review, discuss about how you tested yourself and what you’ve learned.
Although often overlooked in self-improvement, reviews are important in making progress.
You are living a life that makes everything seem great on the outside, but something is amiss. This makes you feel uneasy. You look at external factors that make you feel this way, but would rather look towards yourself and ask,”What is wrong with me?!”
Without clarity, much of life won’t feel full. Without knowing why you have so much, having so much would make no sense. You are unclear about your internal problems. You want to cultivate directional clarity – having an interest, and asking questions – or granular clarity – a plan for having those questions answered.
You don’t know who you are. An anti-dote to which is self-awareness. It requires discipline to know self in more depth. Knowledge of self, coupled with discipline, is freedom. Cultivate the discipline to write down observations about yourself.
You don’t know who you are because you haven’t tested yourself. You haven’t proven yourself, in tangible terms, that you are capable of absolutely everything.
The beauty of finding out what’s wrong with you is finding everything is wrong with you. This brings a sense of humility, upon which the ego dies to give life to The Work.
Notes
- You use productivity tools but make this process as simple and easygoing as possible. Make sure you don’t drown your clarity in excess information.
- Don’t overthink it. Simplify so you can focus on taking action.
- The methods are not prescriptive. The steps are non-linear. That is the beauty of it.