We're often told that the path to happiness lies in finding our calling, leaving our "mediocre existences" behind and chucking everything in to follow our passion (if we're lucky enough to find it).

The thing is, for many of us, these kinds of lofty ideas just don't figure in reality.

Even if we get the opportunity to even think about things like this, things like mortgages, bills and mouths to feed soon eclipse such frivolous thinking.

Yes, despite this, we find happiness anyway.

How?


The "Blue Zones"

As anyone who has been back-packing will tell you, there are parts of the world where there are people, who are not "successful" in the conventional sense, who appear to lead incredibly happy lives.

"Deprived" communities, with perhaps only one TV between the lot of them (as that's how we measure deprivation, after all), will have far wider smiles on their faces than you'll see anywhere else in the world.

Deep-down, we all know why, but research into The Blue Zones literally spells it out for those of us who are still not so sure.

The Blue Zones are five parts of the world (in Greece, Italy, Japan, Costa Rica and California), identified by U.S. author Dan Buettner as hot-spots for consistently producing people with the highest life expectancy.

In exactly zero of cases, is productivity, wealth or hustling the cause of their long lives.

What is invariably the cause (apart from diet and exercise) is relationships.

They live in small towns or villages, they put their families first, they belong to faith-based communities, they eat and drink together, and their interpretation of purpose can equally mean spending time with those they love as it can be "pursuing passions".

They're happier, they live longer and they have significantly lower rates of heart disease and dementia.

Relationships are not just the glue that keeps these communities together; they are literally saving their lives, too.


The Real "Secret"

In her TED talk, below, psychologist and author of The Village Effect, Susan Pinker, flags up the research of psychologist and researcher Julianne Holt-Lunstad, who found that the the biggest single predictor of a long life has nothing to do with diet, exercise, finding the ideal job - or even, quitting smoking.

And it has nothing to do with close relationships either (that was the 2nd biggest predictor).

What is the biggest predictor is how much we interact with people in general, during a given day.

And that means anyone: the barista as we grab our morning coffee, the postman as they drop off the mail, the bus driver as they pass by; the neighbour as they're out walking their dog.

It's what is known as social integration - it's all the small moments of interaction we might not even pay much attention to during the day, but which is literally saving our lives.

So how does this actually work?


The Science Of Making Ourselves Happier

Each face-to-face interaction releases "a whole cascade of neurotransmitters" that protect us now - and well into the future - says Pinker:

Try it. Wave to the bus driver, smile at the postman, ask the barista how their day is going.

You'll find that your day suddenly feels that much more enjoyable.

You'll feel invigorated - grateful, even that you live where you do.

And there's no hustling required.

Life is pretty hard when we don't have what we need to move forward.

We try our best but we don't have enough money to invest in projects; we don't have enough contacts to help us expand; we don't live anywhere with great opportunities and life just seems to present us with continuous obstacles and not much else.

After a while we get trained to spot why things can't work; why we can't do what we want to do; why it might be better to give up instead.

When we get into that habitual frame of thinking, we are exhibiting what is known as a Lack Mentality (or Scarcity Thinking) - and it's a crippling mindset.

It's particularly insidious because, for many of us, it's simply a default setting. It doesn't feel like we are being defeatist. This is just reality.


The Problem With Abundant Thinking

Stepping out of a Lack Mentality can be a bit of a problem, then.

The antidote we are often presented with, to help move us out of this state, is also rife with issues. It's what is known as "Abundant Thinking".

Abundant Thinking asks us to embrace possibility, imagine things getting better and develop a grand vision of a life that is so much more exciting than the one we are currently living.

While fantasizing can give us a temporary high, the problem is that deep down we are all too well aware of our realities. The disparities between what we want and what we have can be enormous, which makes the mental jump so difficult.

"Abundant thinking" is a big ask if we live in an environment which is constantly reinforcing the opposite of abundance wherever we look.


An Alternative Suggestion

A paradoxical way of freeing ourselves from a Lack Mentality is by completely accepting lack is there and that it might always be there.

It's a form of Radical Acceptance.

Radical Acceptance is a therapeutic intervention developed by psychologist Marsha Linehan. It was intended for sufferers of borderline personality disorder but its principles can be applied universally.

The idea is to take us on the very path we are trying to avoid - the one that leads towards painful realizations of difficult realities.

Instead of wishing things were different, it makes us face the fact that life is not the way we want it to be - and it might never get better.

It is painful to do this - but the pain is short-lived.

What we are essentially doing is fully embracing the unpleasant emotions fully that arise from being brutally honest with ourselves.

In this case, it would be the pain of accepting we don't have XYZ (and we might never have it).

Once we face it, we effectively free ourselves from the internal resistance to where we are.

We come out the other side with a new perspective - one that is grounded in reality.

Much like Intense Realism, this practice will then narrow our attention to what we do have at our disposal.

As a result, we give ourselves the potential to become more focused, creative, innovative and resourceful.

The alternative is a pain that lasts far longer - it's called denial.

Denial is "Abundant Thinking" for people who don't really buy into it but do it anyway because they don't know what else to do.

Embracing our lack,  rather than pretending it isn't there,  is a key to help us out of our mental prison, when imagining we are not in prison is just too hard to do.

It’s not always possible to feel fired up. When it comes to the magic of motivation, the only thing we can actually rely on is the fact that we can’t rely on it all.

Our enthusiasm levels fluctuate throughout the day, waxing and waning with our circadian rhythms. All being well, they run their natural course and we feel the fire in our bellies again.

Other times our “down” spells can go on for what feels like a lifetime.

We stare at blank screens, with blank minds and zero idea how to get back to that place of inspired action we had before.

And this, says author Mark Manson, is where we can make a vital mistake.

We wait for inspiration to come.

We wait for that magical feeling, that breakthrough idea, to be “in the right frame of mind” in order to begin.

The thing is, while it might very well come eventually, we potentially waste a lot of time waiting for it, he says.

Manson’s advice is simple: just do something. Anything — literally.

As he writes in his blog:

The "Do Something" Principle

Ideas don’t come just by looking at a screen. Taking action on something — even if it is unrelated — he suggests, is the missing ingredient.

It’s what gives us a kick-start.

The way we feel from taking action on something then motivates us to take action on other things, which then motivates us even further.

The three components of Action, Inspiration and Motivation then form an endless loop (ideally), each feeding off each other.

But the key to always remember, he writes, is that the action part is the catalyst. It’s always the first step.

Action is what is required in order to get inspiration or motivation.

Manson, a former life coach, calls this the “Do Something Principle”.

It’s a simple piece of advice which he has given to his clients — and to himself — and he swears by it.

So the next time you’re sitting in the proverbial waiting room and the flash of inspiration still hasn’t arrived, try taking action on something — either on the task at hand, or on literally anything else instead.

You might find the wheels of your creative train will start to grease themselves.

We can frequently find ourselves in incredibly demoralizing situations.

Take the average office. For many of us, it provides little more than a delightful daily cocktail of insufficient pay, mindbogglingly repetitive tasks and stifling levels of box-ticking.

Feeling like a cog in a wheel is hard enough when this is a job to pay the bills (rather than a step up the ladder to something greater).

It can become intolerable, however, when we are perpetually undermined, given insufficient freedom to make decisions and are left feeling overworked, undervalued and underpaid.

For many of us, quitting isn’t an option, which just compounds the misery we feel. We can’t take action to rectify the situation and the feeling of helplessness takes root, with no visible remedy in sight.

It‘s’ the perfect recipe for apathy, at best. Really, why bother?


Why Agency Matters

The reason why we get dragged down so much, says Johann Hari in this Big Think video, is that we have a strong psychological need for “agency” — the sense of being in control of the direction of our lives.

Having a lack of agency is a key factor behind work-related depression and anxiety, he says.

So what’s the answer when we feel beaten down and we lack this sense of control over our lives?

Not surprisingly, it is to take back control.


The Need To Take Back Control

There are many ways we can do this.

The example Hari cites might seem to be a bit too much of a jump for some right now but is instructive all the same.

In the case he highlights, a husband and wife quit their jobs to run a bike shop together. The act of being responsible for it had the inadvertent effect of combating their prior feelings of depression and anxiety.

This is great, but...

While we might aspire to do that (run our own show), we can’t always change our external environment at the click of our fingers.

The key, then, is to understand how we get that feeling of being in control in our everyday life.

A 1970's psychology study in a U.S. care home might give us some clues about how to achieve that.


Arden House

In the late 1970's, esteemed Harvard psychologist Ellen Langer and her colleague Judith Rodin, conducted what was to become a landmark experiment in Arden House, a care home in New England.

What they did was deceptively simple but startlingly effective.

Langer and Rodin divided the residents into two groups, both of which were given plants to care for and films to watch, with a subtle variation in the parameters set around the control group.

While one group had everything done for them, the other was given the power to make decisions for themselves.

Nothing grand, they were simply given the ability to decide where and when they would receive visitors, if and when they would watch the films being shown and in what way they would care for their houseplants (how often they would water them, where they would place them in their rooms and so on).

The idea being, writes Langer in her book Counterclockwise, was to make this group feel actively engaged with the world around them — and less of a passive bystander.

The results were remarkable.

The Results

Eighteen months later, they revisited Arden House, compared the two groups and found that the control group were not only healthier, happier and more alert but twice as many of them were alive.

It raised the idea that not only is the feeling of control directly linked to happiness - it's linked to longevity, too.

What is so reassuring about this study, is that sometimes the desire to be in control of our lives can take on what feel like unreachable goals - we want to own a house, run our own business, be in a position of status. And, of course, these things might come.

But for the time in between, it is a relief to know that the things that markedly improve our happiness levels right now are the little decisions we are able to take every day - and knowing that there are always some aspects of our lives (if not all) that we are in control of.


What We Can Do Now

Even if it is just choosing what we focus on, there are always some aspects of our lives (if not all) that we are in control of — and they might be more vital to our long-term health and happiness than we realise.

Here are a few suggestions to get started:

• If f you are in a job you hate and you can leave, leave. If you are that unhappy where you are, you need to do it.

 

• If you are in a situation, where you are surrounded by people that make you feel powerless and you can leave it, again, leave — or at least restrict the amount of time you spend around them.

 

• If you can, find something in your life that gives you meaning. This can be volunteering, it can be adopting a pet pooch, it doesn’t matter. We can never underestimate the power that a meaningful existence has on us as individuals. It literally gives us a reason-to-be.

 

• If you feel inclined, think about starting a project that is yours and yours alone (it could be growing vegetables, it could be starting a blog). This is something that belongs to you, that you can take ownership of and that you can always come back to, regardless of what else is going on in your life. It is your safe haven.

 

• Apply The “Do Something Principle”, coined by Mark Manson. Take action on something — literally anything . It will change your state of mind.

 

• Take advantage of The Zeigarnik Effect. Give yourself a task and then put it down before you have finished it. You will be compelled to return to it later and that feeling of having something to do might give you a well-needed boost.

 

• Control what you watch on the TV, particularly the news when it’s always bad news (this is being written peak Covid 19). Our negativity bias draws us towards catastrophes and disasters which can leave us feeling demoralized and demotivated. It’s a perfect recipe for feeling hopeless. Restrict your exposure to that.

 

• Learn how to take control of your emotional state. If you can, start seeing a therapist. If you can’t, learn a D.I.Y. technique like tapping (EFT). You won’t be able to maintain a feeling of control if you aren’t fully engaged with how you feel.

It feels extremely satisfying coming to the end of a task, completing something, getting stuff done, particularly if it has taken a lot of work to do.

The joy of facing the next day with a clean slate.

While this might sound like something worth aiming for (and in certain cases it can be), it can also, paradoxically be hazardous for our productivity levels.

In fact, being too proficient at getting stuff done can be the very thing that can stop us from being able to get started the next day.


The Perils Of A Blank Slate

Any of us who have ever suffered from creative block knows how excruciating it is to stare endlessly at a blank page (figuratively or otherwise), praying for inspiration to come flooding in.

We all know that the magic never came that way.

That's why some of the best advice out there for creatives who find themselves in this position is just to write/create something, anything - even if it's complete drivel.

It gets the wheels turning and gives us something to work with (see Mark Manson's tip, the "Do Something Principle", and Tim Ferriss, with his "Two Crappy Pages").


The Zeigarnik Effect

But there's another, arguably easier, way.

It requires walking away from a creative task before it is done and, specifically, to resist the urge to complete it before we hit the hay.

That incomplete task will linger in our minds and compel us to go back to it. Our brains can't help it. We need closure.

This phenomenon is called The Zeigarnik Effect.

Named after psychologist Bluma Zeigarnik, the concept was inspired by an observation that waiters in a restaurant had an uncanny ability to remember details about orders only up until the point that the food had been served.

Once service was complete, so was any memory they had of the details of it.

It led Zeigarnik to later conclude that we had a significantly higher likelihood to recall unfinished tasks (and forget completed ones), as author and psychologist Adam Grant, notes in his book, Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World:

"Open Loops"

These things left undone, which play on our minds, are called "Open Loops".

These "loops" or incomplete tasks, cause an internal tension in our minds, where we can't stop thinking about them, as Video essayist, Will Schoder explains in the video below:

But that's not all it does. It also boosts our motivation to do them.

Says Schoder:

So having a task left undone is, by default, a kind of way round creative block and procrastination.

Always make sure we have something to do and we won't ever have to face the dreaded blank slate.


Strategic Procrastination

There is another term for this, according Grant. He calls it "Strategic Procrastination".

Strategic Procrastination is the deliberate act of putting something off to ensure it stays in our minds and that we pick it up again.

It also means giving ourselves the time and space we need to potentially come up with better ideas. And it has been unwittingly applied by the likes of Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King throughout history, according to Grant.

So the next you want something to get up for and you are hellbent on increasing your chances of getting in "the zone", then put it down - whatever it is you're working on.

It will still be there tomorrow and you'll be thankful it is.

It’s not unusual, when life goes south, to want someone - anyone -  to tell us everything is going to be OK.

But the truth is, some things don’t ever seem to improve — or, at least they can take a very, very long time to.

We can always find ourselves trapped in situations which we once thought would resolve themselves quickly, only to find ourselves months — or even years — later, still there, still hoping for change, still trying to escape.

It might be a bad marriage.

It might be a shitty job.

It might be that we finally left that bad marriage or quit that shitty job and now we have found a brand new place to be stuck in.

And life can suck for a very long time.

The thing is, just knowing that something isn’t working isn’t enough to make that thing change.

And blind faith that it will somehow magically get better next week, next month, or next year, is only a short-term solution - something that momentarily makes us feel better.

To survive the spirit-crushing nature of our predicaments, then, we have to throw ourselves a rope — one that is, conversely, both optimistic and pessimistic at the same time.

The real lifeline comes from embracing the opposites and living both truths side by side, as James Stockdale will tell you.


The Stockdale Paradox

Relentless optimism in a situation where you don’t really have anything to be optimistic about is more than just deluded thinking.

When you are a prisoner of war, it can actually be life-threatening.

Stockdale, a naval officer at the time of the Vietnam War, had to learn this the hard way when he was held in a POW camp for seven long years.

This is an account of his time there by Jim Collins in his book, Good To Great:

Initially, when Collins asked Stockdale how he endured this, he replied that he “never lost faith in the end of the story”.

He “never doubted” that he would get out one day, that he “would prevail in the end” and ultimately be defined by the experience in the best way possible.

Yet, at the same time, Stockdale said that the ones who suffered the most in that camp — and even died prematurely — were in fact, the optimists.

How so?

Again from Collins' book, Good To Great:

A Marriage Of Opposites

The lesson, said Stockdale — and the thing that kept him going — was to hold two contrasting beliefs in his mind.

He wasn’t getting out by Christmas. But he absolutely was getting out.

The trick was not to allow his optimism to blind him to the “brutal facts” of his situation, which were just as vital to his survival during this time.

As he told Collins:

Facing facts might not be as sexy as “you will meet a tall, dark, handsome stranger” but it is vital we do so, particularly when we feel trapped.

While optimism is an essential component of psychological health; blind optimism — the kind where we think life will magically sort itself out on its own — is a dangerous state to stay in.

Just like the blissful high that comes from a visit to a tarot card reader, these kinds of states aren’t meant to last.

Eventually reality will come crashing in, regardless of whether we want to face it or not.

So balancing faith with facts, is an advisable way to navigate these times; to stay grounded — not deluded.

Aside from anything, it might just save us from a broken heart.

Passion projects can be tricky, not always in finding out what they are (although that is hard enough), but more in the actual execution of them. They require a lot of effort and all too frequently they attract little (if any) reward.

They are invariably thankless tasks. We can find ourselves grafting for weeks, months, years, even, with no external validation or financial gain of any kind.

Before long, what once made us invigorated will make us feel drained; what was previously a passion will become a pain; what fulfilled us will leave us feeling resentful.

What can be done, then, about this inevitable side-effect of sticking with our dreams, when there appears to be no external evidence to convince us it is worth sticking at in the first place?


Passion At Any Cost?

There are three parts to look at here:

1. What Drives Us Vs What Pays The Bills
2. If Passion Projects Have To Make Money
3. What We Are Willing To Do (In The Name Of Our Passion)

Let’s look at the first:


1. What Drives Us Vs What Pays The Bills

There is a key difference between being intrinsically and extrinsically motivated, as much as there is a difference in being intrinsically and extrinsically rewarded.

The first kind — being intrinsically driven — is creating-for-creating-sake, i.e. doing something for the love of it. We do this, regardless of reward.

The second kind — being extrinsically driven — is doing something for what we will get because of it i.e, money, career progression and so on. We do this, because of the reward.


How Passions Can Falter

By definition, passion projects are intrinsically-driven to begin with. There was a point in time when we did this for the joy of it.

But akin to the law of diminishing returns, what once thrilled us about our passion project will inevitably cease to at some point.

Sometimes we can get back to that basic starting point. We can emerge from our dejected state and rediscover what it was that gripped us so much in the first place — and rekindle it.

However, often the reason we can’t do this, is that we fail to notice that a new need has replaced the one that fired us up originally.

And that is invariably about making money.


The Downside Of Thinking Extrinsically

While there is absolutely nothing wrong with desiring money for our efforts, being too driven by financial gain can paradoxically have a demotivating effect.

In a 1971 study, psychologist Edward Deci found that the act of offering an external reward, (i.e. money), to an individual who was already motivated to undertake a task, had the effect of making him less motivated to do it.

When the carrot of money is dangled in front of the eyes of someone who is lost in their passion, blissfully unaware of the world around them, their focus quickly shifts to the money and not the act itself.

In other words, their creative libidos can tank.

Which brings us to point number 2:


2. Do Passion Projects Have To Make Money?

Is it a fallacy to believe we will always be financially compensated for doing what we love? And is it perfectly OK to have passion projects which don’t actually make any money at all?

The answer to the 2nd question is a resounding “yes”. It’s called having a hobby.

The 1st question is a bit trickier to answer.

There are more self-help gurus out there than we care to count who will tell us we can make our dreams come true - and get rich doing it.

Even Joseph Campbell told us to “follow our bliss”. 

But did he mean in order to make money? Or did he just mean ‘therein lies the path to happiness’?

Ideally you want to get both but what Campbell wanted to stress was that we should not sacrifice one for the other.

We shouldn’t turn our back on our passion for money. But equally if we don’t get that money, the passion is still worth having:

Are We Being Delusional By Wanting It All?

In Barbara Sher’s opinion, our dreams don’t need to make us money — and in fact few dreams actually do (contrary to what YouTube gurus tell us).

She argues (here) that it is a false narrative we present ourselves when we align passion with money and use the inability to earn an income from a passion project as the reason for not doing it in the first place.

Earning an income and doing something we love are invariably two separate things, no matter how much we want them to be the same, Sher says.

And we are effectively shooting ourselves in the foot if we use the former to deny ourselves the latter. 

Because realistically, she says, we are not going to be able to easily support ourselves writing poetry all day long.

Having a day-job and a side-hustle or hobby, then, is the first thing to consider at this juncture.

And if that idea makes us recoil in horror, then we need to look at what we are prepared to do in the name of our passion.

And this leads us to point number 3:


3. What We Are Willing To Do 

Mark Manson posted an interesting video recently regarding the issue of what we think we want out of our lives and the reality of actually doing it.

He cites the example of him craving the ideal lifestyle of a surfer (along with the sex appeal that comes with it) but admits that the actual act of learning to surf bores him stupid.

This is the reality vs the fantasy.

As Manson explains in his video, we frequently look to the lives of others and think that’s what we want but we don’t actually want to do what it takes to be like them.

This isn’t a flaw in us, it’s a sign that something isn’t for us.

The Lives Of Others

I like the idea of the lifestyle of an Instagram influencer who floats around the world looking glamorous and living in Bali off the back of multiple 6-figure sponsorship deals.

The problem is, I don’t want my life documented in photographs for all to see. It’s that simple.

The same goes for what we are willing to do in the name of our passion projects.

If we are frustrated at the lack of success we are experiencing but are unwilling to do what it takes to make it successful, we will hit a brick wall.

If we detest basic functions like marketing, promotion or networking, for example — or we don’t like the idea of actually running a business — then we need to ask ourselves a few basic questions.


Basic Questions

So, here is the idiot's guide to some basic — and brutal — questions we need to ask ourselves when we are feeling resentful and frustrated over our lack of success.

• Why are we doing this?
• Is this actually a hobby or something bigger?
• Will anyone else get value out of this?
• Is it something people are willing to pay for (or ever will be)?
• Is it linked to a viable business model?
• Are we willing to undertake business-like activities? If not now, will this change in the future?
• Do we actually want to run a business?
• Is it better to look elsewhere to bolster our incomes? OR are we prepared to radically re-evaluate what we are willing to do with our passions?

The answers we get at this point might tell us if our frustrations are anchored in delusion, denial or procrastination.

While passion projects can begin as things that ecstatically allow us to escape reality, at some point, particularly if our needs change, we will need to face reality.

If we don’t do this, we risk sabotaging an area of our lives which can bring us unbridled joy, simply by viewing it through a distorted lens.

What gets your juices flowing? What do you do regardless of reward or recognition? No-one's asked you to do it, no-one's paying you to do it, but you do it anyway, because it makes you happy.

If there is anything at all, you have hit the gold standard, you have nailed intrinsic motivation, a doorway to life satisfaction, meaning, purpose and flow.

The ability to be make ourselves happy, independent of anyone else, or any external factors (like wealth, geography, a network of contacts etc) is a bonafide superpower.

It is perhaps the single most important skill we will stumble across in our lives.

It can give our lives meaning, when perhaps things aren't going our way - and give us the necessary fortitude and willingness to persevere, even if we are not receiving validation for our efforts.

It's the polar opposite of obligation.

This is something we do purely because we want to, because there is something about this activity that means something to us, that has value. 

It allows us to experience that feeling of autonomy in a singular area of our lives, even when we lack it in others.

And it means we can actually have thrilling inner lives even if we appear to be living distinctly average outer ones.


The Work Of Edward Deci

Intrinsic motivation theorist Edward Deci first realised this as a kid, as most of us do (and as he discusses in the first video, below).

He recognised that there were certain classes at school that gripped him, while others left him cold and no matter how hard he tried, he just couldn't muster up the same levels of enthusiasm for them.


Natural Inclinations

He had stumbled across the idea that we have natural inclinations towards certain topics or activities which become a key factor in successfully meeting key psychological needs.

He ascertains that it is the honouring of these principles that can lay the pathways to the areas of our lives that are essential to our psychological well-being: feeling happy, experiencing life satisfaction, feeling that we are valued, that we are good at something, feeling a sense of control of our lives and having a sense of purpose:

The 3 Requirements

There are three key requirements that need to be met in order to achieve this, he explains and it's the third that raises eyebrows:

We need to feel competent or effective, we need relatedness and we need autonomy:

The Problem With Control

On the other side, "controlled motivation" is about doing something because we feel we have to, whether that pressure comes from other people, society-at-large, material gain - or even ourselves. And needless to say, it's not a great place to be in.

Feeling controlled, micro-managed, coerced with rewards (even if it is with attractive sums of money), in a job we don't like can make us lose interest, sap our motivation and make us money-oriented.

And that can hammer us psychologically, says Deci in the second video (also below):

So the next time we feel that drag, that sense, at best, that we are swimming against the tide, we need to ask ourselves:

1. Are we just in it for the money?
   
2. Are we doing this for recognition?
   
3. Do we feel obliged or coerced to do this in some way?
   

We all have areas of our lives where the answer is "yes" to some of these questions. And it's not a question of radically changing everything if it's not practical.

But if there are any areas of our lives where we can feel that sense of freedom (even if it's a hobby), it's an important question to ask.

It could be vital in safeguarding not only our happiness - but our mental and physical health.

No-one said we always have to be perky.

While there are obvious benefits to releasing negative emotions, like having a good cry, there are also quite a few advantages of being in a stinking bad mood.

Here are just a few:


1. Effectiveness

From Big Think:

In other words, it means people in a bad mood "get things done".

The story continues:

We don't faff around, in other words.

(N.B. The effect is more pronounced amongst people who are used to bad moods - i.e. it doesn't distract them when a black cloud hovers over them, unlike happy campers who are not as used to low spells and so are more likely to be derailed by them.

According to social psychologist, Joseph Forgas, bad moods make us likelier to stick at things.

From The Conversation:

As Forgas adds in the same article, we are also a lot better at remembering stuff:

And we are also a lot less biased, Forgas says:

From The New York Times (referring to a study led by Forgas):

"A 2006 study in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology tested subjects on their ability to detect a lie. Subjects who were put in a negative mood by watching a short film about dying of cancer were far more likely to detect lies than subjects who were put in a good mood by watching a clip from a comedy show."

And finally, in undoubtedly the most important finding of all, the act of embracing our bad moods (rather than pretending we don't have them), can literally save our lives.

From the BBC (referring to a 2010 study of patients with coronary artery disease, which looked at their relationship with expressing anger):

Having a sense of purpose in life does a lot more than give us a warm, fuzzy feeling inside, according to a few key research studies.

Aside from putting the brakes on late stage cognitive decline such as Dementia and Alzheimer's, feeling our lives have meaning and purpose has been found to act as a buffer against heart attacks and strokes.

We could literally be extending our lives by finding what really makes us tick.

From Science Daily, referring to a Mount Sinai study in the US:

From NJ.com:

And from NPR, referring to the findings of the JAMA Current Open Study:

Summing up the importance of having a life purpose is cardiologist Alan Rozanski, who was involved in the Mount Sinai study, quoted in the NPR story:

The number one killer of creativity (and happiness, in general, for that matter) is, arguably, the need for brilliance.

It‘s paralyzing. It‘s also depressing, as it is steeped in — and is rocket fuel for — feelings of gross inadequacy.

If we didn’t feel inadequate already, then piling ridiculous expectations on ourselves for something we haven’t even done yet (or have/own/become) is a guaranteed way to get there.

When we aim disproportionately too high, the Ugly Sister of Inadequacy — the Critical Inner Voice — is then, by default, given free reign to well and truly put the boot in.

It relishes this as an opportunity to remind us in a myriad of ways just how much of a ridiculous failure we really are. “We’re never going to get there”, it whispers, “So, why bother?”

This is not to say we shouldn’t aim high in life, by the way. But there are times when it helps to scale it back a bit.


The Joy Of Zero Expectations

Having zero expectations is a joy in itself — regardless of what comes of it (which is literally the point).

There is so much pressure in life to be “this”, look like “that” and live an Instagram-worthy life. It’s flat-out miraculous to find a place in this world where we can be completely free of any expectations.

And that is why creating-without-expectation is so incredibly healthy. It is creativity for creativity’s sake, giving us that one sacred place, free of obligation, where we can just be.


Finding Our True Voices

Dropping our expectations, or our ambition, every now and again can also free us from hive-like thinking, which is vital if we are to act in a way that is unique to each and every one of us.

Often our goals (and ultimately our identities) our influenced largely by people we see in the world who have already “made it”.

We want to be like them, we think they have found the perfect formula, which, if followed to the letter will make us as “happy” and “successful” as they are.

Before we realise it, we have modeled our ideas and lives on them.

So, if we want to be a successful blogger, for example, we might obediently look at what other successful bloggers have done and think — “there’s the formula — they’ve got it right”.

So, we just do what they do. We operate on the assumption that if we follow their rules, implement their procedures, reach out to the same kinds of people, then bingo — we’ll be like them and we’ll have the kinds of lives they have.

And while that might actually work in some cases, we need to ask ourselves if this is it what we actually want for ourselves?

Is there a certain degree of emptiness in this approach? Are we denying ourselves the ability to chart our own paths?

As Joseph Campbell once said:

Charting Our Own Paths

Paradoxically, embracing a lack of ambition and significantly lowering our expectations are what allows us to find out what our path actually looks like.

Here are some ways it helps:

1. Procrastination
We can sideline procrastination and actually get started on something new (rather than just fantasize about it), because it doesn’t really matter. The pressure is off.

(As Mel Robbins argues here, excessively ambitious plans can be the very thing that prevents us from actually starting a new project, because of the inordinate pressure it puts on us.)

2. Risk-Taking
We can take risks when we are in this state as we are not trying to prove anything to anyone. As a result, we are far more likely to try something new, or take a new approach — and do something that’s more like us.

3. Creative Block
Being a bit crap allows us to avoid creative blocks. We can actually leverage it as a technique when we need to.

(Tim Ferriss testifies to this approach with his “Two Crappy Pages” tip.)

4. Purpose
Following our natural inclination to do something, regardless of the outcome, can be a gateway to discovering what really matters to us. This is what will bring us greater meaning and a sense of purpose in the long run.

5. Intrinsic Motivation
By creating something for the simple joy of doing it, we get a taste for what it feels like to be intrinsically motivated. There are no expectations on us, no-one is asking us (or paying us, even) to do this — we are acting autonomously, which in turns gives us:

6. Agency
We gain a sense of agency from doing something we are not obligated to do. We gain a feeling of control over part of our lives, that we might not otherwise have in other areas, which is vital to our health and well-being.

7. Flow/The Zone
Being intrinsically driven and autonomously led are vital ingredients for entering that elusive — and highly sought-after — flow state. Doing what we genuinely like to do — without expectation — is far more likely to get us in the zone than killing ourselves with unreasonable expectations and following cookie-cutter methods to get what we think we should have.

8. Eureka Moments
Ideas come when we are not trying — when we have switched off. Dropping the expectations, easing up on ourselves and literally going with the flow is then far more likely to lead to those breakthrough moments. And this, ironically, will likely take us to that magical place we had, at last, stopped chasing after.

In any endeavour, we can hit a point where we ask, "Is this really worth it?".  We are not getting anywhere, it feels like a thankless task and we wonder if all that enthusiasm and excitement we had in the early days was ultimately misplaced.

It can be really hard to know what the right step is for us to take. Our minds might say one thing, our hearts another. Are we in denial? Are we refusing to face facts? Are we just committed to this because we have been doing it for so long?

There is actually a psychological term that's related to this latter question: it's called the "sunk cost fallacy".

It basically refers to those times when we find it really hard to walk away from something simply because we have invested so much time and effort in it. 

We can't face the possibility that our precious time has been wasted, so we plough on, despite all signs to the contrary telling us to stop.


How Can We Tell When It's Time To Quit?

But the truth is, as Marie Forleo points out in the video below, some things are worth walking away from.

And when we do, we will feel better for it, possibly relieved in fact.

​But there are other times where the choice is not so clear.

Say it is a passion and it means a lot to you and you are not getting anywhere. What then? How can we tell if we are deluding ourselves or if we have just hit a bump in the road?


"The 10-Year Rule"

Forleo  says "The 10-Year Rule" is worth remembering here. 

She explains that if you really want to know how committed you are  - to anything - it is to ask yourself a simple question:

If you feel a gut wrench right now even considering this question, you have your answer.

You might have just found yourself in a "dip", i.e., a rough patch. You might be suffering from burnout and just need to take a break, step back and recap.

If, however, you feel neutral - or a sense of relief - then you also have your answer. 

Like anything in life, if you are happy and willing to walk away from it - for good -  it might not have been right for you in the first place.

It's not unusual to run on auto-pilot, particularly when life is hectic: the diary is packed, the to-do list is brimming, the days are full.

What is unusual (and beats being busy every time) is to take a step back - as frequently as we can - and reassess; to look at what we are doing and ask ourselves: "Am I being true to myself?"

This kind of question is a catch-all for an infinite number of variations:

"Is this who I am?"
"Is this what I want?".
"Am I heading in the right direction?"
"Did I mean what I just said?"
"Do I really think that?"
"Is this person right for me?"
"Is this job/career really what I am about?"

And so on. And, as with all of them, we will, at times dislike the answers we get.

And that's a key reason why we don't ask ourselves these types of questions in the first place.

Or, we simply don't think to.


Wake-Up Calls

The thing is, if we keep dodging them, they will eventually present themselves to us in a way that we cannot escape.

This is what a mid-life crisis is all about. 

It's about having these very questions thrust starkly in front of us at a time when we feel they must be answered.

It's when we begin to accept a truth about something (or many things) that we have, perhaps, always known deep inside but ignored.

And that dereliction of duty has given us a life that isn't the one we actually want.

It becomes a crisis because by the time life forces us to confront this, it comes with a sense of urgency inevitably due to the age at which we are made to face it.

Changes, then, have to be made - and fast.


Paying The Price

This is when marriages fail, when careers implode and when nervous breakdowns come knocking. 

It is anything but pleasant.

And it is anything but the hedonistic red sports-car-driving caricature of mid-life that is so often painted for us.

What's worse is that while it will take just minutes to undo a life that has been built over decades, it might very well take years to get to the New Life - and to get there in one piece.

Inevitably, by the time we do get there, a big part of us will have wished that we had listened to that voice inside our heads so many years earlier when it was whispering, "this person isn't right for you", or "your career is killing you".


Being "Congruent"

While this form of radical self-honesty might seem a bit extreme, it doesn't always have to reach existential levels. And we don't have to wait for a crisis to make changes.

There are subtle ways we can tap into this "knowing" right at this very minute, before it reaches such a dramatic point that it is forced to become a wake-up call.

It is called congruence.

Congruence (and its opposite, incongruence) is a concept that was coined by a psychologist by the name of Carl Rogers, which Jordan Peterson delves into in each of the videos below.

Being congruent basically means aligning body, mind and spirit. It's when our beliefs, values and desires line up with our actions.

By its nature, it requires being in touch with what we really think, what we really stand for, what we really want, who we really want to be etc.

It means recognizing the little voice in our head and actually listening to it.

The Body's Messages

And as Peterson explains, if we can't hear the voice, our body will also tell us when we are out of step.  In his words, acting incongruently will make us feel "weak".

This is not weak, as in the machismo sense - it is in the sense that acting "out of alignment" dis-empowers us, destabilises us internally, puts us on the back foot.

We all know, for example, what it feels like when something feels "off", or not quite right.

We have all had a "bad feeling" about something at some point in our lives or done something and wish we hadn't as it didn't feel like us. 

We might agree to an arrangement and a big part of us wishes we hadn't. We might make a decision and feel conflicted about it. We might say something and immediately regret it.  We might push forward with a plan but it feels empty. There's no life in it. We aren't all in.

And that's what this is really about - being all in.

Because there is only so long that we can coast along, living a half-life: being in relationships that aren't right for us, working jobs we hate, being friends with people who don't have our backs, failing to connect meaningfully with people who do.

It is a form of self-betrayal which eats away at us each time we say or do something that contradicts our true nature - frequently in such subtle ways we fail to notice it at the time, if we are not paying attention.

Until at some point, much later in life, we are made to.

And when that happens, there won't be a red sports car waiting for us. 

It will be something very different, indeed.

When  we talk to the uninitiated about Shadow Psychology: our repressed states, the idea about "integrating" our darker, unacknowledged traits in order to be fully realised "whole" human beings - we can forgive people if they look back at us blankly,  unashamedly uninterested.

But mutter the word "hypocrite" in anyone's direction and we will get a decidedly different response.

Hypocrisy, is a loaded - and very well understood - term.  And it's powerful. There are, arguably, fewer powerful insults we can throw at someone than this one - particularly the more moral and ethical the target considers themselves to be.

It is a gift, in a sense, when we bump into it, as it is perhaps the ideal introduction into the world of Shadow Psychology.


Do As I Say, Not As I Do

Hypocrisy means saying (or preaching) one thing but doing the opposite (often in secret).

It's the priest proselytizing on purity and abstinence while battling a drink problem or abusing the vulnerable; it is the avidly homophobic politician-in-public who is engaging in a homosexual relationship in private.

It's when we criticize and condemn people for acting in a way that we in fact are also acting ourselves but it can also be us hating on people for things we are not doing but wish we were.

As Jung once famously said:

Psychology and philosophy vlogger Einzelgänger gives a layman's introduction, here, and as he explains, it is not the fact that we are hypocrites in the first place that is the problem. It is that we fail to recognize it.

And that means we miss the opportunity to "integrate" these hidden aspects into our conscious selves so we are no longer dominated by misunderstood, unrecognized unconscious forces.


What We Resist...

Our darker urges exist because we resist looking at them.

And our hatred of other people's behaviour stems from the failure - or refusal - to recognize that the things we are villainising lie inside of us too.

Only when we bring these traits to the surface, then, facing them in the cold light of day and admitting that we are, also, like that too, can they ever cease to hold power over us.

So how do we do this?


"The Work"

There are many different ways to do it (you can find various techniques here).

One way is via "The Work", by Byron Katie. 

Katie has a simple "Judge Your Neighbor" exercise (with an explanatory video here).

The basic idea behind it is that whatever it is that is driving us nuts about our "neighbour" is generally the very thing we need to own up to ourselves.

And it goes without saying that it's easier to do in some cases than it is in others.

But it is always worth doing.

Why?

At the very least, as Jung says, if we learn to recognize the hypocrisy in ourselves, it might not only make us whole but it might just make us connect with people a little bit better (and isn't that what we all ultimately want?):

A recent article in The Guardian, kind of summed up by its title ("A dirty secret: you can only be a writer if you can afford it"), has done its bit to blow the lid on an entire industry - and also an idealised view on life we all might be guilty of having.

That view is that achieving our dreams is somehow egalitarian in its nature - available to all; that all you need is talent and passion and fate will take care of the rest.

This author's inconvenient truth, when it comes to the literary business, however, is that this idea simply isn't true.

You need financial backing if you want to be a writer, says Lynn Steger.

That means at a very basic level, you need to be able to pay the rent, pay the bills and buy food while you are penning the next classic work of literature (and then you might have to pay out a very tidy sum to publicise the thing if you want anyone to know it actually exists).


Facing A Few Home Truths

Very few people can do this, Steger notes.

And the ones who can are either already well-taken care of financially - or have a partner who can pick up the slack while they take X amount of months off work to allow themselves the sufficient time and space they need to be creative.

As she writes:

What she means is that it's actually very hard to make a living as a writer.

And the wider truth is that a lot of people we might look up to, that appear to have "made it", might very well have had pre-existing income to draw on - or a helping hand along the way.

And its our lack of appreciation for this fact that gives us a distorted idea of what it actually takes to be successful if we are not already in a privileged position of some kind.


(Not) Having Your Cake & Eating It

This is the reality of the publishing game. It is also the reality of most other games.

If you do not have a network of backers and if you are not sitting on a pile of cash, it can be very difficult to "follow your passion" if you are a Regular Joe.

But it gets even harder if you expect to fulfill your dreams but you also want to have all the bells and whistles life has on offer at the same time.

Try financing a mortgage, driving a nice car, paying for twice-yearly holidays and decking yourself out in fashionable attire, whilst also breaking in to a new area.


Ambition Requires... Minimalism?

This is where sacrifice comes in.

As entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk explains in the videos below, one of the key components of ambition is actually minimalism.

In order to give ourselves a chance of succeeding at what actually makes us happy, we need to drastically cut back on things that only appear to.

And this is where we can hit a wall.


Dealing With Stigma

It might be the social stigma of not driving a certain car, not wearing luxury branded shoes, not being able to maintain the same kind of social life as our friends.

Or it could be the shame that comes from our new pared down, scaled back life, particularly if we have done something as dramatic (and socially unacceptable) as move back in with our parents, something Vaynerchuk is a big proponent of (at any age).

But, as Vaynerchuk argues, not only is there no shame in sacrificing any of these things (i.e. our material possessions or social status), if we want to really make it - it might actually be our only real chance of succeeding if we are really serious about seeing our dreams through.

So, in the absence of backers, a pre-existing pot of cash to fall back on, or someone who can subsidize us while we chase our dreams, at some point we have to decide.

Are we willing to "slum it" in order to "make it"? 

When it comes down to it, what really matters to us the most?

Only then will we know for sure if our dreams are actually more than just pipe-dreams.

According to the principles of Hedonic Adaptation (or The Hedonic Treadmill), anything that once gave us joy will cease to at some point in the future.

It might be within a relatively short period of time, too, which can come as a bit of a shocker when you feel you have stumbled across a significant piece of good fortune or have discovered an elixir of some kind.

It could be juicing, hiking, fasting - or it could just be getting high. It's great at first but after a while, it becomes the new normal and in order to get that kick again, you need to amp it up a bit (and again and again).

There are obvious downsides to this approach.

But any kind of addictive behaviour - even "healthy addictions", like exercise, can be, at their core, a need to get that original feeling of elation that came the very first time we did it.


Think The Lottery Will Make You Happy?

This principle, that we adapt to our new states of being, even after they radically change, is applied to a well-known study of lottery winners, in the TED-ED video here.

The point was to find out if coming in to such extreme levels of good fortune cemented their long-term happiness.

Did their "baselines" of happiness change at all after coming into such a signficant sum of money?

They did, at first.

But then after a while, participants, like elastic bands, snapped back in to place.

They were about as happy as they were before they won the prize (and some, even less so).

This principle also applies to relationships, career satisfaction, material gain and even altruistic behavior.

No matter what changes in the external world, at some point we adapt and whatever - or whoever -  initially gave us a happiness kick, now fails to have the same potency.

Married couples no longer experiencing the "honeymoon period" will know this first-hand and will learn the lesson we all have to in some way, that happiness doesn't lie outside of ourselves.

Why Baselines Matter

And that is what makes the "baseline" so crucial, particularly for those of us whose basic level of happiness isn't particularly high.

No matter what our default setting is, there is nothing external that is going to change that.

The only thing we can ever do is work on increasing it "internally" instead.

Because whatever it is we think will "make" us happy "out there" at some point will fail us. 

And we will be back to where we started from, still having to deal with whatever is inside us and whatever it is that is really dictating how happy we feel in the first place.

So, you wake up, feel motivated, feel on point - today is the day. And for a few hours you are on fire, you feel like you're really getting somewhere.

And then you hit that wall.

Suddenly all that optimism you had has gone out the window and a different self emerges: one who could not give a sh*t. About anything, least of all the stuff that got you out of bed this morning.

It's the dreaded Afternoon Slump.

For most of us, who can at least recognise that is what it is, it is one of those unavoidable un-pleasantries of life where we do our best to slog on despite it, in the vain hope we can push our way through it.

The rest of us just simply question our existence and wonder why it all went so wrong.

Dan Pink has another name for it: "The Trough", which he describes as "the poison" in his book, When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing:

Or, to put it another way:

Daily Cycles

This low point of the day is part of our daily cycle, whether we like it or not.

Despite our best intentions, our motivation, mood and productivity levels follow pretty regular patterns throughout the day, every day. 

But, says Pink (as he explains in the videos below), if we can gain a detailed understanding of our own unique cycles, learn to adapt to each stage appropriately and take the right action at the right time, then happy days.


Peak, Trough & Recovery

Pink says we go through a 3-stage process  - the "Peak", the "Trough", and the "Recovery" - daily, at pretty much the same time, with us going up and down like a yo-yo, with each step .

The point that we "dip" very much depends on our "chronotype", which Pink describes as:

What defines our "type"?

Basically the time we wake up: if we are early risers (Pink calls them Larks) or late-starters (Owls).

Early risers, or Larks, will hit a "peak" in the morning, then a "trough" around 7 hours after waking up and finally will "rebound" or enter a recovery period later in the day.

Night Owls  who struggle to get out of bed before late morning will have a similar cycle, but starting from a later point in the day.


The Best Time To Get S**t Done

In terms of getting stuff done, the Peak time is where we will feel - and be - the most productive.

We are highly focused and analytical at this time, says Pink.

Creative insights and ideas come later in the day, as the Recovery stage is when we are likely to be a bit looser and more expansive in our thinking.


Navigating The Dip

The key, though, is what do we do when we hit that slump?

Pink's advice is simple: not very much.

At most do things which aren't particularly challenging, like administrative work (answering emails etc).

The trick is not to beat ourselves up if we can't deliver at the level we would like to during the "dip".

No-one can, apparently.

As such, he advises we learn to take it as a cue for "vigilant breaks": to switch gears, stop flogging ourselves and do something far less taxing instead.

So, if answering emails sounds too much to bear (particularly if we are not in the office), then we can always make the most of the fact that our brain has just turned to cheese.

We can take that nap.

It's OK, we're allowed, says Pink:

Perhaps the Spanish are on to something, Siesta, anyone?

No-one likes bullies. But the worst kind, the most insidious of them all, live inside our heads. And the reason they are so powerful is because we don't even realise they are there.

They are so deeply embedded in our thoughts, emotions, beliefs and knee-jerk reactions to situations, that we think they are us - and we think they're right.

These voices have lives of their own - and they began in the 'real world', before they leapt into our minds and started whispering in our ears.


The Critical Inner Voice

The Critical Inner Voice, as it is known, typically gets created as a defense mechanism to a painful situation.

It doesn't always require a direct criticism or scolding to develop (the growing pains of childhood inevitably spawn situations that leave us feeling inadequate) - but the negative feedback loop we get stuck in can inevitably be traced back to an individual or group of people whose words and/or actions impacted us deeply.

If we have ever been picked on, regularly criticized, felt the spotlight was on us for all the wrong reasons, the emotional charge of that event can get stuck.

And the way we were treated at the time, the kinds of judgments/expectations that were made of us and the lack of care that was given to us all get internalised.

We start talking to ourselves in the way we were spoken to that we hated so much.

And it becomes so natural to us, so automated, that we fail to realise we are even doing it.

And before long, we end up doing the original critics' jobs for them.


Recognising The Root

But breakthroughs can be as astoundingly simple as they are effective, as an interview Epiphany Channel did with architect, Greg Schriefer, shows.

Having been plagued by negative self-talk for years, what freed Schriefer was recognising where it actually came from.

When he realised that he was in fact repeating the exact words his father had said to him, he was immediately able to distance himself from the voice.

It no longer belonged to him, so he could begin a conversation with it, rather than just soak up whatever it was saying.

As Schriefer told Elise Ballard, who runs the Epiphany Channel:

Once he realised where the voice came from, he was able to identify it every time it came up again after that - and stop it in its tracks.


When There Are Upsides To That Voice

Writer Isabel Allende outlined a similar experience she had in an interview with Global Leadership TV.

But in her case, she was also able to see how it actually benefited her.

The upside to being harsh on yourself is it can drive you to be better.

Allende was able to create a successful career for herself in a time where it was unusual for a woman to do so.

And it was the high expectations and intolerance of a grandfather cracking the whip (in real life and in her head) that she says she had to thank for it. 

She told Global Leadership TV:

Finding The Right Balance

The downside was, she could never switch off, feeling guilty if she ever stopped working.

Being able to give the voice - and herself - a break has been the key to achieving a bit more balance.

And now she uses this critical voice to her advantage as and when she needs it:

The next time we get swept up by the voice inside our heads, the act of being able trace it back to its originator is well worth trying out.

Not only can it free us from the negative aspects of what it is saying - but it in some cases (depending on what it is saying) it might actually help us as well.

There's nothing as uninspiring as a blank page (metaphorically and literally speaking). Trying to figure out what to do next, whether that means writing, designing or making a life change, without actually doing anything (i.e. by just thinking about it) often does little more than keep us in a vicious cycle.

The more we try and think our way out, the blanker the "page" becomes; we try and think a bit harder - but the page never magically starts filling itself.

Aside from the odd lightening bolts, the only way out in any of these situations is through.

And therein lies the paradox.

The only way to combat our blocks or resolve whatever is keeping us stuck in a situation is to start to do whatever it is we feel we can’t do.

In this vein, Seth Godin argues there is no such thing as creative block.

Until you've dedicated thousands of hours to creating utter dross, he tells The Futur in the video (below), you can't even begin to make such a claim.


What "The Block" Actually Is

The point being, just staring at a blank piece of paper / screen does not count as having a creative block. And the reality is, the "block" is typically good old-fashioned performance anxiety, anyway. It’s our need to be perfect that can keep us "blocked".

As Godin says:

Show me 50,000 hours of writing terribly, he says, and then, he might concede we don't have what it takes. But until that day, the block is a figment of our imagination.

And this is pretty much the case for any other roadblocks we perceive in our lives that leave us feeling stuck, he argues here.


Stuck? Or Just Comfortable?

The key issue when we feel stuck, he warns, is that we can get a bit too snug and warm in the holy sanctums of our comfort zones – we get accustomed to the idea of being stuck and actually take active decisions to stay there:

How We Get Unstuck

If we want to push forward in whatever endeavour we are faced with, it’s essential we face the fact that it will always feel uncomfortable at first.

We will most likely come up with a fair amount of not-particularly-earth-shattering stuff initially.

We might make mistakes.

But, it's only by braving the period of being a rank amateur - and sticking with it anyway - by edging forward, bit by bit, that we will actually and evidentially get unstuck, he says.

And ultimately, Godin says, we only ever have three options to choose from, anyway, when we are in these situations - do something, don't do something - or obsess. 

When we think "if I could go back in life and change anything", it can be pretty easy to come up with a couple of things (or more).

And that's fine, as long as we are not still hankering after the things on our list.

We might have taken a college course, say, and quickly wished we had done something else. And despite wistfully gazing over at our peers doing XYZ for the duration, we did nothing about it.

If, years later, we still find ourselves looking at certain types of people with a degree of envy, we need to ask ourselves this: What stopped us then? And what's stopping us now?


The Work Of Carol Dweck

Carol Dweck might argue it's a Fixed Mindset.

Dweck, a Professor of Psychology at Stanford University, is behind the psychological theory of Growth Mindsets. 

Based on her research, she says that what keeps us from growing as individuals is our belief that we can't be or do what we want.

We hit a certain point and think we have reached our ceiling - or we think we were born with a limitation in the first place (or a number of them) and are lumbered with it/them for the rest of our lives.


The Magic Word Is "Yet"

Her TED Talk, "The Power of Yet" (below), delves into her findings that the kinds of kids who actually do well at school aren't necessarily naturally gifted at anything - they just take joy in challenges and, crucially, believe they can get better at things.

It is something we could all do well to remember. Perhaps we just haven't quite got to wherever we want... yet.


There Isn't A "Growth Mindset Type"

And, reassuringly, in an interview with ANZ, she points out that there isn't any particular kind of person who is blessed all round with this kind of thinking.

There isn't a "Growth Mindset Type" per se.

All of us can be optimistic about our abilities and ambitions in some areas yet crushingly pessimistic in others, she says.

And she advises we would do well to be aware of those areas of our life where we close off opportunities to ourselves in the mistaken belief we do not have what it takes to get there.

It might be wise to keep that in mind next time we catch a "fit of the envies"...

It's usual, albeit frustrating, to hit a wall when trying to execute an idea. There are intractable issues that appear to be beyond your control, fundamental problems that just can't be resolved - if they could, it wouldn't be a wall, would it?

But what if the wall didn't exist? What if these problems could be taken out of the equation? What then?

It sounds like a futile suggestion, but according to Duncan Wardle, the former head of creativity and innovation at Disney, this is exactly the kind of thinking we need to adopt.

The key to breakthrough ideas, he says, lies in asking ourselves a very basic - and no-holds barred - question: "What If?".

Wardle explains that the likes of Disneyland and Netflix both came about due to this kind of thinking and it requires looking at a set of problems and effectively acting like they no longer exist.

He calls it The What If Technique and it only requires three steps:


1. Forget Your Expertise

The What If Technique requires stepping out of your "usual river of thinking", says Wardle, noting that a key "creativity killer" is, in fact, expertise in any given subject.

Expertise can ironically be the very thing that prevents us from seeing the answer to the problem we are faced with, he says, as it boxes us in to the usual way of doing things (which is why outsiders often come up with the most creative solutions to problems).

So, in essence, leave what you think you know at the door.


2. "List The Rules Of Your Challenge"

In order to identify in detail what the wall looks like, you need to have a detailed understanding of it's "rules", he says.

These are effectively all the things inherent within this problem which stop you moving from A to B.

Identify as many as you can.


3. Act As If The Rules No Longer Apply

The last part is to look at all these restrictions and ask "What If" they didn't exist? What would the new terrain look like? What new problems would there be to solve? What could you do about them?

The trick is to allow yourself to explore options in this brand new territory, no matter how hare-brained they appear.

What does the world look like when you no longer need to operate by these rules? And what new rules do you encounter in this pretend one?

This was how Walt Disney went from initially trying to find a way to pump mist into cinemas to liven up Fantasia (which he couldn't do), says Wardle, to ultimately "solving" that problem by creating Disneyland.

Give it a try.

Your brain will get to work in this new imaginary setting in ways that might surprise you.

PATTERNS & HABITS

Starting a new habit is hard enough; keeping it's another matter entirely. James Clear has an answer to this problem - and he has Jerry Seinfeld to thank for it.

Starting a new habit is hard enough, particularly when there is all kinds of resistance around it, based in insecurity, fear of failure, looking like an idiot... the list goes on.

Maintaining that habit once you have actually mustered up the gumption to do the thing is another matter entirely.

There are all kinds of psychological exercises out there to help us motivate ourselves to stick at whatever it is we have committed ourselves to changing.

James Clear has one, however, that is designed to take the effort out of doing it.

The trick, as he explains here (and in the video below), is to focus on something completely different instead.


It's What We Focus On

Typically, we place so much energy on the thing we are actually doing that habits can become the big boogeymen, something we have to grapple with.

They become fights we need to win.

It's exhausting and only too often, self-defeating.

So, drawing on advice from comedian Jerry Seinfeld, Clear recommends this: simply mark out the days on the calendar when we actually do what we say we are going to do - and switch the goal to progressively getting as many days in a row as we can.

The focus will shift away from the habit itself and on to the number of days we have crossed off. It then becomes an issue of minimising the number of days that are not crossed off - rather than obsess fruitlessly over the task-at-hand.


"Don't Break The Chain"

This is what Clear calls, "Don't Break The Chain" and actually seeing the chain take its form in front of us, is key to making it work, he says:

"Whatever the habit is you're trying to build, this type of feedback, It gives you a visual cue, a long-term motivator to see that on the wall and to look at the progress you have made."

You feel the pressure building. You know it's something you need to do and you keep putting it to one side, finding other things more interesting / exciting / easy to do instead.

But this niggling concern that had been safely tucked away at the back of your mind is now beginning to morph into a rising feeling of panic.

It's the thing you know you should do - but aren't doing.

Mel Robbins has a really useful piece of advice on this age-old problem of procrastination which is well worth considering.

While we might thinking shooting for the stars is the best way to go when it comes to our Big Ideas, actually thinking too big, being overly ambitious, can be the very thing that paralyses us in the first place, she says.


Step Back, Chill Out & Prepare To Walk Away

We get overwhelmed, as there is far too much riding on this and way too much to think about - so it's not surprising that that is all we end up doing.

Instead, she says, we need to scale it down - radically.

Recognize Rome was not built in a day.

Be realistic.

Second, we need to adopt a mentality of "I'm just going to try this out for size" and be willing to leave it there. Accept this thing might not go anywhere and make your peace with that.

But crucially, the key thing to remember about this Grand Plan is we might not even like it when we actually do it.

So before we waste any more time avoiding beginning this life-long goal we've given ourselves, we need to see if we have actually chosen the right one.

And all that might take is a week - not a life-time - which is a lot easier to get our heads around.

Ah, how nice it feels to achieve something -  anything, in fact. And how frustrating are the days when it feels beyond our reach.

We are just not getting anywhere, what previously enchanted us now irritates us - worse, it bores us stupid. And the panic sets in. Is it time to call it a day?

Well, yes, in a word. But quitting doesn't necessarily have to be a bad thing, as Veritasium explains in the video, below.

It turns out that when we hit a wall and enter that period of abject misery called apathy or boredom, it is actually a gift in disguise - as long as we resist the urge to distract ourselves from it.

The trick is to let it be, to soak it up to its fullest - and the payoffs are somewhat unexpected:


1. A Boost Of Creativity You Might Not Otherwise Get

According to scientific studies, there could be a direct correlation between the level of boredom you feel (slight, intense, mind-numbing etc) to the corresponding bursts of creativity you can benefit from as a result. The more bored you are, it seems, the better your ideas can get, is the theory.


2. Higher Levels Of Motivation

A key factor that motivates us into changing situations is finding ourselves in ones we don't like, so in this sense boredom tells us when it is time to shake things up. As Veritasium explains:

3. Increased Feelings Of Altruism & Purpose

If boredom hits existential crisis-level and you're questioning what you're doing with your life, this, also, has its upside. Studies have found that boredom has utimately lead people towards altruism, which, as Veritisium adds, can put the fire back in your belly:

4. Increased Clarity Regarding Goal-Setting

Lastly, one of the most unexpected, and needless to say, ironic, by-products of aimlessness is a a higher level of clarity when it comes to setting goals.

When you start asking yourself what you want to do with your life, you might find yourself in a scenario called Autobiographical Planning, he says, which is "to consider your life as a story and where you want it to go in future."

So the idea here is, don't worry the next time apathy hits and you start questioning everything. It could actually be a very good thing that you are...

Barbara Sher offers some priceless insight into why we might feel so inadequate, regardless of evidence to the contrary.

Marrying together three areas - criticism, inadequacy and perfectionism - Sher explains how they come together to create a perfect storm that can be difficult to get out of.

When it comes to criticism, Sher signs up to the old saying, "if you don't have something nice to say don't say anything at all". 

Why? Well you might actually be wrong, for starters. But vitally, on a psychological level, she says, the criticisms (particularly if they are plenty) will do far more than just sting the recipient.

It will leave them feeling rejected, wounded and distrustful, and, Sher says, "they will remember the hurt", no matter how many compliments follow.


How Criticism Leads To Perfectionism

If the criticism happens in childhood (particularly if it is chronic), the deeper the issues take root.  At an early stage, we can get hooked into feeling inadequate and easily triggered later in life.

One of the ways we can try and compensate for this is by being perfect, which even then, says Sher, is never good enough, either.

Perfection becomes a necessity as opposed to an achievement, as she explains in the video below:

This feeling of never being good enough makes it impossible to get the feeling of getting an "A+", despite these high standards, she explains, and god forbid we get less than that: 

Simply understanding how these three factors link together - criticism in childhood, feeling inadequate and the need to be perfect - can be cathartic enough in itself.

But next time you need a reminder, it is worth watching this short clip.

It is a great way to recognize why you feel the way you do - and snap out of any kind of spiral those feelings of inadequacy can bring on.