"I'm Doing Something Wrong"

I had a response to a recent post that I'd like to share.

Someone reached out to me after my comments in the post Be Cool and our abilities to be comfortable in the chaos.

They wrote:

"I'm doing something wrong, my mentality won't let me ride above the stress."

Now I know for a fact that this is a feeling that ALL of us relate to.

We all have aspects of our lives that feel out of control.

And with all the bullshit happening in the World most of us have it worse right now than we typically would.

If you can relate to these feelings then here's my suggestion...

The first thing you need to understand that nobody rides above the stress.

Then you to stop being so hard on yourself and calibrate your expectations.

At least in terms of where you are at right this minute.

If you are completely honest with yourself you should have no expectations of yourself in terms of being anywhere beyond where you are right now.

If you've made no concentrated effort towards the things that frustrate you...

then you should not have expectations to be any further along.

Where we sit in this very moment is the resulting sum of everything we've done prior.

So give yourself up to the fact that you shouldn't be frustrated by expectations you didn't earn for yourself yet.

We must operate where we are, with what we have, while growing our understanding of what we need to do in order to get where we want to go.

First stop...none of us are immune to the stress and nobody rides above it.

It gets me everyday...

sometimes you have to sit with it and sometimes you overpower it

...but you can never succumb to it.

You have to train yourself to feel it, acknowledge it and pull yourself into the present moment so that you may address it and move forward.

If I were you I would grab a blank notebook and start a journal.

Sounds silly but it’s not.

Hear me out.

Once or twice a day you should sit down and write without an agenda.

Let your brain dump out the shit that it’s working on.

By doing this consistently you’ll soon be able to identify the things that are troubling you...then you can dig to the root cause and you can make change there.

Eventually you'll be so good at recognizing these patterns that you'll be able to feel them on the spot and adjust your behavior.

Train yourself to check yourself.

It’s a never ending process and once you accept this then you’ll be able to handle it all with more clarity and resolve...and less stress and anxiety.

You'll feel less stressed about it because you'll understand that you're working through a process but you're headed in a direction of your choice.

You're getting somewhere because you are focused and deliberate.

Constantly and honestly evaluate where you are versus where you want to be on the important aspects in your life.

Always be working in the gap between where you are and where you want to be with the understanding that it’s a moving target.

Yours goals and mindset will expand as you do.

So don’t beat yourself up as long as your honestly working in the right direction.

Too many of us float along wondering why someone else has it figured out or what’s wrong with us and we never connect it to the fact that we’re passive.

(and nobody has it figured out...they're just working through it differently)

Passive creates the anxiety that we all suffer when we aren't doing the things that we know we should be doing.

We go to work.

We come home and chill.

Repeat.

We never work on our brain like we would work a muscle at the gym.

If we don't take care of our bodies we don't wonder why it's not where we want it to be...we know we haven't done the work.

Your brain is the same.

And it’s all the same process forward.

Calibrate yourself.

Be deliberate.

Thank yourself later.

Focus & Fortitude

-Linc