I know what to do

But I keep struggling to do it. And that feels utterly miserable. I have my clearly laid out plan, ready for action. Only I fail to act. That’s ok. I don’t expect perfection, so sometimes I’ll mess up. Only it isn’t sometimes. I keep making the same mistakes, in the same situations. It’s infuriating. Why can’t I just do that one simple thing? I’d broken my plan into simple steps with clear benefits.

I kept trying, and I kept failing.

And I grew more frustrated and then more dejected. And then I asked myself, if I keep failing, do I really know how to do this? If I kept doing the same thing, and failing despite my efforts, why did I keep trying? I never blamed my plan. It was always the fault of my actions.

And so I asked myself, why did you fail?

Subconsciously, I’d asked myself this many times before. And my answer had always been some flavor of ‘you are a failure.’ Once I realized this, I also realized that I had been just accepting it as truth, and I felt the need to challenge it. So, I held the question ‘why did you fail?’ in my mind for a few seconds, and started to peel back the underlying questions.

Why was it difficult (not for others, but for me)?

The action I was trying to take was not physically challenging, or mentally taxing. But emotionally, it was hard. I had to wrestle with my emotions every time I did it. And what was making it emotionally difficult? I had convinced myself that I needed it. That I must do this specific thing to relax or stress would overwhelm me. But this didn’t help me to relax. In fact I felt more stressed after doing it because I would always fall behind. That my life was dull and lifeless without it. But that wasn’t true either. It was entertaining, but I had enjoyed years of my life without it. After questioning the assumptions that I held around this, I felt my need to do it subside.

What did I learn?

If you are struggling to do something that you think should be easy, you are ignoring what makes it difficult. Something is tripping you up, and when you say that it’s easy, you aren’t giving yourself permission to look for it. And if you don’t look for something, you won’t find it. We can generally recognize physically or mentally difficult problems, but rarely account for  emotionally difficult ones.

Your emotions don’t rise out of the ether. They are built out of beliefs based on your interpretation of past events. Although we can see that the beliefs of others may be inaccurate, it’s very difficult to apply this to ourselves. If you are struggling with your emotions, ask what you must believe to feel this way? What assumptions do your emotions require?

Unhelpful emotions often rest on a mistaken understanding of the world, because if your understanding of the world were accurate, it would help you interact with it more beneficial.

P.S. If anyone is curious, the action I’m trying to change is reading webnovels less often.