Gut Check

I'm pretty good at thinking too hard about things. And when I say "pretty good," what I actually mean is an expert. Like, if somebody invented a video game with the object of over-analyzing, I would be the all time MVP. First I get vaguely curious about something, then outright intrigued, and then, if it remains mysterious, I'm hooked. I have to know. Why is it that way? What are the socio-economic influences? What's the history? Has it always been like this? Imagine you're cutting a pizza and everything is going fine until you realize that you haven't cut all the way through the bottom layer. Wouldn't that bug you? Wouldn't you try to do something about it?

Okay, I'm not really trying to get you to accept my over-analyzing (sympathize, maybe, but not condone). I am saying that pizza is delicious, and I'm pretty sure we can agree about that. When you're a serial over-thinker like I am, you realize that it's extremely possible to think yourself into a corner, so to speak. To go over the data so much that it becomes meaningless. The central lie that an over-thinker believes is this: more information will bring clarity. Clarity here meaning a definitive judgement or statement about the topic in question. Ultimately, however, information isn't the source of that closure. We experience closure when we make a decision.

Unfinished "To-Do" lists bother us because they're a graveyard of unmade decisions. We put off thinking about what we have to do because it means making a decision. And in our culture, making a decision is an ordeal. You have to do research. Gather data. Get a second opinion. And a third. And a fourth. You've got to put it through controlled testing. You've got to be sure--why? Because someone is going to ask you why you made that decision, and you can't just say "because it felt right." That phrase is reserved for the crazy ones. The dreamers. The people who fly out of JFK when they're 18 and hitchhike through Europe for 10 years. That's attractive, right? It seems like those people don't have to obey the rules that the rest of us do.

To be fair, it would take more than just this one blog post to unpack these ideas (like how we feel about dreams, how to make better lists, and how we feel about our daily life--though I did previously write about that last one). So what's the point? That I (and Malcom Gladwell) think it can be powerful to do the opposite of this drawn out method. In other words, I think we should capitalize on our gut reactions.

How? Often when I'm mired in the swampy quagmire of overthinking I find myself circling around one thought: "this would be so much easier if I hadn't thought about it so much." But you can't take back thought, right? Well, no, but you can still get your gut check. One very simple way to do this is with a coin flip. For one side, "I will eat pizza for dinner," and on the other side, "I will not eat pizza for dinner." Then, after you flip the coin, you have your gut reaction, and here's the best part: if you're disappointed, then you know that you actually want to do the opposite thing.

This works crazy well. Of course, it also forces you to confront yourself. To like yourself. To trust yourself. To be okay with wanting things that don't follow the script that other people write for you. To be confident in the face of criticism and animosity. To let go. To try. And all of that is pretty tough. But, personally, I think it's worth the effort.

"We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them." Albert Einstein

The Headspace of an Imagined Future

You check the boxes. You pay the bills and do the laundry. You think, “this is adulting, right? I'm doing it now, right?” You have a love/hate/need relationship with social media. With Netflix. With your phone. You want to give up everything and move to the mountains. You want to become a hermit and never have an internet connection ever again and live authentically and never feel that you're not doing it right. Or that you're not good enough.

You checked boxes off for so long, that now you start to wonder if the dread, the sense that something is missing, is just another box for you to put an emphatic check into. You watch others go through the same things and you see the articles and blogs. “Ok,” you think, “maybe the death of wonder in my life is something I can work with. Maybe this existential hole will be the inspiration for my next blog post.”

You feel transparent. Like people are looking past all of your accomplishments and hard work, straight to the truth: that you can't follow through with the things you want to do, the things that you want to make. That you feel hardened in some incalculable way against beauty. Against what used to inspire you. Against almost everything. Against yourself.

It's a special talent of human beings to look ahead. To set a trap and catch an animal. To plant a seed and wait for a flower to bloom. To imagine the future. To connect a finite life to the thought of an infinite being.

But we’re not supposed to use this power to distract or numb ourselves from the now. I think we sense this, and that's why we want to go up to the mountain – to get away from all of the easy distractions. But even if we did go, and leave everything behind, we would still bring ourselves, and the headspace of an imagined future. Hundreds of miles away from any civilization, we could still be clinging to the future.

Most people are sentimental about childhood because if there's one thing children know, it’s how to live in the present. You don't learn to ride a bike or how to swim by imagining those things. You learn by doing. But if your parents don't pay for karate lessons or sign you up for the soccer team, you don't learn those things. Instead, for children, living in the present means learning from the circumstances you find yourself in.

Fast-forward to picking your own job, apartment, and car. Now you are responsible. It's your fault if it isn't perfect. If it isn't effortless. Except for this: every good thing in your life is a gift. You worked for it but that doesn't mean it still wasn't given to you.

While you spend all this time in the headspace of imagined future, there are uncountable moments in the present waiting for you – not just to live through them, but to live them well. This… this is your moment. The annoying chores and tasks are your opportunities. Not to love them, but to understand them as gifts. Opportunities. To live them well, not halfheartedly.

To live your mundane moments well is art. Is beautiful. Is good. To live well is to reawaken yourself to the beauty of the world through gratitude and sacrifice. To live well is to live engaged, and to live engaged is the deep yearning of the human heart.