I’ve just finished recording a couple of videos that are sort of talking about how depressing and down my life has been recently. That’s not entirely true. I’ve been sick and I’m in this sort of state of overwhelm that often happens to me when I’m wrestling through big questions. I’ve been wrestling through a lot of big questions in my life, just about future direction and that sort of stuff. Nothing particularly bad, just stuff that’s taken up all of my attention and brain space. This has caused me to be in this sort of ambiguous state where writing has also been very, very difficult. I’ve been second-guessing myself a lot, and that’s okay. As I mentioned in those other videos, that’s all right. I’ve been in this place before. I’ll be in this place again. This is just a natural part of the cycle of being a creative.
But today, I want to do something more concrete. I want to talk about how I’m going to get out of it. I’ve been here for a couple of weeks and I’m sick of it. I’m done. I think I want to move on, and so I’m going to start taking steps to move on. Now, I cannot just wish myself out of it. I cannot just motivate myself out of it. That’s not how this works.
I read this really interesting book once called Peaks and Valleys. In it, the author identified that what you do in a valley, which is a depressive period in your life, determines how quickly you get to your next peak, a positive portion of your life, and how long that peak lasts. Likewise, what you do when you’re on the peak up on the mountain determines how quickly you get to your next valley and how long that valley lasts.
Well, I’m definitely in a valley. So, I’ve decided that rather than just wallow, which I’ve been doing some wallowing, don’t get me wrong, I’m going to come up with a concrete plan for how I am going to get to my next peak. It is fairly simple. So, I thought I would share it with you, and hopefully, you can find some value in this yourself.
The first and most important thing is that I’m not going to worry about it. It sucks. I don’t like it. I don’t want to be here. I’d rather be cruising along up on the peak, enjoying the view, feeling the sunshine. But I’m down in this valley. That’s okay, though. It’s all right to be in the valley. Life is still good.
Today, I got some time to sit on my porch. My wife moved some comfortable chairs onto our front porch, and I went out, and I just sat, and I really enjoyed the beautiful day because it was a glorious day. So despite being in this valley and despite having all of these pressures, my life is great. Except for this cough. That’s for the birds. But my life is great. I can go and I can sit on my porch. I can enjoy a few moments of beautiful weather, and that’s wonderful. There are plenty of other things that I really appreciate in my life that are just fantastic.
So, the first thing that I’m going to do is just be okay with being in this valley. It’s not easy. I wish I wasn’t here, but I am. And so I’m going to accept it, and I’m going to walk forward. That doesn’t mean, of course, that I’m not going to try to get out of the valley, and that’s what this video is about.
So, the first thing I’m going to do is accept it. The second thing I’m going to do is make small changes. I have a really bad habit of trying to change everything in my life at once, and it never works. So, I’m going to make small changes.
The specifics of those small changes have yet to be determined. I have a whole list of changes. I’m going to pick one of them and focus on it. Normally, I would start with a change to my morning routine. However, I’ve been thinking a lot about my bedtime routine. I’ve realized that how I go to bed at night affects how I am in the morning, and how I am in the morning affects how I work all day long.
One of the things that I have a bad habit of doing is staying up way too late. It’s not like I stay up until one or two in the morning, but because I tend to get up really early, if I stay up until 11, I only end up getting about five and a half hours of sleep. That’s not great. I can do it for a couple of days, and then I really start to drag. Because I’ve been sick, my energy levels have been super low.
So, the first thing that I’m going to try to do is respect my bedtime. It doesn’t sound like a lot, but I think it’ll be really impactful. I don’t know. I’ll let you know in a future video whether or not it worked. That’s what I’m going to start with, and that’s all I’m going to start with.
The first thing I’m going to do is accept the fact that I’m in a valley and there’s nothing I can really do about it. I’m going to live here. It’s going to be fine, knowing that eventually I will get out of the valley.
Then, the second thing I’m going to do is adjust my evening routine so that I’m making sure that I’m going to bed by 10 at the latest. This is going to be hard. I know it will be hard because I’d much rather distract myself and not go to bed. I’d much rather read a book or watch something or do anything other than go to bed. I think that’s where I have to start breaking the destructive habits that I’m in right now so that I can rebuild my good habits.
The third thing that I’m going to be doing is focusing on the process and not the results. I think that part of my challenge when I’m in these states is that I really get obsessive about my results, but ultimately results aren’t what matter. The process is what matters because if I get the right process down, then the results will come.
Again, this has to do with measuring the gap or the gain, which I’ve talked about in previous videos. Do I measure myself against the fact that my book is not done yet? As soon as I do that, I find motivation starting to drain out of me because it’s depressing to be like, “Hey, I wanted to be done with a book already and I’m not done. I’m not even close to done. I should have been starting a new book this past Monday, but instead I’m still stuck in pretty much the same place I was a couple of weeks ago.”
But that’s measuring the gap. That’s not actually measuring the gain. The gain is that I have a much better book started than I did three weeks ago, and on top of that, I’m actually excited to continue writing in this book. On top of that, I’ve started to identify areas where I could be improving my writing. These are all gains that I’ve made, and when I think about life in terms of my gains, then all of a sudden I’m excited and motivated to keep going.
But see, this requires focusing on the process rather than on the result, because the result is always going to be a gap, right? There’s always going to be a gap there. So, that’s the third thing that I’m going to be doing, focusing on the process and not on the result.
Anyway, that’s it. I hope that you can find something helpful for you in it. Thanks again for listening to me ramble about this.
YouTube Video Link: https://youtu.be/iBFQQwmPCHo
Thanks for reading and watching.
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