I have a number of assorted thoughts, or angles, on this question, which hopefully make sense together.
First, let's take the thought seriously. It's probably true on some level that you're not doing everything you could be doing, or not living up to your potential in some way. In other words, it's unlikely this is your best possible life, and you just have to start feeling better about it.
Ok, then why are you failing to live up to your potential? There's a lot of reasons, but first, note that there's no benefit to blaming yourself or feeling ashamed about it. This only turns into an unproductive story like "I suck, I'll never succeed, I always fail, I can't do it." That's called depression.
It's totally possible to accept the way things are without losing the ability to move forward. Meditation and stoicism are both great for this. So even if you wasted the last ten years, ok, so you wasted the last ten years, that's just a fact, there's no point in just feeling bad about it, just accept it and think, given that fact, what's the best thing to do from here?
When you're stuck in self-blame, you tend to want to fix everything really quickly, which means having totally unrealistic expectations about what you should be able to accomplish, and when you don't accomplish all that, you feel like a failure again, self-blame, etc.
If you don't blame yourself, if you instead just focus on what is the best thing to do right now, then you can make sure that every day, you do at least something beneficial for you, even if it's only for one minute right before you go to sleep. The mind is really bad at projecting the effect of many small efforts over a long period of time. And, importantly, as you start to notice changes, that's one of the main internal sources of gratification and confidence you can find.
In fact, learning to enjoy the daily process of doing your best is the only way to find gratification. If you only care about end goals, then even if you achieve your goals, you might end up becoming dissatisfied all over again.
Second, let's question the thought. One thing I notice about this kind of thought is that it is like 1:1 with a bad mood for me. In other words, I don't feel like this all the time, but when I do feel like "I'm wasting my life," it is always accompanied by this very bad mood, whereas when I'm not in a bad mood, I don't usually believe this.
It's so connected that I have started to realize that there's more a reciprocal relationship between these things than I thought. Meaning, I always assumed "I am wasting my life, therefore I feel bad." That's not entirely wrong, but it's also true to say "I feel bad, therefore I interpret my situation very negatively, and conclude that I'm wasting my life."
I've learned over time that thinking clearly is really fucking hard. The emotion usually comes first, meaning the emotion is negative, and therefore the thought that it produces is also negative.
Again, given my first point, the negative emotion does in some way probably reflect something true, but note that a lot of things impact that feeling as well. Here's some examples:
If your diet sucks, you'll probably feel bad, which will make you more likely to conclude that you're a failure.
If you don't exercise enough same thing.
Same thing for other needs like socializing, sunshine, enough sleep, boring things that don't seem to solve the "wasting life" problem but are actually extremely important.
Cognitive behavioral therapy: If you waste a day, do you feel bad for wasting that day and try to do better tomorrow, or do you then think about every failure you've ever had, so that it's too painful to even think about your day? Meditation and therapy can be very useful for making your thoughts more productive, and avoiding feedback loops of negativity that can paralyze you.
There are surely more but I'm not thinking of it right now.
In conclusion: you're probably thinking this way both because there's something true about it, and because you're already feeling bad and feeling bad causes negative thoughts like this. To help address the issue, you can take concrete actions to make things better, and you can also address the negative feeling itself, which will make your thinking more balanced and make it easier to take action.
quixoticcaptain t1_jcroge7 wrote
Reply to [discussion] What helps you combat the “I’m wasting my life” mentality? by brooke512744
I have a number of assorted thoughts, or angles, on this question, which hopefully make sense together.
First, let's take the thought seriously. It's probably true on some level that you're not doing everything you could be doing, or not living up to your potential in some way. In other words, it's unlikely this is your best possible life, and you just have to start feeling better about it.
Ok, then why are you failing to live up to your potential? There's a lot of reasons, but first, note that there's no benefit to blaming yourself or feeling ashamed about it. This only turns into an unproductive story like "I suck, I'll never succeed, I always fail, I can't do it." That's called depression.
It's totally possible to accept the way things are without losing the ability to move forward. Meditation and stoicism are both great for this. So even if you wasted the last ten years, ok, so you wasted the last ten years, that's just a fact, there's no point in just feeling bad about it, just accept it and think, given that fact, what's the best thing to do from here?
When you're stuck in self-blame, you tend to want to fix everything really quickly, which means having totally unrealistic expectations about what you should be able to accomplish, and when you don't accomplish all that, you feel like a failure again, self-blame, etc.
If you don't blame yourself, if you instead just focus on what is the best thing to do right now, then you can make sure that every day, you do at least something beneficial for you, even if it's only for one minute right before you go to sleep. The mind is really bad at projecting the effect of many small efforts over a long period of time. And, importantly, as you start to notice changes, that's one of the main internal sources of gratification and confidence you can find.
In fact, learning to enjoy the daily process of doing your best is the only way to find gratification. If you only care about end goals, then even if you achieve your goals, you might end up becoming dissatisfied all over again.
Second, let's question the thought. One thing I notice about this kind of thought is that it is like 1:1 with a bad mood for me. In other words, I don't feel like this all the time, but when I do feel like "I'm wasting my life," it is always accompanied by this very bad mood, whereas when I'm not in a bad mood, I don't usually believe this.
It's so connected that I have started to realize that there's more a reciprocal relationship between these things than I thought. Meaning, I always assumed "I am wasting my life, therefore I feel bad." That's not entirely wrong, but it's also true to say "I feel bad, therefore I interpret my situation very negatively, and conclude that I'm wasting my life."
I've learned over time that thinking clearly is really fucking hard. The emotion usually comes first, meaning the emotion is negative, and therefore the thought that it produces is also negative.
Again, given my first point, the negative emotion does in some way probably reflect something true, but note that a lot of things impact that feeling as well. Here's some examples:
There are surely more but I'm not thinking of it right now.
In conclusion: you're probably thinking this way both because there's something true about it, and because you're already feeling bad and feeling bad causes negative thoughts like this. To help address the issue, you can take concrete actions to make things better, and you can also address the negative feeling itself, which will make your thinking more balanced and make it easier to take action.