When we think our experience is all there is, we’re often afraid to look at it.
When it feels uncomfortable or dangerous and true and personal, we numb. We avoid. We look away. We distract ourselves from our experience of life in countless ways, like staying chronically busy, needing to be surrounded by people or noise, taking a victim stance and deciding “What’s the point?” yielding to the myriad habits and addictions we have and carrying on in so many other ways.
When we’re spooked by our own psychology, we dance around it, sort of feeling it, sort of looking at it, but not really.
We don’t make eye contact with life. We’re in our heads, in near-constant distraction mode because we don’t feel safe in what we might feel.
So, we don’t take in the full experience of all that’s moving through us, and that is what leads to a life that feels dull and flat. It’s dull and flat because our mind is so busy trying to make things okay for us.
Everything already is okay, but we’re missing it.
– Excerpt adapted from Just a Thought: A No-Willpower Approach to End Self-Doubt and Make Peace with Your Mind. Available now.
