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  • #117196
    Dagny
    Participant

    Hi all,

    I have been reading Tiny Buddha for quite some time. I really like the positive articles here and they help me get perspective on lots of things. I have a persistent situation. And I wondered if maybe someone could give me a little outsider perspective.

    I have a chaotic mind. I am happy and in a great position in my life, but my mind is always chaotic. There are too many thoughts in there that are so trivial and that suck me in and leave me wasting whole weeks with doing nothing. I am a student so its not the ideal situation because I still do my assignments and everything but I don’t do the things I value. Like setting aside time to improve my academic skills. I love studying and I am good at it. But this constant chaos of thoughts leaves me feeling exhausted and not wanting to do anything at all. I do all the obligatory stuff but I don’t do the stuff I want to! And this cycle just keeps going on till I become this ball of mess and start crying because I havent even started on all that I have set out to do.
    And when I complain about it to the people close to me like my parents, they tell me if I want to reach the heights I want to I have to put in the work, which I know!! But my problem I don’t know how to be consistent in my performance as me. I have good times when I am focussed but then the bad ones are longer than the good ones & result in terribly wasted time and I am once again at square one where I start planning everything out all over again.
    Because of all this confusion, I feel like maybe this keeps happening because I am not talented enough and so my brain is not equipped to deal with this and consequently I don’t do anything. So I feel like I should stop aiming for the sky or the stars or whatever and just be. Because of this I feel like dropping all this skill honing I have taken up and just focus on my daily assignments and nothing else. (Just telling that makes me feel worse). But I don’t want to drop my ambitions and I don’t understand why I create this pressure for myself & I feel anxious and not worthy most of the time because I can’t reach my own standards.

    Thank you.

    #117204
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear dagnytaggart:

    Your parents tell you that if you want to “reach the heights you want” then you have to do the work.

    I think you have the right idea when you wrote: “I feel like I should stop aiming for the sky or the stars or whatever and just be.”

    It is their/ your Ambitions (the title of your thread) that is causing you anxiety (ongoing, excess fear) which in turns sends your brain into an over-drive of ongoing, trivial thinking.

    To be calm you need to feel your feet on the ground. I don’t think it is such a good idea to aim at the sky and reach the heights of the stars- what does it even mean…?

    Just be. Take it easy. Redefine your ambition.

    anita

    #117239
    Axuda
    Participant

    Hi Dagnytaggart

    I’m pleased that these articles have a user name because otherwise I might have been worried that I absent-mindedly wrote this myself after a bottle of red…

    Having lived with the same feeling for (probably) at least twice as long as you, here’s how I deal with it.

    The first shortcut I would offer is, forget the idea that this happens because you are not talented enough or intelligent enough. In fact, the reverse is true – because you are intelligent and talented, you try to take on too much. As you state, you are ambitious and create pressure for yourself because you can’t reach your own standards. You reach for the stars and feel a failure for only reaching the moon. Someone less intelligent would feel happy for reaching the top of the stairs.

    So the chaos arises because there is so much going on in your head, and because you feel you should achieve more. As a result, you lose focus, and end up either overwhelmed and achieving nothing, or at best doing a little bit of everything but with little to show for it. The fact is that you are working hard, but not producing all you are capable of. Being told to work harder is like being told to struggle in quicksand – it makes things worse, not better.

    The way I deal with it is firstly to write down everything that I need or want to do on a list. I know it sounds basic, but just getting it out of your head and onto paper saves an awful lot of “RAM” in the brain. The bible on doing this effectively is GTD by David Allen, but even just a single list is far better than nothing.

    Then, the secret is focus. As you say, you manage to complete your assignments, because they take on huge importance as the due date looms and you have to. So tonight, from your list, select just one task as the thing that you really want to achieve tomorrow. Promise yourself that once that task is done, you will do something pleasurable (this is important). Then, tomorrow, focus on just that one task until it’s done. If you’re like me, you will try to procrastinate on it even then. Tell yourself that you will do it for 5 minutes and give yourself permission to stop then if you want (you won’t).

    Do this daily, and you will find that you can build up to (maybe) 3 Most Important Tasks (MITs) of the day. Don’t build this up too quickly, or be tempted to exceed this, as you will end up back where you started. You want a pattern of success, not failure. There is nothing to stop you doing another task once your MITs are done – you just don’t have to.

    Will doing all this quieten down your creative mind? Probably not. But you will be more productive and a much greater proportion of the stuff that you think about will end up happening. And it will at least be the stuff that is most important to you. Will you reach the stars? Who knows? But you will be making your ideas real and not fantasy, and that benefits everyone.

    Good luck!

    #117325
    VJ
    Participant

    Dear dagnytaggart,

    1. Do the relaxation breathing exercises that I have fully explained with steps in an another thread here (post #114812)
    (http://tinybuddha.com/topic/relaxation-meditation-techniques/#post-114812)
    The benefits are explained in the top section.

    2. Along side I also suggest you to do the Donna Eden’s Wayne Cook Posture for clearing your mind.
    This technique is definitely going to help you. I’m not saying that you have a health condition but this method is also used for a mind that gets as chaotic as when a person starts to feel dyslexic – meaning: a person wants to say the words A B but due to confused mind says B A. So its also used for issues like dyslexia, ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder where one is not able to concentrate on one thing for even a short amount of time) and stuttering/stammering too.
    Our mind is chaotic means the energies in our mind/body are scrambled and this technique will de-tangle or unscramble those energies and is designed to help you focus the mind.

    Written instructions are also mentioned on the official website-
    http://blog.innersource.net/2009/07/wayne-cook-posture.html

    Take Care,
    VJ

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