I might … just might… do the dishes now…
Oh my goodness, I’m getting up. I’m walking over to the dishes. I’m doing it!
Suddenly a voice calls from the other room,
“Hey, you haven’t done the dishes in a while. When are you going to do the dishes already?”
Ugh, I don’t feel like it anymore.
What just happened?
Our hero, already struggling with a want of motivation, whim, or the muse, finally had the winds tickling the sails. They were moving. But then someone else told them to do very same thing they were about to do and suddenly the desire was gone.
Many of us struggle with being told what to do.
Some blame “dopamine” … there’s not enough, it’s out of balance, it isn’t interesting or urgent enough, etc. Some make a moral accusation of laziness and the like.
However, if we approached from a perspective of ourselves as growing human beings, we might recognize an early template at work.
When told what to do by others in some out-of-tune manner, we begin to reject being told what to do. “Clean your room!” when our minds are elsewhere, when any process of transition is ignored rather than guided, doesn’t work and creates problems.
The lack of empathy may not have been malicious. It was simply a lack of understanding of the patterns of a mind that wander, a mind fueled by and reveling in play, creativity, and discovery.
But when it happens over and over, we hear a message that our natural mental rhythms are somehow “wrong” contrasting with the self that clearly exists, regardless of how wrong we accuse it of being.
We rebel.
Unfortunately we may well internalize the rebellion, forming a reflex, an unconscious ready path of rejection.
We rebel against ourselves.
How often have you written “Write report” or something similar on a task list only to see it later and say, “Not now”?
Later continues to be later as later always does, and the task languishes until it sinks below the surface or a deadline threatens from the horizon.
We saw our Past Self as an un-empathic authority to reject.
When we see the task “do dishes” and the like, our emotions swell, reflecting the relationships we’ve internalized.
Without a simultaneous honor of past self, care for future self and respect for present self, we channel and perpetuate the injuries. Our tasks, lists, and shiny new apps only become their medium.
- Kourosh
PS One of the interesting consequences of the Waves of Focus is seeing how a previous course of mine has become much more accessible to the students.
Being Productive: Simple Steps to Calm Focus was the product of several years, distilling my prior works into a clear, direct path for meaningful productivity. Suddenly, as internal relationships have improved, the tenets of the old course are newly accessible.
