Mind The Gap

Why the things that make you Sad can Guide Positive Change

Maybe you should be sad? That’s not a popular thing to say. The zeitgeist tells us the opposite, that we should always feel great about ourselves. If we aren’t fiercely slaying life and rocking our this-that-or-the-other-thing, then we’re doing it wrong. Not wrong with regard to our circumstances, mind you. Wrong with our attitude. Wrong with our feelings. If you’re uncomfortable with your obesity—learn to rock your curves! Chemical abuse issues causing misgivings—embrace that you’re a free spirit who bucks at convention! The term “living your best life” (God I hate that phrase), has come to mean doing whatever you want and celebrating it, regardless of the interpersonal, health, or material implications. But, that’s obviously not right, is it? Part of you recognizes that sometimes you’re sad because you should be. And sometimes you are sad.

I’m not saying you’re always sad. Or even that you’re mostly sad. But I am willing to bet that there are certain things you wish were different. Behaviors that you do, but wish you didn’t (smoking, drinking too much, procrastination, fast-food on the regular, leaving your clothes on the floor).  And behaviors you don’t do that you wish you did (consistently eating well, exercising regularly, cultivating productive work habits, calling your mom every Sunday). Thinking about these things makes you sad. Maybe a little bit sad for a moment or two, and maybe a lot bit sad most of the time. And beyond your feelings about these behaviors is the whole other layer of what you think would be materially different about your life if you did/didn’t do the behaviors in question (look great in your underwear, better dating/marriage, less lonely, more energy, better career/higher pay, your dog loves you more). You get the idea.

Feelings of guilt and regret about such things can have a real impact on our wellbeing and how we feel about ourselves. But maybe they should? Or at least maybe some of them should? I wouldn’t recommend anguishing over leaving some dirty dishes in the sink (unless you live in some roach infested flophouse—then you should feel bad about not cleaning up). Guilt about that kind of thing is a trap. In the absence of a real negative impact, it just makes you feel bad. And feeling bad, even about something trivial, makes it harder to do other things that require some effort but which will make you feel better.

But some of the things we stress about are legit harmful. I don’t self-identify as a moralistic scold, but maybe we should feel bad about those things. Perhaps negative feelings about them, while not pleasant to experience, are the appropriate response to self-damage. In my own experience, while I don’t like feeling bad, I don’t feel bad about feeling bad about the things I do that are bad for me. I’ve gotten over guilt and shame about things that don’t matter much (like the quality of the previous sentence—yuck). But I can’t bring myself to take a positive stance on things that are empirically negative.

Now, just to clarify, this isn’t some pop-psych morsel where I now dispense some tips on how you can avoid feeling bad about these things. And I won’t pretend this doesn’t amount to something of a Catch-22. When you feel bad about yourself, even justifiably, taking difficult action is harder. And changing significant things about how you live your life certainly constitutes difficult.

The point I’m trying to make is that many of our dissatisfactions are rooted in real things that we should be dissatisfied with—because they’re harming us. Some of them are killing us. I’m an ER doctor ((link to first post)). I’ve seen the devastation caused by behaviors of both omission and of commission. It doesn’t take a ‘scientician’ or a ‘medicalogist’ to recognize  that the things putting us in the ground are overwhelmingly driven by behavior. Americans are dying because of the things we do and don’t do. Our choices are killing us.

This isn’t a ‘Don’t they know what they’re doing is bad for them?!?!’ rant. Of course they know that, they’re not stupid. And I’m not here to wag my finger and tut-tut. As satisfying as taking a position of smug moral superiority can be, I’m more interested in understanding, and perhaps solutions. Why it is so hard to stop doing things that are manifestly bad for us and to start doing things that are good for us? I’d like some insight into how we can be better to ourselves. That sounds straightforward. But if you consider the difficulty of losing weight (as one example), making change appears to border on the impossible. Despite what Nike has told us, we can’t ‘Just Do It’.

I recognize that not everyone is suffering the ravages of metabolic syndrome or the like. But even if they fall short of the sort of slow motion suicide I see play out in the ER, we all have things about ourselves that we wish were different. And while many of those things are in our control, we have failed to control them.

Now, just to clarify, I’m not some relentless quantified self, productivity focused, tech dude-bro obsessed with “optimizing” my life. Nor am I some woo-woo-weirdo promoting pseudo-spiritual “best-life’ manifestation. But I do believe we all deserve to live the lives we want. We should be able to execute on the choices we want to make, and select the actions that lead to the outcomes we desire.

None of us deserve to be unhappy with the results of our own choices. We should be content with the consequences of what we pick—Because it’s what we picked! Instead we struggle with discontent created by our own actions.

Time is the frame through which I’m examining the ways we make, and fail to make decisions. It’s a neglected lens, and because our minds do a uniquely bad job at making choices where the desired outcome is in the future, a critical one. If we want to arrive in a future we’re happy with and become the version of ourselves we want to be, we need to develop the correct tools for navigating time.

The first step in any journey is knowing where you’re going. Otherwise you’re just wandering. So of course you need a map. A map marked with your destination, the vision of the future you want. But a map with just a destination is worthless. To be a useful navigational tool you need to know both where you are and where you want to be. With those two pieces of information you can chart a course from how you are now to who you want to be in the future.

Where to start with this? I’d suggest the best place to start is where you’re unhappy. Particularly those things you are unhappy with because they’re objectively unacceptable. Look at the gap between the way things are now and the way they would need to be to become acceptable. These are two points on your map. Your starting point, and your “X marks the spot”.

Once these points are plotted you can fill in the rest of the map to plot the best course through the most favorable terrain to reach your goal. But the first step is selecting your goals. And minding the gap around the things you are and should be unhappy with is a great place to start.

- The TimeDoc

Next post will go into more detail about choosing the vision of the future to pursue. Knowing where you want to go is the first step in navigating the future.