Hi there! You described me, for the most part. Just a few months ago, my therapist informed me that I'm a perfectionist, and a whole lot of stuff clicked into place.
I can plan for things, and I can do stuff when I'm not in my head fussing about it--but when I overplan or overthink any situation I get paralyzed by wanting it to go EXACTLY RIGHT. And knowing that it probably won't, I have a really hard time taking that first simple step, even it if would be pretty easy.
Nothing wrong with planning! But when it comes time to act, don't hesitate. You have to train yourself to DO, not THINK. When you're actually making progress you won't be obsessing over it being perfect because you'll be focused on working.
If you catch yourself hesitating to start, don't "set a timer and start when it goes off" or "watch one more Youtube video" just fucking GO. You'll feel a million times better when you're working.
Just take the first step! Dig in and GO and build that beautiful momentum!
That's 100% spot on. Manynpeople seem to have this. It seems that the feelingsnof accomplishment are achieved only by thinking and thus actual reality suffers from it. It's not "overthinking" things, though, but more like "living in a dreamworld".
Apparently, despite what the man in the video said about "living in the now", many people don't actually live in the now, but in their heads.
I believe the "living in the now" you're referring to is existing in the present. "The present" holds a lot of meaning already for me that you might not have instilled upon it so I'll try to briefly outline my learnings of it.
Nothing exists outside of the present: the "past" existed --past tense-- it only existed as it had unfolded, your memory of it is just a memory of events taken place, the more you learn about how memory works the more you learn how fickle and biased it is.
The future is only a prediction, it does not exist yet.
So that leaves you with the only moment which is the present aka now.
That's not to say planning for the future and learning from the past do not have their place, but they should not inhibit your actions in the present by absorbing your attention entirely.
To conclude, the only moment you have the power to act is right now. It's always right now, aka the present.
Buddhism and its similar teachings are centred around this even when they choose to phrase it with different wording.
If this is of interest for your learning then the book The Power of Now is centred entirely around this, it's a fairly hard thing to teach something as intangible as the present but it does a fair work of dancing circles around the intangible slowly nudging you to the center. I think I might reread it.
Depending what you mean by "living in dreamland" I believe it does.
If you're daydreaming then you're not focusing on the present moment, you're either recalling past memories, predicting the future or generating imaginary scenarios, none of which is focused on the present moment at hand.
yes. are you sure you actually understood the comment you initially responded to? no one - at least i'm not - counters this. when you're in your head then you're not in the now.
My position was never intended to counter anything, I just get excited when I see people talking about peoples lack of present awareness and I always chime in with my 2 cents even if it isn't exactly in the same vein as the initial comment.
Oh, no, I just noticed you wrote "manynpeople" and I realized that happens to entire sentences when I try to write on mobile. N's for spaces, ugh, drives me up the wall when I have to go back with my ham-fingers and try to correct that stuff.
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u/TiredMold May 30 '17
Hi there! You described me, for the most part. Just a few months ago, my therapist informed me that I'm a perfectionist, and a whole lot of stuff clicked into place.
I can plan for things, and I can do stuff when I'm not in my head fussing about it--but when I overplan or overthink any situation I get paralyzed by wanting it to go EXACTLY RIGHT. And knowing that it probably won't, I have a really hard time taking that first simple step, even it if would be pretty easy.