Actively vs. Passively Working on Your Life

Every day, I feel ashamed for not doing enough. The guilt eats away at me when I sit down to watch a show, when I take a moment to enjoy my food, and especially as I lie down to go to sleep. The feeling whispers in the back of my mind while I try and get work done, and screams at me when I take breaks. Sometimes, I can escape it,  but as soon as I realize it’s gone, it comes back. 

I bet you didn’t even ask yourself - enough of what? What is she punishing herself for not doing enough of? And if you didn’t ask yourself, it’s because you feel it too. You feel the ever present anxiety of trying to enjoy your life while also simultaneously feeling like you should always be changing it to somehow make it better. 

But that question is important - enough of what? One of the worst things you can do is spend lots of time and energy on the wrong things so what am I so concerned with doing enough of?. The answer is everything. Or almost everything. 

I don’t think I do enough at work. I don’t think I do enough in my relationships. I don’t think I relax enough. I don’t think I consume enough quality media. I don’t think I’m creative enough. I haven’t even been able to decide what the right things are to truly focus on, so I work hard at all of them, and am constantly consumed by anxiety that none of it is enough in the end. 

Why don’t I feel like I’m doing enough? I do something nearly every day to further each of these. I’m not bad at my job, I don’t neglect any of the important people in my life, I write, I study, I work out. Yet it always feels like I’m doing the bare minimum.

Sometimes I think I feel this way simply due to the nature of the world right now. It’s hard to figure out what enough looks like when the world still doesn’t feel quite right. Nothing about the future of humanity feels certain or safe no matter how mundane my day-to-day is. 

Other times, I think I feel this way because I’m afraid of doing too much of any one thing. I’m afraid doing more in one area will compromise the others and I’m simply too frightened to lose anything.

But maybe I ultimately feel this way because I was trained. I was taught to always learn and continuously focus on getting better and better. So perhaps this is a void that won’t be filled no matter how hard I work on anything. 

There are brief moments when I do feel like I’m doing enough. As simple as this sounds, they are when I work out and when I’m with people I care about. Working out allows me to completely focus on something I can control. I have power over how far or how fast I can run, or how much I lift, or how I move my body. The straightforward nature of fitness combined with the control, allows my mind to relax and only focus on the task at hand. Conversely, spending time with others allows me to focus on their thoughts rather than only my own. These are activities I don’t think about too hard - I simply do what feels right and what gives me more energy.

While it’s nice to have those two things as anchors, extrapolating that feeling to other areas of my life has proved difficult. I’m continuously trying to evaluate where I can improve in my life and I actively create and execute plans to carry out those efforts. But lately, more often than not, I end up feeling exactly the same. 

One thing I haven’t tried is to not try at all. I’ve received this advice multiple times in the last few months and it’s an extremely frustrating approach for someone who is wired to try and outwork every problem or negative feeling. Not trying at all doesn’t mean I simply stop everything I’m doing, but it would mean that I stop actively analyzing all the things I don’t like about my life, making plans to fix them, and working on those plans. Instead, I would accept all of my current circumstances and only put in extra work on the things that are currently making me happy.

Ideally, this would organically lead me to those areas of my life where focus on doing enough is deserved, and then I could move back into execution mode if I chose. But in actuality, it is desperately hard for me to let go of the constant improvement mindset. Every time I attempt to let go, I’m consumed with guilt for not actively working on the pieces of my life that are leaving me dissatisfied. 

This is the difference between an active and passive approach. I’ve always tried to be proactive in my life. I want to get ahead of potential issues, work on the future, and constantly improve. But maybe I’ve hit a point in my life where that approach is working against me. Work only counts if I’m working on the right things and if I’m not confident what those are, then I’m going to go in circles. A more passive approach might allow me to notice more about my present circumstances and to harness opportunities that are already there rather than focusing so hard on the future. I’ve never been able to truly embrace a passive approach.

But if nothing else has worked, I owe it to myself to try right? 

Travel is another time I’m usually able to focus on the present.