'not Doing Enough' Guilt.

[The White Belt]

When I have pursued my life purpose in the past, I get really neurotically guilty, when I finish a practice of something, 

whether it was short session or a longer one; I feel bad that it isn't enough.

 

How can I appreciate baby steps? Buddha's quote comes to mind 'A jug fills drop by drop', yet I put in my drop, then proceed to try and pour it all in quickly, it overflows, I burn out, feel bad, self-sabotage, and jump ship.

 

Heelp meeeeeeeeee! ;-)

[SLICKHAWK]

Less is more. Good enough is better than not.

Practice what you will in choice.  

Baby step that that pushes back until you have confidence to take the leap forward.

Continue.. Grow. Love what your accomplishing.

[Leo Gura]

1 hour ago, BeginnerActualizer said:

it overflows, I burn out, feel bad, self-sabotage, and jump ship.

Become more conscious of THAT result.

Do you like that result?

If not, then bite the bullet and learn to pace yourself.

Your suffering is there to teach you all the lessons you need to learn. The trick is to be conscious of the lesson when it hits you. It's all too easy to lose sight of the lesson as we get mesmerized by the emotions of it.

[mostly harmless]

I don't know wether you're a person who does a lot of sports. Let's imagine you are. 

My question to you would be: Do you do sports for the sake of doing it, or do you want to achieve a goal.

If it is the latter, then you are not doing, you are producing. You are producing for example fitness, or a fit and attractive body.

The need to be productive is a paradigm learned from society. Once you see that this is a learned perspective, you can ask wether it is supposed to be that way and if there could possibly be alternatives.

When you apply the paradigm of producing an end result to life, is that compatible? A product (wether some thing you buy in a shop or as in my example some state like fitness) is a static thing. Is life also static? Life is a process. You do not reach a final state before your body's death. The idea of becoming rich for instance is that once you reach that goal, everything remains that way forever (obviously it ends with death but we live with the feeling that we live forever, otherwise how would achievements make sense?). That's obviously naive. It is the logic of novels and movies. 

Life is not a product which is to be optimized. I would still propose to work on yourself. If you can see it as a challenge you choose instead of an obligation, then it could be fun. I have similar issues myself, despite knowing better. So, these are a few thoughts about this.

[The White Belt]

Thanks, everyone!
 

[h inandout]

Allow yourself to enjoy the tranquility of nuturing seedlings.

[ParanoidAndroid]

Read Mastery by George Leonard. It's a short book (ironically). He talks about how the process of mastery, in whatever field, requires a love of regular and sustained practice. I know its cliché but it really is about the journey, the path. You need to rid yourself of the idea that quick results are the only thing that matters. Modern western society engrains in us the idea that we can achieve success without walking the path of mastery, but you can't.

Leonard talks about the 'Mastery curve' in which there are spurts of progress followed by a slight decline to a plateau eventually followed by a another spurt of progress and so on. he then talks about how therefore to master any skill one must accept the plateau when it comes and continue on the path rather than giving up. He also describes the three different personality types that fail at mastery - the dabbler, the hacker and the obsessive.

Leo talks about some of this in one of his videos but I can't remember which one. I'll post it here if I remember.

you can do it,  

 

[mostly harmless]

By the way I find it to be a general principle in life that you can have everything you want, after you give up needing it.

 

Exmaple:

You want a supermodel girlfriend while you are average looking and have an average job with average income. Say one day you meet a girl that you would want to have as a girlfriend. Now since this is so important to you, you get nervous. You are also mostly interested in her, because she looks great. That's why in conversation you don't ask her much about her life, dreams, nothing about finding out if she is smart or not. As a result she gets that you are only superficially interested. And you being nervous makes it obvious to her, that you are not used to talking to girls of her caliber. You kicked yourself out of the game.

If you would instead find her very attractive, but would be OK to be alone, or with a partner who is attractive but not one-in-10,000-attractive, and not impressed by looks alone unless there's an interesting, intelligent person behind the face, then you would probably have a chance.

 

I think it is similar with career goals or sports... Being too invested makes things seem so important that it can be paralyzing.