Replace your expectations with the appreciation
Last three months at my work were INSANE. I couldn’t write as much as I wanted to in my free time. I got trapped. Confused. Skipped a few days. Then a few weeks. Started a creative project. Put it on the hold. Felt terrible, creatively and otherwise. Tired. Swamped. Powerless.
And then I thought that instead of beating myself up for not writing, I can simply make a conscious decision that in July I won’t write and I’ll be on sabbatical.
That sounded like a reasonable decision. Sabbatical. That’s what people do when they get tired and need to refresh.
On the first thought of sabbatical, my inner gremlin shouted:
“But that’s impossible. Sabbatical is when you go to Thailand, scratch your butt on the beach for a few months, drink mojitos, meditate, contemplate the point of life and come back, tanned and with a huge smile on your face and tons of new ideas. Then you write a post for Medium about how you were a workaholic but now you learned the lesson. (Which preferably includes fainting and that jazz.) Then you write how sabbaticals are fucking awesome and how you now have tons of fresh, new ideas. You are working like a dog in a concrete lab, that cannot be sabbatical. What you’re gonna post on Medium? Who knows if you’ll have a single good idea afterward…”
(I ended up not going on a Sabbatical, but the reasons were different than those which gremlin came up with. More about it some other time.)
Here is what intrigues me a lot:
Why are we so attached to the ideas how things should look like? Is this our own version of Plato’s cave?
Why are we constantly judging our reality as Instagramable versus non-Instagramable?
Why do we claim that we want to experience adventure and change, when we have already decided how these adventures and changes should look like? (Rainbows and unicorns.)
My idea of “real” sabbatical eats up space in my mind to conceive different picture. I don’t need a different picture, I already know how everything should look like.
I became Plato’s cavemen, comfortable and defensive in his ignorance.
And here comes the catch.
Just when you decide how everything should look like, reality can prove you wrong.
Example. Last weekend I was trying to write a paper. In fact, I was trying to push a disobedient set of data to tell the story I wanted to see. I already had a good hypothesis. I had a whole outline in my mind. I knew what made sense. It’s just that data did not fit. Regardless of my pushing, desire, hypothesis and my firm, engineer reasoning. Did not happen. And I had to give up.
Good researchers will tell you that when the data doesn’t fit the expectations, that can be a huge opportunity. A hint to look closer and dig deeper. There can be something better and cooler that no one saw, but you.
Be curious. Open up for the experience. Stop comparing it to the old ideas, viral story patterns, hypothesis, shadows. See it for what it is.
Stop searching for grandiose stories and cliches that we all read about hundreds of times. Be present. Listen. Watch. You might end up finding something unique and great that can truly inspire another human being. Not something that makes SEO optimized, clickable and tweetable post nobody actually reads.
By failing to acknowledge what is (often because you know what SHOULD be), you are failing to see what could be. You are operating with a limited set of data. You are stifling your creativity. You are absent. You are unhappy.
Tony Robins said: “Replace your expectations with the appreciation.”
Isn’t that the shortest formula for peace, happiness, and presence? See what is, so you can see what could be. Even if it doesn’t seem Instagramable.
XXX
Miss Strangelove
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