This is all about setting our expectations: this is the one thing we can individually control for ourselves. Expecting the world to jump back to how it was is a futile exercise. It might seem comforting, but it’s delusional, and will lead to disappointment that always comes when expectations are not in line with reality.
Living in the limbo of having identified an obstacle but not yet having the tools to address it.
Anxiety isn’t something you can just “fix.” In Sequoia’s case, and in mine, the anxiety may always be there. It’s working out how to react to the anxiety that’s the key.
The way I like to think about it, isn’t about my suffering or lack thereof. It’s that collectively, there is a sharing of the suffering that allows humanity to survive.
Learning lessons from vacation rather than trying to recreate it.
The difference between being in immediate survival mode and a more sustainable survival mode, and the grief we need to allow ourselves to experience to move from one to the other.
For me, there are two important elements related to these daily gratitudes that help me with the way my brain seems to be wired, and to help me feel less like I’m passively drifting through my life rather than being IN my life fully.
Striving for better has been a characteristic that’s brought me a lot of success and reward. But I tend to see those rewards as obligatory, not as something to celebrate. Because they’re rewards for things I “should” be doing anyway.
What if she’s the one who can see the authentic me, and I cannot? What if I can be vulnerable and open and real and all those things and still be seen as having my shit together? Like those aren’t diametrically opposed views? That being vulnerable doesn’t have to equal “hot mess.” That perhaps it’s _my_ definition of “put together” that needs to change, not hers.
If the bars I set for myself turn into expectations, then no wonder I can’t celebrate clearing them. And even if I set the bar really high for myself (which I know I do), then anything less becomes a failure. It means I define failure as anything less than the absolute best. It means I define success as doing what is expected of me. There is no room for celebration in that equation.
