Feeling Stuck Inside My Head - Craving Friction?

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May 29, 2013
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Hi guys, I recently wrote this short essay to help me understand my own restless and dissatisfied feelings. I'd love your honest feedback and thoughts on the matter.

Lately, I've been feeling bored, restless and dissatisfied. With what? I'm not sure. It's a difficult feeling to explain, which makes it even more difficult to remedy. It feels a little bit like being stuck inside your own head. You know there's a big world out there, you know there's something you should be doing and there's something that will make you happy, but it's always on the horizon. You can't get close enough. And in a world of infinite possibility, the onus is on you to be making the right choices. We think that choice must be the reason we can't get close enough.

Does the following sound like you? It sounds like me. You pick up your guitar, which you've been meaning to do for the last few months, and strum the few chords that you can remember. It doesn't sound great, so you grab your phone and bring up that tutorial that you never quite finished. But then you realise the tutorial's not really giving you the information you need to play the song you want to play. But do you even want to play this song anyway? Is it one of your favourites? While you're waiting for another tutorial to load, you realise that you haven't checked your messages in a couple of minute. No one has messaged you, so you assume nothing's happening. Just to be sure, you check Facebook. Perhaps there's a message that hasn't come through yet. The tutorial's loaded, but you haven't got time now. It'd be counterproductive to force yourself to play when you don't feel like it. You bookmark the tutorial so it can be summoned at the tap of your finger when the time's right. When the time's right, you'll nail that tutorial. But you need your energy first. Time for lunch. There's nothing in the fridge, but there's plenty in the freezer that you just need to pop in the microwave. Now it's a waiting game. You've got eight minutes. You'll send out a group message to get something moving this weekend. You type it out, but it doesn't sound funny enough yet, so you'll wait until after you've eaten. When you've had time to think. You've still got five minutes. Now would be a good time to grab your guitar. The tutorial's only three minutes. But then I'd have to play my guitar in the kitchen, and that'd be weird. You flick the television on. There's nothing good on this channel. Or that channel. Or that channel. Lunch is ready. Tastes weird. No problem, I'll just grab something on the way to town... And on, and on, and on.

I don't know about you, but this sounds like hell to me. The world around us literally falls away when we apply pressure. There's nothing to lean on, to structure your behaviour around, to grapple with. The world around us demands no attention, just the flick of a switch.

We live in an increasingly frictionless world. And it's our human instinct as problem solvers to make it that way. Juicing oranges is messy business, so we buy juicers. Navigating a busy supermarket can be an ordeal, so we order online. Awkward conversations can haunt us for weeks, so we'd much rather send a text. We save a lot of time and energy, and that's terrific, because we generally have better things to be doing than juicing, trolley-pushing, and dealing with other people. We design an environment that demands little of us in return, so that we can turn our attention to what matters most.




While we all agree that cutting out the middleman is generally productive, we employ them every day to avoid getting our hands dirty. And the middleman takes many forms; technology, convention, fashion, even language. I needn't go to the trouble of proving my devotion to my girlfriend when I can say "I love you" once in a while. I needn't worry about encountering strangers when I'm shielded by etiquette. I needn't worry about embodying my philosophy when it's tattooed behind my ear. Technology and language, for example, can connect us to the world in ways that would be unthinkable without them, but when they become substitutes for genuine connection, as opposed to extensions, we have a problem.

When the world around us yields at the flick of a switch or the click of a mouse, don't we lose a sense of what and who we are? How are we supposed to measure our own actions when the consequences are out of our control? How do we figure out what needs to be done when there's nothing to be done? There are no reference points. No yardsticks. And when our environment demands nothing from us, what's the point in us at all? The challenge shifts from mastering the environment to becoming a master decision-maker, because that's all that's left to do. By separating decision-making from the actions that follow, we create the perfect conditions for analysis paralysis, which we all know and love.

Most of us have been brought up to believe that we can be whatever we want to be. The sky's the limit. But this has always made me feel more dread than inspiration. It means that there's no hope of discovering who you are, because there's nothing there to discover. You need to create yourself, from scratch. I don't know about you, but this kind of responsibility keeps me awake at night.

Whether we like it or not, we're growing comfortable in this frictionless world. We squirm when we really bump into our environment head on. When we get into our first scuffle; when we cook our first meal; when we sit down at the piano; when we step out onto the pitch with experienced players; when we read our stories aloud to others at the table. In these instances, our actions and their reactions are authentic and unmediated. We are laid bare. Our reaction is often, "I'm not cut out for this," and we retreat behind our curtain. But these experiences, which we acknowledge as risky, novel, strange, painful, and clumsy, provide rare glimpses of what and who we are in the real world because they connect us to it. For brief moments, our actions and their consequences are back to back. When we see ourselves in context of a living, breathing world, we realise that we're not floating heads, we're not removed, we're real people.



Grappling with the world around us can be scary and uncomfortable for the same reasons that it can be joyous and thrilling and intriguing and fulfilling. When we interact directly with our environment, and not through some middleman or representation or substitute, we can begin to understand our own actions and who we are. We're released from the anxiety of having decide our purpose, because we are discovering our purpose as we go along. A pre-existing structure reveals itself that we can anchor ourselves to, that we can ground ourselves on, that we can rely on.

There is a big world out there, but it's not up to us to decide what it means. It's up to us to discover what it means, one tiny success or failure at a time. We can only do this when we step out from behind the curtain and tackle our environment head on. An environment that demands our attention if we want to get anything out of it. This is the point at which we climb out of our head and start living in the moment.

For these reasons, my 2017 resolutions are to:

  • Call instead of text.
  • Ask my neighbour before I ask Google.
  • Share a piece of writing once a week.
  • Play my bass with other musicians.
  • Juice my own oranges.
Would love to hear your thoughts and start a discussion x
 
OP
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Lol no, but I'm assuming there's something derivative about my post. I've always wanted to read Predictably Irrational, though. Maybe I've absorbed some Dan Ariely quotes over the years when reading about the book.

Will check it out now.
 

Amazoniac

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Lol no, but I'm assuming there's something derivative about my post. I've always wanted to read Predictably Irrational, though. Maybe I've absorbed some Dan Ariely quotes over the years when reading about the book.

Will check it out now.
You replied sooner than the length of the video, time to add this to your original post..
 
OP
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Lol no, but I'm assuming there's something derivative about my post. I've always wanted to read Predictably Irrational, though. Maybe I've absorbed some Dan Ariely quotes over the years when reading about the book.

Will check it out now.

:)
 
OP
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I thought that you were referring to the book, because usually people reply after they have checked the links. I think that you'll enjoy, though.

You're right; I was a bit too keen to keep the discussion afloat ;)

Cheers for that, though. It was very enlightening. Dan's expressed those ideas with much more clarity and force than I have.

However, I do think the two points are complimentary but different. The studies Dan points to demonstrate perfectly that meaningful action supports motivation, and those participants have had those conditions imposed on them by the researchers. They're preserving their agency whilst removing their effects. I think this is an existential problem, like Sisyphus.

What I'm grappling with is the idea of preserving the effects but removing our agency. The feeling is not so much existential despair, but restlessness and anxiety brought on by information overload. We're no longer forced to reconcile our knowledge with practice, because practice has been taken out of hands. There's no ground to stand on. Whereas I think Dan is asking what we're supposed to do when we're unsure of what ground we're stood on or why we're stood there.
 
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You might like this, Amazoniac. This guy can be quite verbose, but what he said really resonated with me.

 

Amazoniac

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What I can comment regarding this topic is that being in charge of the many aspects of your life, and not delegating them, seems to take care of boredom on its own, at least that's what I've observed. Mostly because whenever a feeling like that starts to kick in, you are remembered that you will always be busy with something that's either pleasant, or burdensome but necessary; and both being productive. In other words, you'll always seek and find pleasure when there's something burdensome waiting for you (and that probably you've been delaying doing it). The problem when you delegate most of the annoying activities is that you remove the waiting monster, and then you miss that urge for pleasurable things.

I don't think that anyone would feel comfortable under that syphilis condition.
 
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sex came alive for me 5 or 6 years ago. And changed my whole life more than anything else. Specifically long periods of intercourse with very few/no orgasms. The brain loves this and rewires to it and it makes everything in life alive and full of wonder and changes EVERYTHING. How could it not?

Turns out we have a program in our bodies for this and it is AMAZING but few of us ever find it to run it. It takes a bit of time to rewire to this program but it's there.

As an example that may seem slightly off base but isn't,

Transcript | This American Life

Keck proposed a program that was in some ways similar to the three feet plan. In addition to regular counseling, Daniel, who was now 13 and larger than his mother, would participate in holding therapy. That is, every night for a year, 20 minutes a night, Daniel, Heidi, and Rick were supposed to hold onto each other and talk. Rick and Heidi cradling Daniel like a newborn child, which is exactly what they did.

Heidi Solomon
Even though he was really big, I would try to cradle him on my lap. Or it was really both Rick and I because he would take up both of our laps. And I would look into his eyes the same way you would with a baby and you make eye contact. And we would feed him with a spoon-- ice cream. That's what we'd have to do to get him-- because he liked ice cream.

Daniel Solomon
It definitely feels really weird. Like, what is this?

Alix Spiegel
How did that change the way you felt about them?

Daniel Solomon
Well, it was like, they were feeding my ice cream, so I was like, OK, fine. But it was like that's when I actually first started to be able to talk about what I was feeling.

So here's the tie-in. No way could you feel the way you do now, if you were being held/holding someone you love for hours at a time, and having sex and living the life of being physically close with someone you love.

This changes EVERYTHING. Of course in the above case it is non-sexual, but the same program is available to us in a slightly different form with sex and it is INCREDIBLE and so life-changing. I want to encourage you to investigate it.

1. Take dance lessons (ballroom or salsa) where you change partners and meet new people and have physical contact

2. Make an effort to socialize and get away from the computer and phone

3. Get into meetup groups with a new hobby that is social (hiking, photography are two that come to mind but there are many others) Consider volunteering for something like a soup kitchen or community event where you meet others and all work together to a common goal.

4. Start dating if you aren't already. Date just to spend time and discover new people, not for any objectiv.

5. Spend time outdoors and in nature.
 
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It seems to me that you're not lacking friction in your life, in fact you seem to be creating a lot of internal friction it seems and that's where your problem lies perhaps. Because you feel like you should be doing something more or better, it makes the present moment dissatisfying and tense.

Tell me if what I've said is accurate. What I just described is my own personal experience.
 
OP
T
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sex came alive for me 5 or 6 years ago. And changed my whole life more than anything else. Specifically long periods of intercourse with very few/no orgasms. The brain loves this and rewires to it and it makes everything in life alive and full of wonder and changes EVERYTHING. How could it not?

Turns out we have a program in our bodies for this and it is AMAZING but few of us ever find it to run it. It takes a bit of time to rewire to this program but it's there.

As an example that may seem slightly off base but isn't,

Transcript | This American Life



So here's the tie-in. No way could you feel the way you do now, if you were being held/holding someone you love for hours at a time, and having sex and living the life of being physically close with someone you love.

This changes EVERYTHING. Of course in the above case it is non-sexual, but the same program is available to us in a slightly different form with sex and it is INCREDIBLE and so life-changing. I want to encourage you to investigate it.

1. Take dance lessons (ballroom or salsa) where you change partners and meet new people and have physical contact

2. Make an effort to socialize and get away from the computer and phone

3. Get into meetup groups with a new hobby that is social (hiking, photography are two that come to mind but there are many others) Consider volunteering for something like a soup kitchen or community event where you meet others and all work together to a common goal.

4. Start dating if you aren't already. Date just to spend time and discover new people, not for any objectiv.

5. Spend time outdoors and in nature.

This is really cool. My understanding is that you're recommending that people interact directly and concretely with the people around you in a pure and unmediated way. Being an active member of a group, be it a relationship or photography class, is exactly the sort of thing I've come to understand is fruitful in getting you out of your head. The world around you is something to structure your behaviour around rather than make sense of. Cheers.
 
OP
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It seems to me that you're not lacking friction in your life, in fact you seem to be creating a lot of internal friction it seems and that's where your problem lies perhaps. Because you feel like you should be doing something more or better, it makes the present moment dissatisfying and tense.

Tell me if what I've said is accurate. What I just described is my own personal experience.

I can see a lot of personal truth in that, too. But I don't think our points are contradictory. I think having a lack of meaningful interaction with the real world around you causes you to create internal friction. When you can't look around you to discover meaning, it's your job to create it in yourself. For example, I'm a writer. I don't feel like the act of writing is complete until what you've written has been read. That's the moment you connect to the wider world outside of yourself. If you take away that moment of connection, by staying locked up inside your head, you lose your sense of place and purpose. Would you agree? It could be as simple as having a personal and honest conversation with someone. It cements your place in the world. Am I wrong to feel dissatisfied and tense by sitting on my own and keeping these thoughts to myself? I don't think so. I think I'm denying myself purpose. I think I'm denying myself a real place in the world by hiding behind texts or avatars. I hope you don't think I'm disagreeing with you - but can you see how they're kind of similar.

I think a sense of conformity is a different thing, and leads to more of that internal friction. Because then the pressure is on you to bend and deny who you are. The problem I'm talking about is when people don't give themselves the opportunity to be who they are because they're hidden behind technology, convention, shortcuts, getouts etc. Simply because it's easier. Our intended actions and their consequences are being obscured by intermediaries, so we lose touch of who and what we are in relation to the world outside.
 

sprinter

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I don't think there is anything wrong with using the technological tools of our time, as long as they don't hurt the environment (which I think is a big issue).

This sounds like man's search for meaning to me. The key thing is discovering who we really are, as you said. I think it all boils down to getting on the spiritual path and meditating.

You can make time to do things, but should also make time to do nothing, not even think.
 

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