Sacrifice the Exciting Day to Actually Have One

One of my greatest feelings of disappointment in myself came from moments at the end of the day when I would look back and I would think about that moment probably 30 minutes after I got out of bed and I would start to think about all the great things that I was gonna do that day.

I was gonna exercise, gonna work 10 hours, gonna hang out with this person, gonna meditate, I’m gonna surf.

And then I would blinkAnd it would be 5:30 PM and I would realize that I spent the vast majority of the day compulsively checking my phone, avoiding my work scrolling on Instagram or social media, or watching YouTube videos that started at lunch that went into the afternoon.

I would have wasted my day.

That contrast between bright-eyed and optimistic and the sheer reality of having just not done any or almost any of those things, and the things that I did do were more distracted than I would have liked them to have been or just lower quality, that contrast is what created some of the greatest disappointment that I’ve ever felt in myself when I was consistently distracted and engaging in those kind of avoidant behaviors

And where would that lead me to?

Greater disappointment in the form of late night binges of whatever else came after.

Some relatively funny examples of this would be searching for old video games that I used to play.

So old Miniclip games like Bloons 4 or that Castle Crashers, I forget what they’re called, the map game where youthat tower defense game.

What else?

A funny one.

God, I don’t remember the name of it, this is gonna sound ridiculous.

You’d be a little baby in a raft with, your little baby brother, and you’d be shooting tennis balls at your opponents over water trying to knock them off their rafts.

Yeah.

If you can imagine me in my bed with my laptop playing a game as a little baby shooting tennis balls at your enemies in other rafts.

I’m not even talking shit about the game.

Oh, the, the motocross one with the f- the red or the yel- like the solid color backgrounds where you’re just wiggling your motocross guy to get from the start to finish.

These kinda games.

I’m lying in bed as a grown adult man avoiding my emotions, avoiding my work, avoiding my, effectively my goals by playing these old silly video games that I’m not talking shit about.

They were fun when I found them and played them

When I was 7 or 12 or 17, I don’t know what, whatever age I was when I played these games

But that idea that they were enjoyable in my past would then serve up to my mind the idea that they are still fun in this moment.

But think about that image, maybe, okay, of me, I guess, of me being in my bed playing some stupid video game at 12:30 AM, 1:30 AM in the morning, avoiding going to sleep because I wasted the day and I felt bad about it even if just subconsciously.

Do you think I’m smiling and laughing and having so much jovial fun?

No.

The voice in my head might have said it was fun, but my face in those moments was indifferent.

It was stressed.

It was probably numb, bloodshot eyes, like sad.

That is actually how you would describe that experience, not the way your mind tries to alter the image as if you actually intentionally chose to play this game to have fun

No, it’s that facial expression of just numbness that you experience when you’re compulsively checking your phone, you’re scrolling, Or you’re playing these childish games.

Childish not necessarily in a bad way, just like childish as in they’re for children.

That image is a glaring sign that something is being used as a coping mechanism not as a genuine avenue to experience joy

Something I noticed is that these experiences would get more consistent for me as the ends of the year approached.

So as we got into September, then the holidays started to come around, I would find myself losing more of my days and then spending more time binging YouTube or these games or social media into later nights as we got into the end of the year.

And that’s because the pressure starts to mount from the lack of effort that is produced because of these behaviors earlier in the year

All of the sudden, all of the lack of effort that you put in starts to compound on top of the already normal stressful end of the year And since this is the way that I used to handle my emotions, I would go back to it more regularly.

That’s why you start to see an uptick in your avoidant behaviors starting right now.

You may have already experienced this

And what does that lead when we start to revert back to default coping mechanisms that only reinitiate the negative feedback loops that lead us back into worse behavior or more undesirable behavior?

Undesirable in this context being procrastinating, avoiding, being unproductive, being distracted, things like that

It leads to larger blowups and greater disappointments

Also, what’s up?

If you’re new here, my name is Flint Mitchell from iAlign.

I went from a life of stagnation, scrolling, procrastinating, overthinking, and feeling behind to one of clear, consistent, confident action and freedom

And I’d love to know, drop this in a comment, do you resonate with this story?

Do you ever find yourself late at night on your phone or your laptop Just doing things that you know that you will regret in the morning.

But you can’t seem to get yourself to stop, not only in the moment, like youyou don’t stop until you physically just have to put the computer down, And also can’t stop yourself from engaging in this way on a consistent basis over the long term, like over the course of weeks and months Where in the moment you almost think, you almost feel like it’s fine.

But you also recognize both in the moment and afterwards that

You know you will pay for with the noise that will exist in your mind the next day, with the grogginess that you experience the next morning, with the poor sleep that you have, where you won’t have sufficient energy to get your exercise in the next day

Or you won’t have your full energy to work the full workday the next day.

You’ll probably avoid social experiences just because you’re kind of insecure or you’re feeling ashamed about the way that you’re performing in this moment, because you spend so much time engaging in these things that you lose energy, you don’t exercise as much.

You then cope with food or you don’t eat as well, and you end up physically feeling not very stoked about yourself, and so you avoid dating or you avoid social environments or group environments, group parties at the end of the year.

Your suit doesn’t fit perfectly anymore, things like that.

If this is hitting home,The reason for it is because I have experienced all of these things.

I have experienced all these emotions, and that is why I can speak to such vivid detail about them

Like Ipersonally remember resistance to some holiday party that was coming up because I had gained a couple pounds because my nights had got pushed back.

I wasn’t getting exercise.

I was scrolling into the night.

I was doing all these things that were non-productive, making my mind feel chaotic, my body feel inflamed, my body gaining fat.

All these things had caused me to have this physical experiencethat then led to resistance to social environments, that then led to me wanting to isolate,

And I use that just as one example of downstream consequences of these consistent behaviors because every morning where you have these ambitions, you have this optimistic view of the day that turns into disappointment, that then turns into late night binging of food or social media or whatever your poison of preference is It steals the next morning.

And one lost night, that’s not that bad.

But you string a couple of those together and all of a suddenYou’re ending your week in that chaotic, anxious mindset, and okay, you lose one week because of that.

Oh, but you string a couple weeks of those together, then you start ending your month in that chaotic, noisy mindset, and you start starting the next month.

All right.

Still, a month in the scope of a lifetime, pretty…

It’s not small, but it’s small-ish.

But then, you know,you string a couple of those months together, now we’re getting into the realm where you’re ending your years in this chaotic, noisy mindset, and you’re starting your next year in that same place with stagnation, what feels like a a complete loss of momentum, a lack of trust in yourself, that you keep feeling optimistic and committing to these things, and then you don’t follow through, and so you’re losing the self-image as you continue to progress.

And instead of ramping toward your career, toward your goals, you’re not even staying neutral.

You’re starting to fade because your self-image is starting to deteriorate based off of the actual results of your actions over a consistent period of time, all stemming from individual nights

And the reason why I draw that line, that clear relationship between these single nights and stagnant years is because the consequence is in fact that severe.

Because what happens if you don’t stop these individual nights and they lead to years of stagnation?

If you start to string years of those together, the only longer unit of life that there is is literally life

And a stagnant poorly spent life, You only get one of those

One thing that’s going on under the surface here is quite interesting.

It is our constant search for the perfect and most exciting day.

A lot of these behaviors tend to be born from a desire to spend our days well

But that desire to have the best day can actually be what leads into unfulfilling ones filled with anxious and avoidant behaviors and disappointing results

Because when we try to do things perfectly, when we try to have the perfect day, what happens is we end up in a state of constantly seeking stimulation.

When the reality is most of our most fulfilling days lack consistent stimulation.

That might sound counterintuitive, but it’s the truth

Constantly seeking excitement or positive stimulation generally leads us, or at least led me, toward these cheap forms of stimulation like social media or these silly video games from my childhood.

And there is a time and place for extreme periods of joy and excitement and adventure.

I love adventure.

I love to travel.

I love to explore new cultures and new mountains and new towns and people and all.

I love to adventure.

I love adrenaline.

I like to surf.

I like to be in the mountains

And that is great.

But if my every day is seeking out stimulation like that, what ends up happening is I fill it with those cheaper forms of it.

And so counterintuitively, being willing to wake up and quite literally sacrifice the perfect, exciting, wonderful day tends to be how you actually have them.

Because even in those experiences where I’m traveling abroad or I’m in a new mountain range, I’m not actually in every single moment getting stimulated.

Those days tend to also be a slow buildup through some new experience where there are wonderful awe-inspiring moments, but it’s not the whole time.

Even hiking through really majestic, beautiful places, 50 minutes out of the hour might just be spent walking and in your head,And then you have some moment where you’re like, “Oh my God, wow, look at this mountain range.” So even in the big adventures, they aren’t completely and entirely overstimulating for the most part

But at the start of my day, if I tell myself, “I will sacrifice excitement for today in the name of my mission or my work,” or some of these other potentially more mundane things,

If I accept and I say,today can be a slow, unstimulating day,” I still in my chest feel a visceral resistance to that, even though I know That tends to be How I actually find my most fulfilling and content, and sometimes inspiring days filled with excitement.

Because the more I do that, the more I allow my mind to settle and experience whatever the present moment is instead of avoiding it.

And when I’m able to experience the present moment, everything is so much more colorful and enjoyable and loving and and interesting.

For example, I went to a restaurant yesterday, And I had completely separated from my phone for the day.

Sometimes I’ll take entire days and just have it completely off and put away.

And I just sat there watching the guys behind the counter make burritos and tacos.

And this woman was sitting next to me, and I ended up having this great conversation with her.

Didn’t ask her name, don’t know who she is, will never talk to her again, probably never see her again.

But just the act of sitting down and doing something relatively mundane, watching a line of workers make food, ended up being a very happy experience that I’m now even telling a story about.

And that was because I was willing to allow yesterday to be completely void of entertainment.

I ended up being extremely entertained.

I would much rather build a, a quick connection and have a fun conversation with some person that I may never meet again than watch a TV episode or play Balloons on Miniclip.

I don’t even know if Miniclip still exists.

So the excitement and the adventure comes from the presence that is experienced once you allow yourself to sacrifice the excitement.

It sounds a bit counterintuitive,

But I believe that that obstacle of constantly seeking stimulation is one of the main crux obstacles that people are facing in this day and age, Especially for the ambitious types, where there’s so much opportunity in this world right now, and there’s so many tools and resources to pursue opportunity, that it is so easy to fall into this mode of constantly needing everything to feel successful and forward and stimulated.

It’s counterintuitively how we fall into the trap of avoiding and ending up in these late binge nights that turn into binge weeks, that turn into binge months and years

Anyways, I’m Flint Mitchell from iAlign.

If you found this valuable, first and foremost, I’m stoked to hear it.

I would love if you would be willing to share it with just one person.

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Peace.