You wake up Saturday morning feeling groggy from the night before. You already know it will be one of those lazy days where you stay in your PJs. Turn up the heat. Scroll through Netflix for a couple minutes before deciding to crawl back into bed where you just lie there.
Something feels off. Maybe it’s the hangover. Maybe it’s the creeping insecurities. Hopefully it’s the hangover because at least that’s temporary. Should you try to reflect on what it is? No that can be Monday’s problems. But you’ve resolved yourself to personal growth over New Years. It’s fine you can take it easy – you’ve had a long week. Let’s just leave this as a hanging thought.
Learning to listen to yourself is tough. As with all skills, you need to put in repeated effort, but unlike most skills, what counts as a “rep” is not obvious and sometimes even feels like taking steps backwards. Life is non-linear, unlike studying predefined course material to get that A in the class or “progressing” from step 6 to step 7 of an internet self-help guru’s 10 step plan for “ultimate happiness”.
I feel lucky to be surrounded by a group of smart, driven friends who have largely overcome the first hurdle to listening to yourself – not escaping your problems. Whether it’s learning to work out, socialize, empathize, whenever we feel lacking in one area, say the extra holiday weight gained, we have the toolset to work towards improvement. But once we gain those basic skills, we hit a wall. That it’s no longer about reading 10 more books on productivity to learn how to be more effective. Or about journaling for another few hours to uncover part of yourself. This wall I like to call a “skills trap”, and one I too tend to gravitate towards as a safety blanket. Where it may feel productive to be running forwards, but is that really in the direction you want to go?
Life is a game, and one we take many years to even figure out how to play. The key nuance of listening to yourself is accepting that each person has their own unique game to play. And for me even after countless pages of journaling and recording notes, I still find myself waking up these Saturday mornings wondering what the hell the controls even are.
Despite these frustrating mornings, I remind myself I have to try playing different games to learn what game is truly right for me. That even though I paid a ridiculous amount of money for a luxury high rise, I needed to have that experience to realize I prefer more practical living. That learning I love laying down roots was only possible after months of travel. That despite my IG stories saying otherwise, there are nights out drinking that I think to myself how much I’d rather have spent this night one-on-one with a close friend catching up on their life.
As someone naturally good at putting my head down to grind out “productivity,” the right solution for me becomes pushing myself to explore more variety of what life has to offer. And each time I fall into one of these morning slumps, to perceive these moments not as taking two steps backwards, but rather as a reminder that without leaning into life, I would not have even realized what the options for life are.
I’ve start to admire that every individual is uniquely beautiful in their own way. That the right advice for you is an answer only you yourself can know. It’s time to stop playing the game you think others want you to play. And to discover and learn to play our game the best we can.
Random Musings 