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I recently found myself facing a big personal decision that will affect the rest of my life, a consequential decision surrounded by much uncertainty. I would wake with this on my mind, and as I began to interact with my inner worries, I realized there was a deeper unease that had been there before this situation arose. This unease is something that’s been there for a long time. Perhaps you’ve been aware of such a quiet, low-level gnawing on the bones of your own life.
Curious, I began to inquire into the nature of this feeling. As I allowed myself to experience it, I noticed a sense of both an absence and a presence of struggle. I discovered so many things pull on my attention all day that I am missing the experience of my own life. My attention is not centered in my own life. The absence of here-and-now grounding, plus the nightly parade of problems, was creating that feeling of struggle, like my life didn’t quite make sense. Koyaanisqatsi* is a Hopi word commonly translated as “life out of balance”, and that fit. I had the feeling that my life had become a problem I was supposed to solve, but couldn’t, hence the deeper sense of struggle.
Are our lives problems to be solved? An ongoing struggle?
I confess, this question took me way down the rabbit hole. As I peered into the looking glass of modern existence, I found four factors that contribute to this sense of self-abandonment and struggle with life.
SOCIAL COMPARISON. Humans are relentlessly social creatures, and since we must find our place in our groups, we have a social brain that compares our position with others. Rank often determines what resources a person or family can access. Our brains devote considerable resources to keeping track of who we are, what has happened to us, what might happen next, what other people are doing, and where we appear to stand in relation to them.
We also have imaginations. This need to compare and evaluate also includes comparisons with imagined, idealized versions of our lives rather than relating to the messy, imperfect reality of human life. This abstraction to the ideal also means that we focus on the category of, say, the perfect car, the right degree or job, or the optimal relationship, and lose sight of the specific, unique qualities of real objects and people. When we aren’t focused on a specific task, brain networks involved in self-referential thought and detecting what feels important can help keep these thoughts, fears, and comparisons circulating, sometimes creating an uncomfortable baseline state we barely notice.
FOO FACTOR. Where did these standards of comparison come from? I like to call this the “FOO Factor,” the Family Of Origin imprint, which contains family history, cultural norms, socio-economic status, and ways of behaving that align with them. We learn these norms and aspirational goals, including messages to think big or stay small, before we can speak. One known mechanism for this kind of patterning is ‘parental conditional regard,’ in which parents make approval, affection, or attention more contingent on behavior that matches their values and expectations. Without realizing it, we may have imbibed messages such as “Good people work hard,” “Anything worth having requires a struggle,” or definitions of success such as having the right job, car, house, mate, etc. While adopting these performance standards allowed us to fit in with our family of origin, these may not support our development or allow us to access the opportunities our own situation presents. Terry Real claims that we tend either to model our parents or rebel against them (or both). Either way, we are trapped in patterns that may be better adapted to a different period in time, our parents’ time.
SOCIAL MEDIA: COMPARISON ON STEROIDS. Now we can instantly compare and rank ourselves via social media; what I call comparison on steroids. In comparing, we don’t often look down; we look up to those we perceive as better off than we are, which tends to make us feel worse about ourselves. Social media by itself doesn’t make us unhappy, but it provides an extraordinarily efficient means for upward comparison, quantified social approval (likes, comments, etc.), and idealized self-presentation. Social media offers rapid social feedback that encourages us to come back time and time again, and makes our own life “a problem to be solved.”
MODERN MARKETING. Sophisticated, algorithm-driven marketing converts that social brain, busy comparing ourselves not just to our neighbors, but to those who appear to have resources we lack. It connects our social brain to consumer capitalism, often by inventing problems we need to solve. Here’s an example. A great example is the Smithsonian's discussion of Listerine which describes how its 1920s advertising did not invent bad breath but successfully medicalized it as “halitosis” and attached social fear to it. Profits rose dramatically. The genius wasn't inventing bad breath. It was transforming something ordinary into evidence that you might have a socially disastrous problem. Happily, there was something you could buy for it.
Advertising isn’t completely bad when it reduces uncertainty about what is available to meet actual needs. It is less beneficial when it stimulates materialistic craving. Consumer markets have an incentive to keep our yearnings alive, to maintain the distance between who we are and who we might become with the right product, body, house, car, wardrobe, or partner.
Combine this with the increasingly out-of-reach American Dream in which each generation could hard and do better than the previous one, and there is a peculiar discomfort we feel when the means to achieving these dazzling solutions to our life problems seem out of reach.
So, how do we find peace in the face of forces that frame our lives as problems to be solved? Here are four ways to bring your life into better balance.
DISCERN. First, is your life the problem, or do you have a problem you are reasonably trying to solve? Recognizing that you lack funds for this month’s rent can spur you to search for a better job. In that case, our comparison is serving us. When we identify ourselves as the problem, however, then it’s not so useful. I might feel like a “failure” because I don’t have as high-paying a job as my sister, for instance. Parental praise of the sister’s success can make this worse.
I also need to determine whether I am creating an actionable plan to address a problem or simply having a meeting with myself about the problem. Rumination and worry, letting these nagging stories and thoughts go around and around without a next step, will not help me pay my rent.
Here is a discernment test you can apply to those thoughts:
1. What specifically is the problem?
2. Is there an action available to me now? What is the next smallest step I can take?
3. Have I learned anything new or actionable in the last ten minutes of thinking about this problem? If not, I’m probably worrying. I might be better off discussing the problem with a friend who could help me make a plan of action or accepting that this isn’t something I can solve right now.
Learn more: Harvard Health’s Break the Cycle
RETURN. Our imaginations can take us to extreme places. We can imagine all kinds of catastrophic consequences of our less-than-perfect existence, and all kinds of things we should be doing to correct for this dreaded fate. Returning to our life as it is in the moment can calm the anxious mind. Focusing on sensory experience in the moment can gently redirect a busy mind that is building imaginary castles (or disasters).
Here is a quick way to ground yourself in reality.
1. Breathe! When we are anxious, we tend to hold our breath. Exhale completely first, then let go and let your body breathe. Repeat this two more times.
2. Notice three things you can see in your environment. The desk, my cat, this pencil, for instance.
3. Notice two things you can hear. For example, the click of my keys on the keyboard, the squeak of my desk chair.
4. Finally, notice one physical sensation. I might feel the breeze of the air conditioner on my bare arms.
Learn more: NCCIH’s overview of mindfulness.
ACCEPT. When we are encouraged to acknowledge things as they are, we may fear that acceptance is the same as agreeing to a situation we don’t want. This is different than relinquishing unnecessary judgment. We need discernment to recognize when we haven’t saved up enough for this month’s rent; however, in this case, the judgment that we are a hopeless failure is optional. Recognizing our mistakes and positioning ourself to make better choices in the future saves energy that we might otherwise spend on self-flagellation. We can stop requiring every unwelcome event to undergo an additional trial where reality is found guilty of not being what we wanted. Once I acknowledge what is happening, I can make clearer decisions about what I want to do next.
Try this to sort judgment from fact.
1. Start with observable facts. What would a camera be able to record?
2. Ask yourself what value, good or bad, you are placing on what happened. Note especially, should, shouldn’t, supposed to, failure, and other evaluative words.
3. Notice what you can influence in this situation.
4. Identify the first small step you can take toward a better result and commit to doing that within the next 48 hours.
Learn more: Association for Contextual Behavioral Science introduction to ACT’s acceptance, present-moment, and values-based approach.
CARE. Meet the difficulty you are facing with kindness and care. When life isn’t presenting the way we want, it’s easy to become negative, and especially to be harsh with ourselves, as if that would somehow motivate us to do better. Beating doesn’t work for training dogs, or humans for that matter. More likely, we will induce a sense of shame and shut down the motivation we need to take constructive action.
When you find yourself speaking negatively about or to yourself, try this simple three-sentence compassionate statement.
1. This is hard!
2. It makes sense I’m having a response to this.
3. What would be both kind and useful for me right now?
Learn more: Kristin Neff’s free Self-Compassion Break
I still have a big decision in front of me that will require sustained attention and effort to resolve and consequences I will live with. However, using these approaches has brought me more ease around the underlying worry “noise” of life. Some things in life are indeed problems we must solve. Some are realities simply to be lived. We increase our misery when we insist on treating the second category like the first. The goal isn’t to stop noticing the gap between what we want and what is. Instead, we can allow the gap to exist and still feel good about ourselves as we are.
*Koyaanisqatsi was made into a powerful film a few decades ago that showed the expulsion of our lives from our natural setting. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0860055297FEA6A1
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