Life is long
We’ve been diving a bit deeper into stress and trauma lately. Many of us have baggage that we are carrying around that is holding us back. There’re many ways and techniques to deal with or alleviate pain, trauma, and stress, and we have covered many of them in previous articles.
Today we want to look at a different side of this story—which is the beautiful cocktail of being hard on ourselves for not being there in life “where you should be,” combined with anxiety to do the necessary thing, and sprinkled with a sense of urgency, despair, and resignation, because you should have done this a long time ago, and now you're too old.
Well, this is a tricky one, and we’re not going to sugarcoat our answer, but hopefully, we can put it a bit more into perspective.
Firstly, you only have one life—in which you’re speeding through the 4th dimension with the speed of light—hurtling towards the future and never seeing the past again. This means that you have one life and you’re not getting younger. So, entertaining thoughts of what you should have done is a sunk cause, and it is preventing you from looking forward.
Secondly, your baggage is holding you down, so you will not do the right stuff. There is a simple but effective way of assessing what you should be doing—think of the most uncomfortable stuff you can come up with. This can be heights, public speaking, spiders, water, etc. Whatever it is, it’s telling you what you should be doing more of. But often people will not approach things that frighten them as we age—e.g., you will not see many older people on roller coasters at amusement parks.
This ties back to the headline of this article, which is that Life is long. This is taken from an interview with Steven Pressfield, and it’s a pushback against the pressure many people feel from society—"I’m 30 so now I should have accomplished this”, or “I’m 56 and…” You get the point. Age is not “just a number” and there are things you should prioritize when you’re younger—like having children or pursuing an athletic career, but all other things are more flexible. You can shift careers later in life, get an education, learn to play an instrument, or do that thing you’ve always wanted to do.
Remember—life is long, and you don’t want to unnecessarily pressure yourself, just because you didn’t do the right thing in your twenties, or because you didn’t get your breakthrough when you were 35. This doesn’t mean that you should give up or stop evolving. Life is long and you should try and make it as meaningful and enjoyable as possible for many years to come.
Until next time
Scott and Lennart