Sometimes the urgency of our hunger
blinds us to the fact that we are already at the feast.
(John O’Donohue)[1]
I love making progress, but sometimes I get too caught up in it.
Progress helps me achieve a sense of traction in life, giving me a daily trickle of both saline and champagne. When I make progress, I feel empowered, fulfilled and secure because I feel like I’m perpetually ratcheting up.
Sometimes, though, my fixation on progress becomes unhealthy, almost like a drug addiction. My progress-fixation leaves a psychological residue that makes me feel anxious without continuous and escalating progress. Ironically, this intensifies after a recent flurry of progress. I get so revved up that I come to expect my high of accomplishment to continue at an ever-increasing pace. Sometimes this is good, of course, because when I get on a roll I’m motivated to keep rolling. Sometimes, though, it leads to unrealistically high expectations and lots of frustration. I start getting annoyed by a level of progress that would usually be quite fast enough. I also get overly distraught when plans fall through or when my progress gets slowed by the normal realities of life.
When we get in a progress-oriented mindset, we come to expect a click-click-click geometric pace to our progress. In reality, progress is usually more of a slow, step-by-step, arithmetic process. This is especially true of our most worthwhile and long-term projects, which are usually marathons rather than quick, one-off dashes.
Stamina is utterly important. And stamina is only possible if it’s managed well.
People think all they need to do is endure one crazy,
intense, job-free creative burst and their dreams will come true.
They are wrong….
(Hugh Macleod)[2]
Swept away by my progress high, I come to feel “It’s not enough! It’s not enough to keep my high going!” During long periods of such progress-fixation, I can even come to feel that my life itself has no value without the progress I’ve set myself up to expect. I get so caught up in the framework of things, the agendas, the habits and the expectations, that I can even come to see my life and my own sense of self as a failure.
It’s important to take a step back during such times and try to remember the underlying value of life itself. It’s important to remember that while it’s good to be purposefully driven, it’s not good when it turns our life itself into a masochistic exercise. The worth of our life and identity shouldn’t feel like it’s always teetering on the edge of a cliff, with progress (or lack thereof) constantly threatening life’s fundamental value.
In the midst of pursuing our goals, we should take time to appreciate what we already have. Life, after all, is more than just a means to an end. Ultimately, life is an end in itself. Sometimes we have to take a step back to remember this truth.
We need to learn to step back at times and be okay with just being okay. We need to lift our nose from the grindstone occasionally to take a look around. Yes, we have to accomplish and produce to stay alive, and it’s important to overcome challenges to feel proud of ourselves, but we should also take time from progress to appreciate what we already have (which is always our life and everything in it).
Fixating only on how life is supposed to be tends to make us miserable over the long periods when we don’t yet have what we want. Yes, such misery can fuel us to work harder, but it can also drain us to zero, making our life feel like nothing but a burden. If it drains us too much, it can even make us quit our dreams, or even life itself.
Remember to Love Your Life
Fortunately, the same brain that lets us imagine goals being done instantly can also step back and adopt a more realistic perspective when we ask it to. Instead of harshly criticizing life for failing to meet our expectations, we can learn to adjust our expectations to reality and to appreciate the life we already have all around us. (See “Managing Expectations” for some tips.)
* * *
There is an art to being focused on progress just enough and no more. There is an art to being responsible and attentive enough to address our challenges without being so consumed by expectations that we become paralyzed and start viewing our life “through a glass darkly.”
Focusing just on progress makes us forget how much is already great about the simple fact of being alive.
In my view, we should aim to be both productive and appreciative—to be both a catalyst and a witness in life. Instead of always feeling desperate to prove our life’s worth, we should also take time to remember its worth. After all, life has meaning, not only because we strive for goals, but also because we witness and appreciate our existence.
We should hope to leave our fingerprint on existence,
but also to let existence leave its fingerprint on us.
(EVR)
To learn more about Life Savor’s philosophy,
read Life Savor: Treasuring Our Gift of Life by Erik Victor Reed.
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Does the demand for progress feel like it’s running your life? Share your thoughts. Also tell us about other topics you’d like to discuss.
