Minor fuck-ups, major breakdowns
Lately I haven’t been feeling quite ok. I’ve been locked inside my head for a while now and I cannot place my finger on what’s wrong. It’s like I’m on autopilot and my self confidence is like a beaten down tulip. I’ve been wobbly. Do you know that feeling? Quite ok to not look into it, but bad enough to make simple mistakes often. It’s like an “not ok, but under the radar”. And these particular states are the most dangerous ones. Because of your under the radar not ok-ness the mistakes will keep piling on until they will leave you unbalanced and you’ll fall. Now depending on your habits, you’ll maybe fall into a mild depression or at least a close relative to it.
You might want to make a little check in with yourself.
But before I go ahead with the questions, I first want to explain what I mean by “minor fuck-ups”. If the fuck-up only includes hurting your own and other’s ego’s, if the fuck-up disrupts only a small part of the system, if the fuck-up costs you only a small percentage of your income (let’s say 10%), then we could consider it a small fuck-up. As small as they can be, then can really, really sting. So yeah, you did not just hurt someone beyond repair, but you still did something that was perceived like an insult or a disappointment. You didn’t fuck-up in a big meeting, but you did in a smaller stake one. Or you didn’t get a fine that would throw you into personal bankruptcy, but you could’ve definitely use that money for something else.
There is a deep, rotten romance between us humans and fast things. We love fast conclusions because it saves us the time to really process the data. We love jumping to conclusions as much as we love our McDonalds. So knowing this about human behavior, a minor fuck-up could feel real quick like a major one. Hence, have a major breakdown.
1. Am I getting enough sleep?
No, it’s not only you who is an entirely different person when they’re sleep deprived. Sleep depravation makes you go on auto-pilot/ power saving mode. And that would be fine if like would be well oiled machine. But… we already know it ain’t so. The moment you go on auto-pilot there is no doubt that you’ve just increased your chases of screwing up by ten-fold. These are just a few things that happen while being sleep deprived.
Mood disorders, higher stress responsiveness. Stomach pains. Increased appetite. Focus, cognitive, performance and memory deficits (namely memory formation.
Over longer periods of time, sleep deprivation is linked to dysfunctions like hypertension, dyslipidemia, cardio vascular disease, weight-related issues, metabolic syndrome, and type 2 diabetes. On this grim note, I want to add that the good news is that we can invest in our sleep if we really understand the deep effect it was over us.
Check this out! I learnt new things about sleep from this conversation between Shawn Stevenson and Tom Bilyeu. He’ll also give you tips on how you can improve your sleep quality.
2. Am I moving enough?
The easiest way to high-jack your mind state is to go through your body. Just like Tony Robbins says. Besides the good hormones release, a good exercise also nudges you to wake up behind the wheel and take yourself off from autopilot. Raise your hand if after a good, hard exercise you felt like a different person. I won’t mention food here because our eating habits are a byproduct of the most basic things we do like sleep, exercise and mental health. Do these three things good and food will follow.
When you are in that major breakdown after the minor fuck-up, you might not feel like moving. But do so. Even a little bit. Go outside your office building, breath, get up from your chair, make yourself some tea. Stretch. Anything that will short circuit your brain.
“The difference between peak performance and poor performance is not intelligence or ability; most often it’s the state that your mind and body is in.” — Tony Robbins
3. Am I trying to get rid of the pain?
Be careful with this one. The more you try to deny the pain caused by that really small fuck-up, the more you will enforce the cycle. While you are busy to push against your natural flow of feeling those emotions, the more defocused you are. We have a lot of shame associated with negative feelings. This shame appears especially around minor mistakes. Just think about the very known “just pull yourself together”, the “just wipe your tears and let’s go”, or, or (!) “that’s enough”. The desire of perfection was so strongly embedded in us that we don’t even need an external source for this one, we can do it ourselves. I’m not saying that we should endlessly sulk. But I do say that getting rid of the pain is an illusion as it just transforms into something else, eventually materializing into your next mistake. And this is the precise recipe of forming your private Fuck-Up Waterfall.
Shame is afraid of permission and inclusion. So let me give you permission right here: you have the right to be affected and be sad and disappointed about that mail, about that lost phone, about that small fall out, about that fine, about *insert minor fuck-up here*.
I just want us to learn how to learn how to move efficiently though the different shades of pain.
4. When did it start?
When you make mindless mistakes, your focus is off. You lack focus every time you’re not centered, every time your focus derails to an exterior source. So, what was the first thing that defocused you? That initial push that disbalanced you? And I mean the very first thing. I mean that last time you felt like surfing the wave instead of just floating. Answer this and half of the work will be done. You’ll also get a prize at the end: you’ll either find something new about yourself or an old habit manifesting itself in a new manner. Depending on the reason, stick with the investigation and go deeper.
These past few days I was in Holland. It was definitely an experience. I’ve had three days in which mistakes were running like tap water in my life. At the end, I was so at peace with anything that might happen that I could’ve stayed suspiciously calm if the plane crashed. I also thought that given the past days I could be the only one dead at the crash. Or if I had survived, me explaining to the police my calmness would’ve been quite the conversation. Instead of making a list all the fuck-ups and write about my minor-major breakdowns, I chose to write this note to self.
I hope that it can become a note to yourself, as well.
Thank you for checking out this story! This is the recommendations section. Welcome.
Have you watched Dirty Money on Netflix? So good!
The song that popped into my mind while writing this: Ice Cube — Check Yo Self.
