The Way We Fool Ourselves To Inaction

I can’t even count how many times I’ve had this conversation with myself in the past.

I should lose weight. I should improve my looks and dress better. I should go talk to that cute girl there. I should go sleep earlier so I’m more energetic tomorrow. I should graduate sooner. I should be more active in social events. I should… Yeah, the list goes on and on and on and on.

Of course I didn’t do any of those, because they had a loophole that allowed me to do nothing.

The dangerous word – Should

The “I should do X” is a game of daydreaming we play with ourselves. It’s our perfect self-image, our ideal beliefs and grand expectations for ourselves. They come out like “I’m a good person, so I should…” or “I want to be a guy with tons of girls, so I should…”

But thinking that you should do something like losing weight, dressing more attractive, or go talk to that hot girl is actually a coping mechanism that allows us to do nothing.

And that’s what I was doing.

I daydreamed that I’m going to be the Chad among all Chads. Any day now. And for that, I felt like a total fucking failure, because I did nothing to make that a reality.

We’re conditioned feel guilty to avoid taking action

So what happens when we do the opposite of what we think we should do? Well, our mind tells us that in our self-image “I’m a good person, so I should…”, which also means that “when I don’t do it, I’ll feel guilty because I’m not a bad person.” After all, only bad people enjoy doing bad things for themselves and good people know better.

And that guilt allows to punish ourselves for failing our own expectations. It allows us to say “I didn’t go to the gym today, but I’ll go for sure tomorrow or next week. See how much this hurts me? I don’t want to hurt and I committed to changing myself, so I promise I’ll do it the next time.”

Feeling guilty lets us keep up our perfect self-image even if our actions keep telling us that we are doing the exact opposite what our ideal image would require. “Paying the price” (guilt) for our “crime” allows us to keep do the thing we feel guilty about. As long as we’re willing to pay the price of more guilt, we’re free to do it (or not do it) again.

The guilt allows us to pretend something is true about ourselves that, based on our actions, isn’t. It maintains an inaccurate image about us that doesn’t match our actions.

And for real. That guilt was killing me inside. Every freaking time a cute girl walked by or saw a hot girl’s profile on Tinder. I was reminded that I never did anything to reach what I wanted.

Eat pizza and drink tons of beer, even if I should cut calories. Play video games, even if I should work on homework. Stay home, even if I should expose myself to social situations.

Did I do anything to change these habits? Yes, go on a guilt-trip with myself. After couple hours of blaming myself how I was such a failure, I returned to my normal life. Did anything actually change? Of course not.

I was defending my frustration with my very life.

I had high expectations of myself, but I did nothing to achieve it.

Channel your anger to the situation instead of you

If you take a good look, you probably can notice that being angry at ourselves i.e. feeling guilty isn’t really productive. We want something, but we don’t do anything for it because we can just feel bad for not-doing-it without actually changing anything.

In other words, we fool ourselves into not doing anything by feeling guilty and pinky-promising that next time we for sure will do it. And so the story continues.

Steps I eventually took were to first change my self-image to be in line with reality. That, at the moment, I was quite ugly and shy. I was honest with myself.

Second, I started to take actions to change myself and reach the self-image I wanted. Read books. Go to gym. Lose weight.

Third, I directed my guilt to the situation instead of me. Guilt is anger towards ourselves for failing our own expectations thinking “I’m a failure for doing what I shouldn’t do”.

Instead, I said to myself “the situation is horrible, but I can fix it”. Because if I hate the situation this much, why wouldn’t I change it?

After all, I was doing the same at work and school. If a work tool wasn’t working as expected, I’d fix it immediately.

My mindset changed from calling myself a failure to “yeah, I’ll fix this situation”. At the same time, the anger I felt transformed from degrading me to motivating me to change things.

Takeaways

• Thinking “I should do X” sounds positive, but it leaves us an escape hatch to not do it and just feel guilty. Instead of a productive mindset, it’s a coping mechanism that allows us to do nothing while preserving our perfect self-image.
• By feeling guilty, we can pretend something is true about ourselves even if that conflicts with the reality of our actions
• Guilt is anger directed at ourselves, which is destructive. If we want to be productive, we should direct the anger the situation as much as possible. This shifts the anger from degrading you to motivating you.

To be honest, just changing my mindset on not feeling guilty was just the start.

Doing the actions felt like a huge leap, and I didn’t really feel ready for it. Trying to change my life surfaced a lot of fears, doubts and uncertainties on will this ever work. If you don’t feel ready either, check how I worked to get started.