Mental Traps_ The Overthinker's Guide to a Happier Life - Andre Kukla [26]
A moment’s reflection is enough to see that the validity of this assumption can’t be taken for granted. Our life isn’t always more fortunate when everything proceeds according to plan. Some surprises turn out well. Resentfully dragging ourselves away from the evening news, we have a delightful evening with an old friend. Our clamber up the ladder of success is brought to a halt by illness, and we find the mental space to review our life and emerge with deeper values. Alternatively, our clamber up the ladder of success proceeds exactly as planned; and we wake up one day to find our children grown before we ever had a chance to play with them. If only their interruptions of our important work had been more effective!
The forces that shape our destiny are infinitely complex. Our plans and decisions are therefore always based on radically incomplete information. Nevertheless, we’re often required to make plans. But there’s no advantage to making an indiscriminate habit of it, as though proceeding according to plan were an intrinsic good. If the Universe should pull the reins from our hand by visiting us with the unexpected, there’s no immediate cause for sorrow. The track record of the Universe is at least as good as our own. A life in which we are always having to react to unforeseen developments is not necessarily less happy or less creative than a life of total self-direction. Even if both lives resulted in equivalent outcomes, the former would have the advantage of sparing us the burden of deciding. With the Universe at the reins, we can relax and enjoy the ride.
The assumption that things always go better when we consciously determine their course finds its quintessential expression in the enthusiasm for biofeedback. How delighted we are at the prospect of controlling our gastric secretions by an act of will! We don’t question whether we can do a better job of it than our autonomic nervous system. But what’s the basis for this confidence? Has willful direction been so remarkably successful in the rest of our life that we’re ready to entrust our stomach to it?
In reality, of course, this striving to extend our control to the furthermost reaches of space and the innermost recesses of our own bodies stems not from confidence in our abilities so much as from a fear of the unexpected. But the unexpected is neither good nor bad. It’s another dimension of life entirely. Its elimination may be likened to the extinction of a species or the abolition of the experience of color. If we succeed in scrubbing the world clean of surprise, we will be left with a fragment of our former life.
t often happens that, having unequivocally decided to do something, we nevertheless experience a great deal of difficulty in getting started. The mind simply refuses to get down to business. In preparation for writing a letter, we order up all the papers on our desk. Then we order up all the papers in the desk, straighten a picture on the wall, do some calisthenics … In short we seek out any small occupation that can take the place of turning to our appointed task. This is the mental trap of procrastination. We may or may not get the upper hand over our procrastinative tendency. But even when we do, it takes the usual trap’s toll of squandered time and energy.
Some of our procrastinations last for only a moment. Having already decided to run into a burning house and save a child, we still hesitate before entering the flames. Except in the most extraordinary circumstances,