When You Aren’t Sure What to Do, Try This
A two-part practice for moving forward.
During the times I’ve been most sad, depressed, or anxious (often a combination), I frequently wonder what should I do. Not just “What should I do to solve the problem?” but also “What should I do to occupy myself?”
Sitting around feeling depressed and anxious, I know well, tends to make the initial feelings worse. But if I can find a way to move forward and take active action, often I improve.
So what could the answer be?
Following this logic, I learned a simple tactic that’s helped a lot. I still do it often, even when I’m not sad or depressed.
The two-part solution is: when you’re not sure what to do, make something and help someone. That’s it!
1. Make something
2. Help someone
These actions are deliberately broad. When it comes to making something, I like to work on projects and create. For me, this often involves writing, though I also do other things. Having a project and a routine goes a long way toward having a sense of momentum.
I don’t think the specific project matters, so long as it’s something you believe in and feel excited to work on. (It shouldn’t just be busywork, or “someone else’s project that you don’t care about.”)
Similarly, helping someone can have a wide range of applications! It could be big or small, private or public, someone you know or a stranger.
This strategy works because it gets our eyes off the things that are troubling us. It doesn’t solve everything, but it does make things better.
A Brief Note on Current Events
Here is a way to think about current events. There are things you can control, and things you can’t. Most things fall into the second category! Only a few fall into the first.
When it comes to “what’s happening in the world,” there’s not much more to do at this point. You may be hyped up, checking the news while trying not to check the news. And yet there is no real news! Just more speculation.
So again: think of all the things that are within your control. There will always be something you can create, always someone in your sphere of influence who needs help with something.
You can not decide the future of the world. You can, however, make something and help someone. Why not do that?
I concur. Random anxiety will sometimes rise up in me like a hungry ghost that makes me wander around to escape it.
In IFS terms, my firefighters will try to numb me by scrolling on Facebook or doing other low-ROI activities that push the bad feelings down, but also create more bad feelings by freezing me up and blocking my energy flow.
Sometimes I can’t face the underlying bad vibes arising from my exiles directly. I can’t use my thousands of hours of IFS experience to deal with being triggered in the moment, and that’s OK.
That’s the actual definition of being triggered, right? Sometimes life is a wave that pushes us underwater and no amount of swimming capabilities will do us any good in the moment. It’s time to surrender on a certain level and accept we’re triggered and simply find a way to not drown!
So I love this advice to do something. Ideally, not doom scroll—instead, engage in a meaningful activity that takes our mind off the crap long enough to get us through whatever bad patch arose from the depths of the murky subconscious unprocessed stuff that floats up and rises to the surface from time to time.
#action seems to conquer fear, distraction ;) sometimes the action is mediating / prayer, but I can worry through that, I'm always happier making music, always :) So brain activations, etc. and now it's pretty easy to do :)