39. Goodbye Alarm, Hello Self-Criticism

A few Sundays ago, in a noble attempt to be virtuous (and negate some of the Sunday Scaries), I had a think about the week ahead.

I came to the decision that I was going to have a productive Monday. The broad plan was going to go something like:

• Wake up at 6am

• Go to Jiu-Jitsu

• Work

• Go for a post-work swim

• Publish a podcast

• Chill for a bit

• Go to bed, content with a day well spent

Nice. So brimming with virtue and motivation, off to bed I went. Good job.

Then 6am came, and I committed the cardinal sin. I didn’t just snooze my alarm, I reset the bugger. For two hours later.

Yep, the alarm was patched, Jiu-Jitsu was patched, and consequently, any sort of internal peace of mind for the rest of the day was patched…

To be fair, on paper (‘on paper’ being the key words), the day didn’t spiral like it could have done, and has previously been known to.

I did eventually drag my arse out of bed just after 8am, and just about managed to force myself to do a very light 5km run before work. Then most of the other things that I had planned to do got done as well. On paper, a pretty productive day.

On paper.

Though what gets done only ever tells us so much. How it gets done is often more insightful.

And in this case, as opposed to doing all of those things out of enjoyment/motivation/general positive vibes, due to binning my alarm off, everything that day was done more from a place of self-criticism. A little naggy voice in my head saying something along the lines of “you better get this done, you don’t want to be even more of a let down!”

Good day on the outside, not such a good day on the inside.

Now, the objective of this post isn’t for you to feel sorry for my potentially overly self-critical ways (though feel free to if you’d like!)

No, I suppose it’s to echo a point that we discussed in blog 35, that there doesn’t always seem to be a correlation between people’s external world (apparent happiness/status/achievements/successes etc), and how they actually feel on the inside.

This may be fairly widespread knowledge these days, but as it’s something that still feels counter-intuitive, I do think it’s worth reiterating.

In blog 34 we used the stories of Virginia Woolfe, Rafael Nadal and Andre Agassi to exemplify this point. All achieved remarkable success, though all driven (to varying degrees) by their relevant demons. And I’m sure we can all think of examples where we’ve been pushed to do something by some sort of negative emotion (insecurity, jealousy, self-loathing etc).

It can be tempting to see other people’s lives and other people’s successes and admire, respect or even envy their position, but without fully appreciating why and how they got there.

Though if external ‘success’ can often overcompensate for inner turmoil, then without any context of what’s going on in other people’s lives (and more importantly, in other people’s heads...), then we may want to think twice about negatively comparing ourselves. Often, it isn't what it seems, and is possibly a worse option than our own.

The only things we really get to see from other people are their external facades, achievements, and what they selectively choose to put on social media to represent themselves/their lives.

Compare that to what we get to see of ourselves, and it’s not so pretty.

We have to witness every weird thought, neuroticism, regret, insecurity, worry and generally destructive internal dialogue from a front row seat.

Tiny unrepresentative window into someone else’s life vs a constant very representative live stream into our own. Naturally our lives are going to seem comparatively shambolic.

Again, this may be so bleeding obvious these days as to be hardly worth stating. Though regardless, I do believe that an acknowledgment of this point can help us have slightly more empathy and slightly less jealousy, and therefore can be worth deliberating on every now and then.

And after deliberating on that point a little while longer, I suppose it’ll be time to set my alarm again…