Your imagination will beat you.
I regularly talk with some friends about decision making, about steering life and about doing right. Something very prominent in those conversations is the thought of there being a better opportunity coming up in the future. I think we’ve all had that thought and that at some point, it has impacted some decision we’ve made.
On a micro scale, this thought is best described as the concept of FOMO — fear of missing out. Those suffering from FOMO pretty often describes it as a feeling following them trough every decision they make, and making them question their choices, every single one, on a very basic level. The premise for FOMO is for you to think that there might have been a better option for you to choose, and that you might be missing out on that better option.
I recently stumbled upon a quote that pretty well describes my thought of this.
“To constantly think there are better things for me to do is to suffer.”
— Andrew Forsthoefel on Good life project.
The notion of there being something better for us to do, is to always evaluate and weigh the activity we’re pursuing against the fantasy of how some other activity might be. I can tell you, my imagination is always going to beat reality, and therefore, I’m always going to be let down by the present if I evaluate it in the same category as my imagination.
Let’s say I’m pursuing one of my favourite activities, watching Chelsea FC play brilliantly. That’s one of the activities that I value the most, and I really enjoy it. In my imagination, I can easily beat that by instead of watching them on my screen, watching them in real life. And instead of just watching the game on set, I can imagine someone picked me up and let me say hello to the whole team. And so on.
The point is that to constantly weigh your reality against your imagination is always a loosing game. That’s why thinking that there are better things to do than what you’re currently up to is going to create suffering.
I’ve been trained in a community called Art of Hosting. It’s focused on creating rooms in which people can have conversations that matter. In that community, some rules or principals have been developed to frame workshops. One of those rules is that whoever shows up is the right person.
I had a real issue accepting that thought at first. My mindset and approach is that if one works har enough and with enough passion, you’ll see results from that. So if you work har enough with marketing and with inviting people to events, the right people will show up. I was living with another kind of suffering, as I always thought there might be a better way to do the thing I was doing.
Whoever shows up is the right person.
And I still do, just not to the same extent. When I did think like that at every given point throughout all of the events I hosted, it had an impact on my presence. So when I leant back on that rule, I became a better host, which I think has given me more leverage hosting events.
The point of all of this is for you to stop overthinking things, because that’s really the core when thinking of what if:s. Stop thinking of what might have happened just as well as you can give up all thoughts of what will happen. Your imagination always gets the better of you.
