Let's study

мιηєяνα

Last week, I was exploring college campuses and weighing my options. However, whenever I open my for-you-page in Instagram, I always can’t help but feel down. Everyone is accomplishing amazing things while I still feel left behind. It’s like everyone knows what they’re doing but me. Every post and reel, the constant nagging thought of me being the only one struggling with their goals always consumes me. In the end, I fall to the doom-scroll and self-pity hole.

It’s a never-ending miserable cycle. You think you feel fine at first, but then you see a post of a loud influencer telling you to do this and that. They tell you to always be on the grind—to keep up the hustle culture or else you failed your ancestors. That isn’t to say loud posts are all you see in the media, but there are gentle ones too. However once you’re deep in that cycle, those very same gentle posts become a stab in the chest. What’s meant to be a comforting and encouraging hug, just suffocates you instead.

"I already rested and procrastinated multiple times, why should rest be productive for me? I don’t deserve that reward yet."

Yet that thought itself is a lie. Everyone deserves proper rest regardless. Your procrastination? It looks like rest but it’s just stagnation that turns into regret. Actual rest energizes you, procrastination demotivates you. It’s so easy to say "just keep up the momentum" and "be consistent" but it’s still so easy to fall back into it regardless. The more it repeats, the more it brings you down. It eventually forms the belief that you can’t be able to do it -- that maybe you aren’t meant for it. The thought of not living up to your ideal self and who you’re meant to become is enough to ruin a person.

I am someone who still struggles with it. I promised to post weekly when starting this account, and I didn’t live up to that. Right now, I’m second-guessing myself as I write this post. That this doesn’t deserve to be heard, that what I have to say isn’t insightful, and that I have no right to be here especially as I didn’t live up to what I expected for myself.

But then I read this substack article that said:

"Seneca said, "While we are postponing, lifespeeds by."

They understood that waiting too long was a form of self-abandonment.

You want to honor your potential?

Stop waiting for the stars to align.

They won't. Move anyway."

That passage of text alone got me to start moving and type this entry. To keep up that pace and become who you want to be, we have to forgive ourselves right now and accept who we are. We have to embrace all the flaws, failures, and the label of not being enough. If we want to move unto the new version of ourselves, we must forgive and accept the old. To forgive means to be present, instead of indulging in self-abandonment.

It all sounds so cliché and simple. Another case of easier to say than done, and I admit it really is. Forgiveness and acceptance take time. Practicing them in small moments is crucial, but it also makes them all the more difficult. Now I’m not saying all this to demotivate you and myself, I’m just stating the reality of how it is for me. I’m still learning to overcome this in a world that glorifies hustle culture.

Last week, I was traveling to see the campuses of colleges I could go to. It’s a bit terrifying but it’s exciting. But this experience also forced me to take time off of my phone, and boyy it felt so much better. I didn’t have to face another person loudly or gently sharing how to be better. I didn’t have to look at another post to compare myself to and think "I’m so left behind…"

Social media demands attention, and most of the time it forces your attention away from yourself. It forces you to look at others as it fuels its algorithm to keep you glued to the screen. This cycle? Keeps you stuck and it is not a pretty situation to be in.

So if ever you find yourself in this position, just as I was? Take a break from all social media. Lock it. Log off. If you want to? Delete it. Then explore. Do the things you love. Do the things you once hated but want to try again. Experience life. Love again even!

You don’t need to be perfect or accomplished to be loved and cared for. If you want to become the person you want, start giving yourself what you need right now. Otherwise, how else can you continue your journey and achieve your goals if you’re starved of your needs?

Don’t talk to yourself like you’re nothing. Talk to yourself like an encouraging friend and a gentle parent. Furthermore, let go of that idealised version you have of yourself. Even the most perfect version of us will have their bad days. If we want to become them, we must accept their most flawed being. When all is said and done, it’s your growth that matters most. Not others', just yours. So, I’m learning to grow—not for perfection, but for peace.

——

To those who stayed, thank you for reading! Once again, I greatly apologise for the inconsistent posts. However, I came up with this during all that time lost and I hope you gained something from it.

Lastly, shoutout to the substack post that helped me:

Give this a read as well. I swear, it’s worth your time as it was mine.

I've been trying to limp along with filtering rules and have added "email mortification ritual" to my personal calendar but it's not helping and I'm having trouble sussing out WHY email has become so impossible to look at.

what are my goals?

what does approaching my goal look like in an ideal world?

what does approaching my goal look like in the real world?

what are the things that make my approach non-ideal?

can I fix any of those things with simple changes?

can I fix any of those things with complex changes?

can I ask for help with any of those things?

are some of those things actually totally unnecessary and can they be dropped?

can I make a coherent plan to improve my approach?

what steps do i need to take to make this plan part of my day?

mushroom: can you feel your heart burning? can you feel the struggle within? the fear within me is beyond anything your soul can make. you cannot kill me in a way that matters