like, if i’m feeling bad but force myself to do something, i usually feel better. how to maintain the usefulness of this advice without presenting it as ‘fuck your feelings’, in that usual arrogant right wing sort of way
“Action over anxiety.”
My mom has told me this since I was a kid, and it is still something I am trying to put into practice effectively when met with challenging situations. It is the most forgiving way I can think of to get yourself in the mental headspace you are talking about without the “time to nut up” connotation.
I really like this, and your mom is wise. Hug her for us if you can! 🫂
I will do that, thank you. I’ll show her your response. I’m sure she will appreciate the kind words.
Enjoy when you can, and endure when you must.
-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
not an exact fit, but i think about that sentence often
I prefer to think of it as “the only way out is through” or “the only path is forward.”
For some problems it won’t matter how people feel or even who is at fault. What matters often is how you begin to work through it. Once you’re out of the hole you can reflect.
Rise to the occasion
Thread soundtrack: IDLES - Samaritans
+1 for IDLES
In Swedish we say “Har du tagit Fan i båten, får du ro honom i land”.
In English it would be “If you put Satan in your rowboat, you’d better row him ashore.”
The English equivalent is “When you’re going through hell, keep going.”
“I have to get over this some time, why not now?”
~ Louis Wu, from Ringworld, written by Larry Niven.
“Because I’m not ready” is also a valid answer, but it gets your brain moving towards the goal I find.
Technically what you’re describing is discipline. It takes a lot of will power to just make yourself do something. You can take pride in that. Call yourself disciplined, principled, stoic.
In fact, you might broaden your perspective on this particular subject by looking into stoicism. It’s like a “manly” mindset but without the gender or toxicity attached.
Your feelings are valid. Job still needs doing.
You don’t get to the Promised Land without going through the Wilderness. You don’t get there without crossing over hills and mountains, but if you keep on keeping on, you can’t help but reach it. We won’t all see it, but it’s coming…
Thug that shit out
Just keep swimming…
Really, that thinking should be a last resort instead of the default.
It’s ok to be vulnerable. It’s ok to ask for help. It’s ok to do or say nothing while you assess a situation as sometimes that is the best course of action.
It’s only when you have no options left and you must act that you actually need to take action alone. One might actually need time to process a trauma, or experience grief. And I would argue that the ability to be vulnerable with others is it’s own type of strength.
For instance, if you are noticing that you are getting depressed and are finding it hard to perform basic maintenance tasks for yourself. Instead of first trying to be strong and convince yourself to do it every time. Maybe it might be better to seek help for your depression.
True. “Suck it up” works in some occasions and in others it makes everything worse. It’s a terrible default approach to teach your children because they can end up never learning how to deal with stress in a healthy fashion.
The result is usually someone who builds up stress where other people don’t (and then acts accordingly) and who has absolutely no ability to comfort other people when they need it. Few parents want their children to be lonely assholes.
Of course it’s harder to teach someone nuance. Identifying when it’s okay to be vulnerable and when you need to tough it out by yourself is difficult. But if you’re not capable of both you’re lacking essential tools.
“Your feelings matter, but your actions matter too, and you choose those.”
“The only way out is through.”
“What can I do to improve my situation.”
Don’t let douchebags scare you away from this, but this is basically stoicism. It’s not that your feelings don’t matter, it’s just that sometimes you actually can change your situation and it’s good to do that then
I don’t know that there’s anything quite as punchy, succinct, and general-purpose as “man-up” that doesn’t have the sort of macho bullshit connotations, and if there is, it’s probably some sort of psychobabble that wouldn’t mean much to most people who need to hear it.
I’m also not a fan of the phrase itself, but the general sentiment represented by it has gotten me pretty far in life.
I’m not a religious person at all, but in certain contexts the “Prayer for Serenity” can kind of get you to a similar place.
For the SciFi nerds, there’s Dune’s Litany against Fear, or Yoda’s “Do or do not, there is no ‘try’”
There’s also “mind over matter,” you can’t necessarily help what all the synapses and hormones and such in your body are making you feel, but you can sure as hell help what you do about it.
And of course from the advertising world there’s Nike’s “Just do it”
There’s also some echoes of it in things like “be the change you want to see,” or “if you want something done right you have to do it yourself,” or “fake it til you make it”
Something else that has stuck with me is something one of my instructors said a lot when I was training to be a 911 dispatcher “don’t do nothing.” Make sure that whatever the problem is, you’re taking positive steps to address it. You can’t count on things resolving themselves, and you can’t count on someone else fixing it either, you have to be the one to make things happen.
Again drawing from my own life experiences, I was a boy scout and the scout motto is to “be prepared” which I find pairs nicely with the saying that “people don’t rise to the occasion, they fall to their level of training.” Do what you can to prepare yourself beforehand, and everything will fall into place a lot easier when the time comes. That can mean physical or mental training and practice, or it could be something like getting your clothing, gear, tools, meal prep, cleaning materials together the night before and setting up alarms, reminders, notes, etc. to keep yourself on track.
For people inclined to read up on some philosophy, ancient Greek stoicism had a lot to say about things like self control and virtuous living, and daoism/taoism which has concepts like “Wu Wei” which is tricky to translate and keep the meaning intact, but it means something like “effortless action” it’s kind of a mix of just doing what is needed as it comes up without having to think about it too much, and a bit of, like God said to Bender in Futurama “When you do things right, people won’t be sure you’ve done anything at all.”
A stoic though that helps me more than “man up” is asking myself “what harm will come to me?” In stoic thought we’re the only ones who can harm ourselves through the misuse of our impressions. We often know how we should act in a situation, but we don’t want to because of some perceived harm or discomfort. But since the stoics believed the only real harm was moral, we’re only hurting ourselves by not acting virtuously.
Will I hurt myself more by action or inaction? Through inaction what kind of person will I be? What will I lose through inaction?
Clearly you need to watch “The Magicians” for a dose of High King Margo. No really, give it a try.
Persevere.
