Things May Be Simpler Than You Think

Image by alicepopkorn – busy (license).

“Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler.”
Albert Einstein

Is personal development and improving yourself complicated? Sometimes. But in my experience, it’s very easy to make things a lot more complicated than they need to be. This can make goals a lot harder to achieve than they really need to be and add unnecessary stress.

So why do we do it? I mean, we don’t really want things to be more complicated and harder than they really are?

Well, actually, I believe that from time to time we may want them to be complicated. Two key reasons are:

Protection from pain.

By actually doing things, failing and learning you also need to expose yourself to pain and discomfort. By overcomplicating things and over thinking them you can create a helpful excuse to not take action. Instead you can remain in a state where you are “still trying to figure things out” for a long time.

The ego want more, more, more.

The ego tends to want to more. It wants to feel better or worse than someone else. By making things more complicated than they need to be you can make them feel very important. And since you are involved in these important things, well, then you have to be important too, right?

So you feel more important and often smarter since you are involved in all this complicated stuff – which feels good – but at the same time you make it harder to make actual progress and to take action by making things overly complicated, important and “heavy” in your own mind. You overcomplicate every issue and make it an intellectual discussion instead of a solution.

Another variation of this can be to make any personal development goal – or just anything your want out of life – in to this epic struggle. Either just in your mind or also by reading more and more about a topic.

The more you read about a topic the more complicated it seems in your mind and is also becomes “heavier”. What may have been pretty straightforward in real life becomes this huge struggle, where you are Rocky Balboa taking slow painstaking steps uphill against horrific odds. Yep, it’s a real inspiring thing as you struggle as the heroic underdog.

It’s also – again – a great way to make things so much harder for yourself. It’s you putting up imaginary obstacles in your own mind that aren’t even there in reality. The Rocky way of thinking about these things is very seductive. But life becomes so much lighter and easier when you just let that stuff go.

It’s a bit counter-intuitive and it took me quite some time to understand this. You think that an overly serious attitude may seem like the right attitude to help you achieve your goal.

But a more relaxed attitude where you tell yourself that what you are doing isn’t really that complicated, epic – millions of people have probably done what you want to do in last 1000 years or so – or super serious is often more effective to get the result you desire.

How to simplify your thoughts, plans, actions and life.

Here are four tips I use to simplify my life.

1. Bring awareness to you own thought patterns.

Ask yourself questions like:
“Honestly, am I overcomplicating this?”
“What is the simplest and most straightforward solution to my problem that I may be avoiding to protect myself from pain?”

2. What would Jason Bourne do?

I like to ask myself this question from time to time when I feel that I am making things a bit too complicated or when I’m thinking too much.

Now, the Bourne frame of mind isn’t about putting your car in reverse and going off rooftops.

It is about putting a stop to thinking and allowing yourself to work with what you already know. You allow the right action to arise from within rather than think a lot about it. You have trust in yourself and your experience.

This is what Jason Bourne does a lot of the time up on the movie screen. He does what he has learned, he let’s his body and subconscious do most of the doing. A lot of thinking would only hold him back.

As I have mentioned many times, I believe that thinking has its place. But to be wrapped up in it all the time often leads to much doubts within and little actually getting done. The thing is, you know what to do most of the time already. Don’t put up obstacles in your own way.

3. Let go of the need to feel smart or important.

Instead of deriving a sense of feeling good about yourself by feeling smart and important through over complicating or over thinking things just relax. Derive those positive feelings about yourself by doing what you know deep down are the right things to do instead. This will make your feel good about yourself – raise or maintain your self esteem – and give you practical results you can enjoy.

4. Realize that much of this is in your head.

Your relationships to what you want to achieve are – just like your relationships to people – to a large extent just in your head. Think that something is easy and simple instead of “heavy” and complicated and your perception of that external thing you want to achieve tends to change too. Experiment and find healthy and effective relationships to what you want to achieve instead of just seeing something like many people may do.

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