Makeover! Homebody to hustler edition
February 27, 2019 9:14 AM Subscribe
Have you gone from being more on the passive and fatalistic side to being more active and self-determining? How do you think this happened?
Ideal if you could address 1) habits of passivity (eg learned helplessness), 2) motivation, and 3) beliefs about agency vs structure in general (ie whether an individual’s self-directed action can yield hoped-for results and prevail over the inertia of social structures).
Ideal if you could address 1) habits of passivity (eg learned helplessness), 2) motivation, and 3) beliefs about agency vs structure in general (ie whether an individual’s self-directed action can yield hoped-for results and prevail over the inertia of social structures).
I don't know if this directly applies to your question. But I think our influences can affect how optimistic and active vs. how pessimistic/realistic and passive we can be. I know that something as simple as changing your source of news or what I choose to watch on TV can have an effect on outlook. I once read a book on the effect of television within domestic borders and internationally. The author said something like how TV creates images that "glow in the mind for hours" after we see them. Not to say I should be Pollyannaish or isolate myself from what I need to know to function in the world. But being deliberate about what I let in is a lot of my own responsibility. TV news isn't often any better than "Criminal Minds," so I wonder if the entertainment argument often used to defend the latter is a little weak. Working with a professional to set goals and change internal messages, like working with a dietitian to help me eat better is a necessary step. But I am ultimately responsible for staying away from the refrigerator or choosing what I let my TV or radio or Internet feed tell me.
posted by CollectiveMind at 10:00 AM on February 27, 2019 [4 favorites]
posted by CollectiveMind at 10:00 AM on February 27, 2019 [4 favorites]
that's actually a really good point CollectiveMind brings up, that I wouldn't have thought of, but the choice to binge a particular TV show was a huge motivating factor in a major positive life change I made a couple years ago, one that has had beneficial side effects on my overall level of motivation and confidence. Hooray for TV, watch some every day!
but I came here to say something along the lines of, overcoming some fairly major life obstacles and achieving important goals lead to a real antipathy toward passivity and fatalism for me. Obviously, this is sort of hard to package as prescriptive advice; I do not suggest that you go out and acquire some fairly major life obstacles to overcome. But the fact that you're asking this question suggests that there's some things you need or want to accomplish, and if you can find a way to make progress in addressing them in material ways, you will be providing the best kind of fuel for the internal philosophical engines that can propel you toward a state of mind that's more proactive and self-determining.
I'm being purposely vague about my own experiences here but memail me if specifics would be helpful.
posted by prize bull octorok at 11:38 AM on February 27, 2019 [4 favorites]
but I came here to say something along the lines of, overcoming some fairly major life obstacles and achieving important goals lead to a real antipathy toward passivity and fatalism for me. Obviously, this is sort of hard to package as prescriptive advice; I do not suggest that you go out and acquire some fairly major life obstacles to overcome. But the fact that you're asking this question suggests that there's some things you need or want to accomplish, and if you can find a way to make progress in addressing them in material ways, you will be providing the best kind of fuel for the internal philosophical engines that can propel you toward a state of mind that's more proactive and self-determining.
I'm being purposely vague about my own experiences here but memail me if specifics would be helpful.
posted by prize bull octorok at 11:38 AM on February 27, 2019 [4 favorites]
For some of us, passivity can result from perfectionism. The idea that if you think you might fail, or it won't be perfect can really put a big damper on your motivation to do something. Sometimes even if that thing is something we know we have done well in the past. I adhere to the idea that 'If something is worth doing, it's worth doing poorly' -- if a thing is truly worth doing, it's worth doing no matter how it turns out. Perfection is ever the enemy of good.
Sometimes a good way to get motivated is to give yourself small wins. Make a to-do list for the day or week and just do one thing, the smallest one, so you can check it off and get the ball rolling mentally to tackle the other items. As with many fears resulting in avoidance, often the avoidance can make the tasks seem larger or more complicated than they actually are. Once you start reminding yourself that you can tackle things bit by bit, the fear can recede and you will be able to have the confidence to move forward.
Social structures are a bit more difficult to tackle. Racism, sexism, and other things like that are often invisible to those who don't experience them. Yes, it's frustrating to know that you have to work harder and do more to get the same opportunities that seem to come easily to others. However, allowing yourself to be mired in self-doubt and defeatism because of those factors is not ever going to net a positive result. You cannot work towards systemic change if you aren't going out and participating and proving (even just to yourself) that these obstacles can be met head-on and sometimes overcome.
Fatalism and passivity are often results of systemic issues or childhood trauma. They are coping mechanisms that you developed to feel safer. But they can stand in your way, and once you see that they are, you know that you have grown past them. So you have to find other coping mechanisms that serve you better for where you are in life today. This is not an easy process, but CBT and DBT are often recommended on the green for solving this very issue. They really do work wonders for many people, often much quicker than you might suppose.
Start small. Do things even if you're scared or don't want to. Make a conscious decision to keep trying every day, even if you fail sometimes. It's these little, everyday choices that eventually add up to finding yourself in a different headspace one day.
Best of luck.
posted by ananci at 12:40 PM on February 27, 2019 [6 favorites]
Sometimes a good way to get motivated is to give yourself small wins. Make a to-do list for the day or week and just do one thing, the smallest one, so you can check it off and get the ball rolling mentally to tackle the other items. As with many fears resulting in avoidance, often the avoidance can make the tasks seem larger or more complicated than they actually are. Once you start reminding yourself that you can tackle things bit by bit, the fear can recede and you will be able to have the confidence to move forward.
Social structures are a bit more difficult to tackle. Racism, sexism, and other things like that are often invisible to those who don't experience them. Yes, it's frustrating to know that you have to work harder and do more to get the same opportunities that seem to come easily to others. However, allowing yourself to be mired in self-doubt and defeatism because of those factors is not ever going to net a positive result. You cannot work towards systemic change if you aren't going out and participating and proving (even just to yourself) that these obstacles can be met head-on and sometimes overcome.
Fatalism and passivity are often results of systemic issues or childhood trauma. They are coping mechanisms that you developed to feel safer. But they can stand in your way, and once you see that they are, you know that you have grown past them. So you have to find other coping mechanisms that serve you better for where you are in life today. This is not an easy process, but CBT and DBT are often recommended on the green for solving this very issue. They really do work wonders for many people, often much quicker than you might suppose.
Start small. Do things even if you're scared or don't want to. Make a conscious decision to keep trying every day, even if you fail sometimes. It's these little, everyday choices that eventually add up to finding yourself in a different headspace one day.
Best of luck.
posted by ananci at 12:40 PM on February 27, 2019 [6 favorites]
If the environment you're in seems like it's warped and keeps you in helplessness, see if you can find ways to spend time out of it.
posted by Baeria at 4:03 PM on February 27, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by Baeria at 4:03 PM on February 27, 2019 [1 favorite]
To address aspect 2 of your question, for me the phrase "motivation follows action" is extremely helpful.
posted by inexorably_forward at 5:04 PM on February 27, 2019 [3 favorites]
posted by inexorably_forward at 5:04 PM on February 27, 2019 [3 favorites]
Going to the gym, getting a dog, finding a partner.
posted by Middlemarch at 10:19 PM on February 27, 2019
posted by Middlemarch at 10:19 PM on February 27, 2019
This is a serious curveball, but how comfortable and secure are you in your current gender identity/gender expression?
I'm in the slow process of coming out as non-binary, and I've noticed a significant uptick in my own sense of agency and motivation (and a downturn in passivity) since I started dressing and presenting myself in a more masculine/androgynous way and stopped putting effort into passing as female (in retrospect, it always felt like trying to pass as my assigned gender rather than actually being a woman).
The "I've known since birth" narrative around gender variance doesn't resonate with me at all, and if you'd asked me a year or two ago how I felt about my gender presentation I would never have identified this as a root cause issue or something I intended to seriously act on. The whole thing came together more unconsciously than consciously, until my "see how I feel wearing men's clothes" experiment last year turned out to be a startling success and I realised that I feel baseline 20% more confident and like I deserve to take up space in the world since I stopped pretending to be a girl. Couldn't have guessed that this would be the case, but it's been a really positive life shift that came from a totally unexpected place for me.
posted by terretu at 5:16 AM on February 28, 2019 [2 favorites]
I'm in the slow process of coming out as non-binary, and I've noticed a significant uptick in my own sense of agency and motivation (and a downturn in passivity) since I started dressing and presenting myself in a more masculine/androgynous way and stopped putting effort into passing as female (in retrospect, it always felt like trying to pass as my assigned gender rather than actually being a woman).
The "I've known since birth" narrative around gender variance doesn't resonate with me at all, and if you'd asked me a year or two ago how I felt about my gender presentation I would never have identified this as a root cause issue or something I intended to seriously act on. The whole thing came together more unconsciously than consciously, until my "see how I feel wearing men's clothes" experiment last year turned out to be a startling success and I realised that I feel baseline 20% more confident and like I deserve to take up space in the world since I stopped pretending to be a girl. Couldn't have guessed that this would be the case, but it's been a really positive life shift that came from a totally unexpected place for me.
posted by terretu at 5:16 AM on February 28, 2019 [2 favorites]
Ideal if you could address 1) habits of passivity (eg learned helplessness), 2) motivation, and 3) beliefs about agency vs structure in general (ie whether an individual’s self-directed action can yield hoped-for results and prevail over the inertia of social structures).
I think your question is great, and it seems like the kind of inquiry that could launch many constructive therapy sessions about empowerment, depending on who you speak with - for example, from an ecopsychological perspective, the surrounding socio-cultural contexts need to be acknowledged as the barriers they can be, but this doesn't mean it's the end of the conversation.
These days, I am an avid fan of self-care, self-compassion, and a focus on wellness as the ultimate pushback against learned helplessness and habits of passivity - it's learning a new way to be, and it's not easy and it takes time.
In the past, to get free of learned helplessness, I had to humble myself with regard to the limits of what I could change in my situation and what was beyond my control, and then pack what I could and run from a dangerous scene. And then I really had to learn how to have compassion for myself, because it's not called post-traumatic stress for no reason.
These days, I interact with a thunderdome of medical providers, and I try to resist their passivity with data and documentation as supporting evidence for my concerns. I have sometimes felt like a radical when advocating for myself and figuring out how to be effective in this context. It is not easy, and it is taking a lot of time, and thankfully I have an LCSW as a therapist, because we are often very action-focused in our sessions and I feel like I've benefitted immensely from having a safe space to process my various challenges.
I have a variety of responses about motivation developed from my own experiences, and some of my answers focus on family lore about not-too-distant ancestors, and their emigration from the Pale. My motivation sometimes gets expressed along the lines of, 'well, if she carried an infant across Europe to find the husband that never sent for her, crossed the Atlantic and made her way to Chicago, and still possessed the strength to throw the other woman out of a second-story window before settling in and raising my great-grandfather, then surely I have the strength for this.'
So for me, in addition to the motivation from my own goals and core values, I also draw a fair amount of motivation from how hard so many people in my family have worked so I could live free, and I try to live up to the standard they've set for resilience and perserverence.
There's more to it, though. But without launching into a PowerPoint presentation about it, I think having a developed sense of core values can help, because those values can help guide decisions about what actions to take, and bolster motivation to take action. I have also been drawing a lot of inspiration from roaming around Metafilter, and reading so many stories of resilience and perserverence and compassion, and I think it relates to CollectiveMind's description of how these images can "glow in the mind for hours."
posted by Little Dawn at 12:35 PM on March 3, 2019 [2 favorites]
I think your question is great, and it seems like the kind of inquiry that could launch many constructive therapy sessions about empowerment, depending on who you speak with - for example, from an ecopsychological perspective, the surrounding socio-cultural contexts need to be acknowledged as the barriers they can be, but this doesn't mean it's the end of the conversation.
These days, I am an avid fan of self-care, self-compassion, and a focus on wellness as the ultimate pushback against learned helplessness and habits of passivity - it's learning a new way to be, and it's not easy and it takes time.
In the past, to get free of learned helplessness, I had to humble myself with regard to the limits of what I could change in my situation and what was beyond my control, and then pack what I could and run from a dangerous scene. And then I really had to learn how to have compassion for myself, because it's not called post-traumatic stress for no reason.
These days, I interact with a thunderdome of medical providers, and I try to resist their passivity with data and documentation as supporting evidence for my concerns. I have sometimes felt like a radical when advocating for myself and figuring out how to be effective in this context. It is not easy, and it is taking a lot of time, and thankfully I have an LCSW as a therapist, because we are often very action-focused in our sessions and I feel like I've benefitted immensely from having a safe space to process my various challenges.
I have a variety of responses about motivation developed from my own experiences, and some of my answers focus on family lore about not-too-distant ancestors, and their emigration from the Pale. My motivation sometimes gets expressed along the lines of, 'well, if she carried an infant across Europe to find the husband that never sent for her, crossed the Atlantic and made her way to Chicago, and still possessed the strength to throw the other woman out of a second-story window before settling in and raising my great-grandfather, then surely I have the strength for this.'
So for me, in addition to the motivation from my own goals and core values, I also draw a fair amount of motivation from how hard so many people in my family have worked so I could live free, and I try to live up to the standard they've set for resilience and perserverence.
There's more to it, though. But without launching into a PowerPoint presentation about it, I think having a developed sense of core values can help, because those values can help guide decisions about what actions to take, and bolster motivation to take action. I have also been drawing a lot of inspiration from roaming around Metafilter, and reading so many stories of resilience and perserverence and compassion, and I think it relates to CollectiveMind's description of how these images can "glow in the mind for hours."
posted by Little Dawn at 12:35 PM on March 3, 2019 [2 favorites]
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posted by capricorn at 9:37 AM on February 27, 2019 [8 favorites]