I often find my friend complaining that she feels sorry for not doing the things she is good at more regularly. Okay, that sounds confusing. Let me explain.
Say, for example, you are good at singing or writing but you are not able to pursue those talents as much as you feel you should because of how busy you are and you end up feeling bad and beating yourself about it.
This feeling is called FOND – Fear of Not Doing.
When I started thinking more about this, I felt that most of us encounter these thoughts quite often!
Obviously, we all want to be the best version of ourselves and do everything that we think we should be doing.
But considering how we get engrossed in the hustle-bustle of our lives, we can list a thousand reasons as to why we aren’t able to do the things that we want to. And the remorse or dissatisfaction this guilt gives us could gradually take a toll on how we look and feel about ourselves.
FOND could also develop out of the disappointment that comes from knowing you may not be able to do those things with as much dedication and this stops many people from even beginning at the task.
And now you know so many people feel the same way!
However, we have always been wondering how we can get ourselves out of this vicious cycle and we will learn exactly that in this article!
So you may have a bunch of activities that you are good at and want to pursue but you are struggling to decide where to start. Here are a few ways that work for me!
- Make lists and pick one thing
This technique works for almost anything that you want to finish with or even any decision you want to make. You can apply it to this as well.
Make a list of the things that you want to do. It could also be divided into various categories based on the time each one takes or based on your preference on which one you like the most. Getting thoughts on paper could actually clear half your confusion. You can then decide and pick out the most appealing idea and start working on it.
- Routine
After you decide on the activity that you want to pursue, you can try and do it as often as you can or make it a part of your routine.
That way, you can take a break from the regular work and also be satisfied with pursuing tasks of your interest. Well, sometimes it could be that our days are packed with so many things and it gets very challenging to accommodate new tasks into the existing hectic schedules. In such a situation, we can assign some particular days of the week when we do these things. It could be something like a weekend routine or twice a week routine.
- Prioritize
Yet, there are a few things that we should be more mindful of when we are just getting started with these things. Like I mentioned before, sometimes we get so busy that there’s no more time left in our days to accommodate another new activity. And in such cases, committing to do your favorite tasks might just backfire. Not the activity literally but the consequences of pursuing them over more important things. And hence it is always better to prioritize and make more informed choices. Sometimes, committing to certain things and then not being able to do those only leaves us with more remorse and contempt for ourselves so much such that we end up hating those tasks that we once liked. And that’s certainly not what we want to do.
- Repeat
Once you have got yourself into the routine of doing these things regularly, you can repeat the same process when you want to switch to a new activity. Just pick one new task from the list you already made and you can continue to follow your routine. You would be quite sorted and free of guilt about not doing anything for a good period once you decide and put yourself into pursuing your talent. And oh! It need not be like a strict and religious thing. You are completely free to decide for yourself what works best for you or how you would like to do things. This was only an example of how you can just make a decision and get started. It usually works for me and so I thought it would be nice to share it with you all as well.
There can be completely different approaches to this like you can do one activity for a given time maybe till you feel like you’ve done enough of it and then switch to a new one or maybe do a new task every week.
Anything works well as long as you are happy about it and can enjoy the benefits of doing so.
The benefits of trying and getting rid of FOND are more than we can imagine. It can just change the face of how we look at ourselves. Because it involves us getting started to do with what we like doing, it can help you relax from the stress of a rough day at work, aid to engage in some fulfilling activities that can feel almost therapeutic, and also work towards building up your self-regard and ultimately to love yourself more!
We all have been facing some major confusion in our lives given the testing times we are living in. It could be the ambiguity of not being sufficiently productive or the uncertainty of getting back to normal lives again, these things have given us so much of restlessness and frustration.
We don’t want FOND to add to all the existing chaos.
Also, it is very important to value and pursue some activities even if you think they are not productive as they can promote sound mental health.
We sure need to do something to keep ourselves sane in these times and it could be getting started with those long-pending favorite hobbies of ours!
There’s surely no better time to start than now, make the most of it.
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