Working Towards Our Purpose

Welcome to episode 85 of Working Towards Our Purpose.

In today's episode, we're going to talk about the feeling of

just going through the motions. But before we get into that, I'm going to take

a moment and to just check in with ourselves. See where we're at,

see how we're feeling today. So just take a second.

All right, hopefully you got a second to see where you're

at. Um, for me today,

uh, I'm a little, a little behind my schedule that I had for myself.

Um, feeling a little

imposter syndrome-y, not valuable enough,

unworthy, those sorts of feelings. And then

I took a moment and my brain switched and I was

super inspired and came up with a bunch

of ideas and stuff. So yeah, kind of feeling both of those

right now a little bit. So yeah, it's interesting how

you know, you could take a turn and,

you know, acknowledging certain feelings can like kind

of help set them free, I guess, which is why we do these check-ins. So,

you know, hopefully you got a second to check in and

yeah, so let's get into today's episode. Today I want to talk about the feeling

of just going through the motions, especially, you know, when

it comes to working at your job and

This is a feeling that

I'm pretty familiar with. I

haven't really felt it in a long time, which I'm grateful for. But I

remember when I was working my corporate jobs, feeling it all the time

and just kind of trying to

close my eyes and hope that the weeks go by and

get me to a place where I wasn't inside of my cubicle.

I think it's a familiar feeling for a lot of us who

are doing jobs that maybe they don't feel connected to. It's just this feeling of

going through the motions that you just have to do this thing because

somebody else is requiring you of doing it. And you kind of just

maybe feel like you're on autopilot or maybe your

emotions could be muted. Maybe you feel

trouble having happy emotions or

feeling excited about something. And

also another thing that I think goes with it too, for me anyways,

was the feeling of time just going by and then being

regretful of it. Because time always goes by kind

of fast, I guess. But I remember

years going by and me being like, oh, I'm not doing anything.

I'm only doing things that I don't want to be doing, and I feel like

time's slipping away sort of feeling.

So I have a story, and I think

that this kind of paints a picture of

the opposite of this feeling of just going through the motions. So

there was this one time, and hopefully it'll make sense and you can stay with

me here. I was on a train one time, and we

pulled up to some random train stop that I wasn't getting off of.

And I remember, I don't know what kind of mood I

was in or where I was at, but I remember like seeing somebody get off

the train and it was like, I don't know, this woman probably in her

like 20s or something. And there was somebody waiting on

the platform for her. And like when they saw each

other, they just like got so excited and it seemed to be her mother. I'm

assuming here, didn't know the people, but they just got

really excited and hugged each other. And I remember being kind of

struck by it because it was

memorable for me. And I still remember to this day, this was a long time

ago, but I remember thinking to myself, like, huh,

why can't we always feel like that? Why can't we always

be like that appreciative of a person in the

moment? And why can't we sort of always—

and I think where I was coming from was like, perhaps

feeling like I was going through the motions and then seeing this event that was

like the opposite of how I was feeling and

just wondering like, how come we always can't feel— and of course you can't always

feel good or super present or whatever. But

I remember thinking like, that I want to feel like

that more often. I'd like to be

more grateful and appreciative more often and to experience

those feelings instead of just kind of going through the motions. So

I say that to paint the picture that that's the

opposite of going through the motions. So I don't know if that made any sense

at all, but it's weird that I still— I don't know. I feel like it's

weird that I still remember that. It was just like a small little moment, but

it made me want to try to be more

like that, to try to be more present and

just engaged with life. That moment was a

specific visualization of somebody being engaged

in their life, and I may not have been in that moment, and I was

just kind of craving more of that and being like, how can I do that

more often? So that's what we're talking about today. And

why do we feel like we're just going through the motions? And

for me, and in my experience, you know, I think we kind of get to

this place where we are numbing ourselves.

And, you know, another word for that is just disassociation. And you've

probably heard that word before, but when you disassociate,

you're basically trying to like protect yourself from

a negative experience, and, you know, maybe it's a painful experience or,

you know, just something that you don't want to be doing, you

disassociate and you numb yourself with

maybe your phone or a substance or anything

that kind of like makes you feel a little bit better or,

you know, brings you out of the present. And I think that

this is common in the workplace to kind of disassociate and maybe

Maybe you think of dissociation as like a different thing,

but I think when we are feeling like we're just kind of going

through the motions, we're feeling like that because we're numbing our feelings

and we're dissociating from our present. And I think

there could be many reasons, you know, why you're dissociating at work. It could be

because you're bored or you're disengaged. You're not

like feeling like you're doing anything. Like for me, that was a lot of it.

I was just always bored. Another one is just like,

you could maybe have to be doing something that you don't want to be doing.

Maybe somebody's forcing you to do like a presentation or something, or

acting in a way that doesn't feel like

you want to be acting. It's not true to yourself. And I think the

biggest one is to just not be acting in an authentic way. I think that

we can disassociate from ourselves when we're feeling like we have to be

a certain person that we're not. And this

disassociation is kind of what creates the feeling like you're just

going through the motions. And when you disassociate, you also

are sort of suppressing your own feelings. And

it's exactly why you can't, or you normally don't feel like

you can experience joy, or because you're trying to not

feel like the negative experience And while you're muting your negative

emotions, you also mute your positive emotions.

And so I have another story to explain this. So this, to bring it

back to, like, something that's maybe a little more grounded. When I went to go

do my first open mic night, I kind of forced myself

to do it. I was, like, really nervous, really scared to do it. And I

went up and I did it. And then I was

all done and I, like, I went and sat back down again. And I remember,

like, feeling afterwards, like, I don't

really feel anything. Like, I don't feel proud of myself. I don't feel

like good. I kind of just feel like nothing.

And it confused me for a bit. And then I talked about it in therapy.

And as soon as I brought it up, I like figured out

why I didn't feel good about doing that hard thing.

And it was because I was dissociating.

I was— I didn't want to experience the negative emotions. So I kind of just

shut my feelings off. And I didn't experience any of the negative emotions, but I

also couldn't feel the positive emotions. And my therapist

was like, you can't just shut your negative emotions off.

You have to, if you're shutting your emotion system off, then you're shutting them

all off. So because I didn't want to feel negative emotions, I

also wasn't able to feel positive emotions. And again,

I think that this is kind of a good example of

why we have this going through the motions feelings.

Because we're trying to avoid the negative feelings, we also

avoid all the positive stuff. So hopefully that makes sense.

And I also want to talk about,

especially in the work setting, why are we doing

this? And I also want to validate that

it makes sense that we're doing this. I think the corporate

system itself is a hard place to be in, and it

asks you to not be authentic to yourself. It asks

you to do things that you don't believe in, to do things that you don't

want to do, and it asks you to be bored for long periods of

time and to be okay with that and to pretend like you're busy.

And to, yeah, just feel

disconnected from things. So because it's a hard place to be in, it makes

sense that you are trying to avoid that. You don't want to feel

negative, so you end up numbing yourself with your phone. Maybe

you're searching the web or you're kind of just like small talking

with other people trying to waste time. And

I think that when engaging in those activities,

it helps to keep you dissociated and helps to keep you numb.

And for doing that for long periods of time, you can become

very disconnected to yourself. And I think that this

is like the major contributing factor to feeling like we

are just going through the motions because we're in such a

habit of numbing ourselves and numbing how we feel when we're there that

we like sometimes can't even get back to feeling because we're so

used to it. So

First thing is, like, it makes sense that we're dissociating, you

know? So I think the second thing would be like to not

be hard on yourself because of that. Because like I said, for a lot of

us, it's a very challenging place to be in and

to use this coping mechanism of dissociating, it makes

sense that we're doing that. So I did

want to like sort of validate that feeling, 'cause I think that

for me, that would've been really helpful back when I was in that

setting. 'Cause I always used to just get really angry at myself and be like,

what are you doing? You're wasting your time. And I didn't

have any kindness towards myself. So I think being kind to yourself

and realizing that this makes sense

that I'm having this reaction to this environment because it's a

challenging environment. And I think once you

can notice and be aware that you're doing it, then

you can take a step forward. Then you can try

to maybe not do it as much or try to get

back to yourself. So

if you're still following me and you're still with me here, I

think that a next step after being aware that you are

in this state of disassociating is

for me, what was helpful, and you know, take it if it's

helpful, don't if it's not, but for me, what was helpful to get

myself out of that place where I just felt stuck and

I just, yeah, feeling stuck,

feeling like you're just going through the motions, something that I did that like

changed everything for me was I replaced the

disassociating with something that felt authentic to me.

And for me, that was

reading books on stuff that I was interested in. So at my desk,

I had a lot of time where I was just trying to kill time and

get through the day. And I always felt really

terrible about myself when I would just pretend to work and stare at my

screen or just listen to music or flip through Instagram on my phone

or TikTok or whatever you do. I

just— it didn't make me feel good. So I don't know how I came to

this idea, but one day I was like, I can download

Audible to my phone and I could read books. And I was in the midst

of trying to make a side business work. So I was reading a lot of

books about business and that was really empowering for me to not feel like I

have to just disassociate and sit there until my day was over,

but to take some of that time and

make it a piece of time that like what felt good to

me, that felt authentic to me. So I was able to, in my downtime,

just read books on business and learn different things.

And I truly think that that was like some sort of tipping point for

me to be able to have confidence to leave, have

more ownership over like my decisions and

my time. 'Cause that's what corporate does to you. It just, it

takes your ownership away from you. And I think like

doing this one little thing for me, like reading books on my phone, gave me

a little sense of like, wait, I have a decision here. I can

choose to do something with it. And

yeah, just gave me the confidence to try to

keep continuing that and to keep following,

you know, the ideas that I had in my head and to get out of

a place that I felt like I did not want to be in. So

yeah, to recap, you know, this feeling

of just going through the motions, being on autopilot stems

from disassociating because you're in,

you know, an environment that is hard. And so it makes sense that we're

disassociating, but if we can realize that we're doing it

and sort of replace those moments instead of trying

to numb yourself with your phone, replace even just a little bit of, you know,

10 minutes, 20 minutes, replace a little bit of that time with

reading that I think it can be really helpful to

get some of our own ownership back and our own authenticity back.

So that way we can move forward and

be in a problem-solving mindset

versus a feeling helpless mindset.

And yeah. I just had

another thought, another memory come to me, even though I'm

recapping here, because when I said,

like, even if it's 5 minutes, it made me remember that, like, when I first

downloaded that app on my phone and started reading books, that I only used

it when I was in the bathroom at corporate at first. And

sorry for the graphic details if this is too much for you, but

I would only use it when I was in the bathroom and I'd be in

there for like 10 minutes and I'd just read on my phone because I thought,

like, I wasn't allowed to do that, so I didn't want to get caught doing

it. So I would only do it in the bathroom and I would read like

10, 15 minutes a day. And I started making a lot of progress on my

books. But then once I did that, I was like, wait, I can do this

at my desk. If somebody comes up to me, I'll just put my phone away

and everybody's on their phones anyways. So then I started doing it more

and I would do it more on my desk. And then I started just burning

through books because I was doing it as much as I could.

So, so I think that there's something to that. Like, just take 5 minutes, just

take the 5 minutes and, and then build from there. So

I'll leave you with, you know, if you, if you're in a job or,

or you're somewhere where you feel like you're kind of just going through the motions,

can you take 5 minutes and do something that feels authentic

to you, that feels good to you? And can you

use that as a stepping stone to, to make a change and to, to take

some ownership back in your life. So hopefully

this episode was helpful. I did feel a little all over the place, but I

feel like I always do. So, you know, maybe you're used to it at this

point, but thank you for listening as always.

If you would like some help with being kinder to yourself, I have a free

guide, 7 Days to Softening Your Inner Critic. There's a link in

the show notes for every episode and it's a free

downloadable guide. To help you be kinder to yourself.

So if that's helpful, it's there for you. And thanks

for listening. Thanks for being here. And I will see you on another episode

soon.