“Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.”
― Theodore Roosevelt
I’ve been finding it hard to write this week.
Along with turning thirty a few days ago, I faced a couple of personal setbacks that have left me without as much will and grit to summon up creativity. The thing with starting a blog is that people assume you’re good at writing and therefore, you write. The reality for me is that while I might be good at writing, I’ve become good BY writing. I wrote when I was terrible at it. I wrote in spite of knowing there will always be better writers than I am.
But I wanted to be better, and so I wrote. And wrote. I’ve deleted some of the cringe things I published online, but some of it still exists. The thing is anyone can be creative with enough time and motivation. But to be creative and consistent on demand – that’s the stuff I’m working at.
I’ve never wanted my work to be perfect, but I’ve always wanted to feel like I’ve put everything I had into it. Some days, especially the ones riddled with glorious inspiration, my work comes pretty darn close to what I think is perfect; some days, I’m left with scraps.
So which voice do I listen to? The one that says, “When in doubt, chicken out?” or face the fact that there is no other voice in my head and I simply must soldier on.
Anyway – so instead of languishing, I thought I’d count on Google to give me some likely causes of this overthinkey-slow-to-action-ey phase, and it did! Anxiety, imposter syndrome, brain tumor – the usual stuff. But in the process, I discovered a term I hadn’t heard before called navel-gazing.
It refers to excessive self-absorption or self-reflection. Like when someone is focusing inward in an introspective but unproductive way. Apparently, it comes from a meditation practice where one would literally gaze at their belly button for the purpose of contemplation. Over time, it adapted to take on its more ironic and negative definition to mean useless self-indulgent thinking. If someone is ‘navel-gazing,’ it means that their self-reflection has crossed into the territory of self-absorption.
Side note: I don’t like body-related idioms or metaphors at all. I find them icky. Navel-gazing makes it to the top of my list, along with ‘teething issues,’ ‘tongue-in-cheek,’ ‘dip your toes’, and ‘finger in too many pies.’
While a bit of introspection is useful for appearing profound at dinner parties, if taken to an extreme, it leads to a kind of analysis-paralysis that prevents us from actually moving forward and doing things.
I’ve given in to too many neuroses in the process of trying to write consistently. Trying to know myself and understand how my brain functions has been a very boring and useless endeavor in many ways. I can’t just simply live my life, I feel compelled to dissect my choices, critique my habits, and analyze myself like an FBI profiler.
Personally, I feel like too much self-awareness can be an affliction. When I examine myself under a microscope, my imperfections and faults become glaringly visible. I realize my limitations, hypocrisies, and contradictions. I see that I’m not the heroic protagonist in the epic story of my life. Instead, I’m an inconsistent character full of conflicting desires and behaviors. I say one thing and do another.
And it’s this heightened self-consciousness that breeds action-paralysis. You become so aware of your flaws and weaknesses that you feel unworthy or incapable of pursuing new opportunities. You realize that anything you attempt may end in failure or imperfection, so why try at all? You see so many sides to every issue that you become incapable of committing to a particular course of action, always doubting your choices before you’ve even made them.
The thing I find most annoying right now is that those who don’t sit and examine and over-examine, the it-be-like-that-sometimes crew, they seem to seize life by the nuts and bumble ahead with reckless optimism. They start ill-conceived side hustles, they make friends with people overnight, they pursue random interests, join a gym, quit stable jobs and bet on themselves over and over.
But in the end, while the odds seem stacked against them, a few wild successes actually emerge from all their chaotic striving. And they aren’t afraid of failing. Or they don’t seem to be. Not in the way I’m afraid of failing. The thing with navel-gazing that irks me is the intention of ruthless self-optimization. Understanding why you do what you do, so that you can do it better next time.
It feels like the people that aren’t navel-gazing know that mistakes or failures have a way of summoning kindness from others. Frankly, almost every act of kindness I’ve received, offered, or witnessed, has been in response to a perceived need. And those needs are usually the outcome of some kind of failure or mistake or shame-inducing thing.
Yet, most of us navel-gazers organize our lives around avoiding these open displays of weakness. In our quest to be deemed worthy of love or admiration, we avoid all failures. But failures represent love’s most traveled-on pathways. I’ve failed (or rather, haven’t succeeded) in a few ways off-late, and I’ve received immense kindness, comfort, and reassurance on account of it.
Sure, we already know Brene Brown’s mantra of daring to be vulnerable. Plenty of people have talked about how vulnerability and failure are the catalysts to our success. Right now, I think they’re the very instruments that can help me focus outward. You know, the place that’s away from my belly button.
The solution is not to avoid self-reflection altogether but rather to temper it with self-compassion. To make peace with my messy contradictions and my limitations. To accept that in order to move forward, failure is inevitable and no amount of self-awareness will help me avoid it.
So, I leave you with the advice I’m offering myself: Look before you leap, but for the love of God, leap.
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