so I lock myself inside my head and I just run in place

==

I have no space, no room to move around

And this box is getting smaller, I’m trying to get out

How did I get so far from where I was?

When did I decide to lose my way? Who have I become?

 

I’ve got a new low

All 52 cards in a row

 

I’ve been right, I’ve been left

I’ve been wrong, I’ve been left behind

I’ve been up but mostly down

 

I cannot help feeling like I have so much at stake

So I lock myself inside my head and I just run in place

So many directions I don’t know which way to go

I’m so busy doing nothing, I got nothing to show

Middle Class Rut – New Low

==

“We are the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no great war, no great depression. Our great war is a spiritual war. Our great depression is our lives. We’ve all been raised by television to believe that we’d be millionaires and movie gods and rock stars – but we won’t. And we’re slowly learning that fact. And we’re very, very pissed-off.

Tyler Durdin, Fight Club

==

I believe many people feel locked inside their heads because they never attain resolution on things.

Our heads get normalized from the top, cascading through thoughts like a virus. Ultimately that virus begins to affect our decisions and decisions set the tone for what’s acceptable. Uhm. What happens if we don’t make any decisions or, well, just run in place in our heads thinking and thinking and thinking. Well. Before you know it, it becomes a reinforcing cycle of behavior creating an environment where right and wrong are about as clear as mud. This is where technology begins fucking with the inside of our head.  Social media, life, business, all keep slinging things in front of us and while we may get some things done, we are leaving an increasing number of things in the past unresolved. This asymmetrical ‘completion’ creates an uneasy tension between the past, present and future. Maybe said another way, we are stuck in a continuum of unresolved things. That said.

• What happens if you feel like you are just running in place?
• What happens if you feel like you’ve lost 52 cards in a row?
• What happens if you feel like you are constantly reaching a new low?

You are locked in a mental hole. Shit. A hole where everything is as clear as mud. From there you have a tendency to grasp at straws.

This is a dangerous time.

You are locked in your head and, well, the rest of the world is unlocked and moving.

Look. We all face tough moments and tough situations. And 90+% of the time we muddle through – either stumbling our way or thru some insightfully smart maneuvering, or somewhere in between. But when you are locked n your head, despite making it thru things, you are constantly attempting to rationalize how you did it – without any real resolution. Well. At least anything that sounds rational.

“Man is a rationalizing animal not a rational one.”

Robert Heinlein

Which leads me to winners and losers.

When you are stuck in your head it becomes difficult to see whether you are a winner or a loser. In fact. No matter how you muddle, good or bad, you constantly feel like a loser or you are losing. At its worst, you feel like you have lost 52 cards in a row. In this head space, more often than not, we become heuristic imbeciles in how we define success and failure as we flail about. I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that success always rests on a fairly fragile balance between the needs of the individual and those of the collective and it would behoove us to understand that balance does not naturally occur in a technologically driven world, it needs to be monitored, calibrated, recalibrated almost on an exhaustingly minute-by-minute basis human by human. This sounds incredibly exhausting if you buy into the thought we are constantly facing unresolved things, but, if you don’t fight for some control, power moves to anyone who has the most data, about the most people, and can convert it into understandable narratives. I will point out that if data is used the right way, it can actually make us smarter collectively, not just richer personally, but that is a societal winners/losers discussion. That said. The problem is that we are now at a moment where the social contract is being renegotiated involuntarily because while we are locked in our heads, somewhere inbetween, some dubious characters are crafting ‘the social contract’ which will replace the one we may know and like. And maybe that is where technology screws us the most. As we run in place in our heads, we keep getting fed a lot of shit in terms of information. Many (many) sources are shaping what is locked in our heads with distorted ‘facts,’ alternative realities and lies. None of which (a) helps unlock our heads or (b) assist us in achieving some common sensemaking with reality. I imagine my point here is if you are stuck somewhere in between your ability to picture what the future may, or should, look like, your view is impaired and the world is simply shaped by a bunch of tools trying to hammer loose screws into your head.

Which leads me to unlocking.

Being locked in your own head is frustrating. Sometimes even maddening. Sometimes it makes you angry. I don’t have some secret to share about how to unlock yourself. All I know is that it sucks, it feels sucky, and you have to sometimes suck it up and be creative in your pursuit of some key to unlocking it. I imagine my point is the real personal inventions, which are the things that unlock yourself from your head, aren’t necessarily found in seeking change, but in the way we creatively, and smartly, navigate our mental system itself. Perhaps the greatest skill in today’s complex, dynamic world is the ability to see inside our head for what it is, accept its constraints, and elegantly maneuver within and around it to create the progress we desire. Part of that is going to be what you accept “in” as stimulus, how you filter out the nonsense, and how well you grasp reality (versus perception). Ponder that. And stop running in place.