All of us happen to have experienced the following – you have a very important event tomorrow morning. It can be an audition, an interview or whatever. Or you just simply want to have a nice sleeping pattern, not a weird one when you stay up late and then wake up at around noon. So you want to fall asleep as soon as possible so that you won’t undersleep and consequently feel dreadful the next day. However, the fact that you want it so much, that you’re forcing your sleep makes you feel awake. In fact, the more you long for falling asleep, the more you feel awake. Even if you haven’t been sleeping for the whole day, even if you have been feeling extremely sleepy recently. Conversely, if you’ve decided to lie down on your bed in the early afternoon to just chill out, you’re going to fall asleep almost immediately. But why is that? Obviously, because, you are completely relaxed in this case, you didn’t have any intention to fall asleep whatsoever. However, if you do feel a desire to drift off at midday then you’re going to have a bit of a struggle doing that.
It seems like an ordinary thing. Everybody experiences that. But I’m sure you have you noticed that this actually tends to happen in almost any other area of our life. There can be numerous situations when we’re so desperate for results. To the point where it makes it even harder to reach those results. Let’s think of it. Where exactly in our life does it seem to come in play?
Let’s take learning a language, for example, when a student is so desperate for an outcome. He or she is just all outcome-conscious, Students like that are only results-driven. They are not really enjoying what they are doing. And when you’re coming from this place results feel like ages. In fact, it’s you who are holding them back not even being aware of it most of the time.
But what would happen if only they let go of that impatience and desperation for success, even a little bit, and just start appreciating the process itself more?
Let’s come back to the subject of sleep for a while. What can we do to fall asleep if not forcing ourselves to? The best idea is to try to let go of that desire to immediately drift off, just enjoy those night hours doing something relaxing, something which can potentially help us fall asleep. And if we do, if we really let go of that desire then we’ll notice that we start falling asleep. Or we’ll just fall into a deep sleep unexpectedly.
And this is the key insight which we all sooner or later have to realize – enjoy your journey.
And I believe this can also apply to any other situation in our life where we’re forcing something to happen, where we’re feeling highly desperate for results. Just try to let go of that feeling and start enjoying the process itself doing something which potentially leads to the outcome you want. But, ultimately, enjoy the journey.
P.S.
And even though I say enjoy it should be taken into account that learning a language (or whatever any other result-directed activity you’re taking part in) can’t be all about fun, but you can definitely sugar-coat it to an extent.