This week has been one of those where nothing special happened, but a lot was going on. The usual minor and major catastrophes in between getting up in the morning, working, acting like an adult, responsible relationships, water leakages, doctor's appointments, mental breakdowns – you name it.
About this week’s picture postcard:
I am highly empathic and emotional, but my rational mind is my biggest enemy in getting anywhere close to a state of "truly feel, think what this means, then act". My mind just jumps on every single opportunity, overanalysing – especially my role, contribution, and flaws – until a feeling of anxiety and feeling overwhelmed arises – and here we go with analysing that one again.
Somewhere in this state of already feeling overwhelmed, I set myself the ambitious goal of working on my paper publication manuscript since I finally got feedback from my three co-authors and supervisors this week. As I opened the MS Word document, it had all these tracked changes highlights where you never really know what the document's current state is – at least, this is what it appeared to me. I tried to work with it without having the capacity to look at the overall picture of my publication. And gave up. Which just got me spinning further down into self-blame, doubt and self-loathing. Later, Sven told me that one is not supposed to keep all changes tracked until the very final state of the document – you have to create some versions in between that are more or less comment-free and without any tracked changes. I felt a tiny pinch of relief. But also some concern: Isn't it essential to see how the document evolved? Aren't the others expecting to see the tracked changes still? Well, it is pretty difficult to look at the overall publication with all these past changes. It's not possible to know the status quo and go from there! So, probably now would be a good time since everyone gave feedback and said that apart from these elements, the content seems good.
I have not worked on it since, and I won't simply hit the "Accept all changes and stop tracking" feature immediately. But in the coming week, I will review the overall document and then work through the comments and suggestions to hit the "Accept all changes and stop tracking" button before sharing a new version with everyone.
Maybe this "Accept all changes and stop tracking" button is something I could run against my mind occasionally, too. No matter what it is (over-)analysing and dwelling on. We can only truly feel, act, and decide on whatever is in the current moment. Of course, there might be a thousand things that happened throughout your life that brought you to precisely this point. Still, there is no value in keeping track and checking all of these things to move forward at the current moment. I can drown myself in my lifelong history of gut issues – or I can do whatever feels good for me right now to bring me relief or look for new solutions. I can sit numb and paralysed in a corner after an argument, trying to figure out what is wrong with me, or I can attempt to feel what I am genuinely feeling at that moment and take it from there. What could possibly go wrong? The changes, decisions, and experiences that have been made have been made. No need to track and hunt them down. They shaped the current form of a document as they shape you as a person and the current situation in your day or life.
Whatever got you here won't bring you there.
So accept anything that led up to a situation to look at the status quo, feel what you need and then do what it takes to get you there. And now, I will not edit this text anymore to avoid my mind interfering with it!
Happy Sunday! Maybe let's all accept some of the elements from the past week, stop tracking, and start from here for the new week ahead.
Love,
I had to "accept all changes" in my manuscript this week. It's like throwing out old clothes.