Do you ever get super anxious about a project? Uptight until a particular task is done? Are you nervous or antsy until you reach your goal, and fulfilled and relieved when it is done?
...only to get nervous again when it’s time for the next item on the list?
I’ve written before about the finish line syndrome - the feeling of being somehow incomplete until something particular is accomplished.
It’s a normal feeling, really. Healthy anxiety spurs us into necessary action. But I’m talking now about something deeper - the core feeling of being “not okay” until a task is done, until a milestone is reached, or until something is accomplished.
“All I need is to graduate college, then I can start my life.”
“I just need to finish this project, then I can relax.”
“I just need to lose another ten pounds, then I won’t be fat”.
“If I would only get married (or divorced!), life would be more manageable”.
“I’m so stressed out! Two more loads of laundry to fold…”
The truth is that there will always - always - be another task to address, another career milestone to reach, another personal goal to strive for. That does not and can not impact our serenity and sense of self worth.
It can not and must not. Because if our serenity and self worth depend on tasks, milestones, or personal goals still unmet, we will never be serene. We will never have self worth.
Never.
So, ladies and gentlemen, it’s now or never. We can choose to accept ourselves NOW, with all our imperfections, unmet milestones, and unfinished tasks. Or we can spend our whole life in pursuit of the serenity that will always remain just out of reach.
You choose.
A speaker this weekend shared the metaphor of the stage game “Props”. Improv actors are given a box of props and told to act out a scene. They don’t choose the props, they can only use what they are given. Sometimes the props seem to be well chosen and the scene flows rather fluidly; other times the props are baffling and perhaps difficult to handle. No matter. The actors need only do their job: to perform their scene with the props they are given.
Shimmy Feintuch, LCSW CASAC-G maintains a private practice in Brooklyn, NY, and Washington Heights, NYC, with specialties in addictions and anxiety. He is also an Adjunct Professor at the Wurzweiler School of Social Work at Yeshiva University. Contact: (530) 334-6882 or shimmyfeintuch@gmail.com.
Sign up for the Spiritual Sofa newsletter to receive each blog post before it's posted here!