Right now I'm on vacation between two jobs, and the best idea I came up with was this: eight days during which I promised myself not to set any goals, tasks, or obligations.
I let myself relax so much that, for example, a couple of days ago I slept for 10 hours, ate a whole bag of gummy candy, and then took another nap for a couple of hours. Later, I watched reels — for like two more hours.
And you know what I did after that? I read a couple of emails in Hungarian, studied some words, for the first time in two years finally figured out the structure of my website (something cool is coming soon!), and wrote this post. In the evening, I edited it and then jumped back in to add some visual polish to the site.
But here’s the thing: none of that socially acceptable, "productive" behavior would’ve happened if I hadn’t first regained the energy for it. And that energy came from what you might call "junk dopamine" — reels, sugar, and doing nothing.
There’s a fine line between not controlling your behavior and obsessing over your weaknesses. If something becomes an obsession — then yeah, maybe it’s worth paying attention to. But that attention works better when framed like this:
“Today, in a moment of boredom, I watched YouTube and ate chips for an hour, because in moments of boredom my anxious brain is looking for something to do — like storing fat and information.”
There’s no self-blame in that sentence — just a statement of fact. I can’t speak for others, but I feel like negative self-talk, even if it’s “deserved,” just creates more anxiety. And in the end, a brain that eats to soothe anxiety only gets more anxious.
The Bible has a line: love your neighbor as yourself. But how can you love your neighbor if you don’t love yourself? You can’t truly embrace people in all their complexity unless you first accept your own right to weakness.