Why We Dread (and Ditch) Our Own Social Plans, Plus 3 Tools to Try

And what if you’re still struggling to make sense of your fear dispassionately? One strategy I find helpful is to tell myself the experience I’m going through, but as a story about someone else. Of course I’m not scared, I tell myself. But if I were to write a fictional story about someone like me, in my position, who was procrastinating on this ta

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At that point, we tend to fall back on one of three defense mechanisms, where we abandon our curiosity, our ambition, or both: Cynicism: Doomscrolling, passing up opportunities, poking fun at earnest people. Like the Beast before he meets Belle, we see transformation as a source of meaningless work, and we abandon any desire to build a good life. W

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