In my “closing thoughts” post about the phone usage experiment, I mentioned I had deeper thoughts I wanted to share. Here I am, sharing those thoughts. I ran various month-long life experiments over the years, many of which I chronicled here on this blog. For that reason, the outcome of this recent phone experiment wasn’t a surprise: if I make the conscious decision to pay attention to some specific aspect of my life, there’s a high likelihood I’ll manage to enact significant changes in that specific area. Or so I thought.

You see, I am a flawed human being, like many—most?—of the people out there. If I were in therapy, there would be a plethora of issues I’d be discussing with my therapist, but in therapy I am not, and so I thought it would be fun—for me at least, not sure about you—to tackle one of them here, since it’s strictly related to this recent phone experiment.

«Wait a second, if that’s the case, then why aren’t you in therapy, Manu?» Good question, I’m glad you asked. There are two main reasons. The first, and less important reason, is that I am a stubborn motherfucker, and the idea of asking someone else to help me fix my inner issues is something that doesn’t sit right with me. The second, and more important reason, is that I have a fundamental distrust of psychologists. Not in psychology as a field, I have no issues with that. I even considered going into psychology back when I was about to finish high school and was thinking about possible career paths. I also read plenty of psychology books, and the book that had more impact on me growing up was a psychology book written by a psychologist.

The issue I have with psychologists is that all the ones I had the pleasure to meet in person were deeply flawed and fucked up individuals, and that left an impression on me. Now I carry this fundamental (and partly irrational) distrust in them, which is a bit problematic since it’s hard to go to therapy when you don’t trust the person on the other side. Maybe this will change at some point in the future, who knows. I'm open to that possibility.

Anyway, to get back on track, the issue I wanted to discuss is related to disappointment. Specifically, my issue with the concept of disappointing others. This is something I had to deal with since I was a kid, and I’m not sure why that is. I don’t know if it was triggered by something specific that happened or if it’s just part of my character, but disappointing others and especially the thought of seeing them disappointed because of something I did or didn’t do, is something I have always struggled with. To this day, I still do.

The reason why I think this is all related to my weird life experiments is that those experiments usually follow a pattern: I experiment with something, I blog about it, I get to enjoy the benefits of some positive change, the experiment ends, I stop blogging about it, and slowly but surely the old habits manage to creep back in. It happens every time, like clockwork. But this time around, I realised that the reason why it happens is that I, fundamentally, do not give much of a fuck about myself. That itself is a topic for another time, but in the context of this discussion, the thing that matters is that as long as I’m blogging and I’m sharing my experience, the irrational pressure of disappointing someone keeps me on track. At a rational level, I know that no one gives a fuck if I fail at these silly experiments, and yet, for some reason, that extra pressure is what keeps me in check.

Now, is this a healthy way to exist in this world? Probably not. Do I care? Definitely not. But, having realised this, I’m now wondering how I can exploit this to my advantage. Because there are things I’d love to change in my life, and I’m starting to think leveraging the disappointment-lever to my advantage could be the way to go.

My phone usage, for example, is still under control, and that’s because I know I’m gonna keep sharing those numbers. Not weekly, because that’s boring, but probably every couple of months. And this fact alone, the decision of doing this, is apparently enough to keep my brain on track.

Brains are weird, what can I say? I’m still figuring out which changes I want to put in place in my life. The tricky part is that they need to be trackable and shareable somehow; otherwise, this will not work, but I’m sure I’ll manage to come up with a solution.

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