Feeling restless
Every year many people take action to change their lives. You may want to lose weight, increase your income or spend more time with your family. Yet, less than 8% of them become self-actualized. Somewhere along the way, you encounter an obstacle that leaves you feeling restless.
It is important to recognize that feeling restless is a normal part of life. Things don’t always happen as quickly or efficiently as you expect. Depending on why you feel this way, there are various actions you can take to get back to life.
Why feel restless
Restlessness is defined as a constant desire to move, an inability to calm your mind, or a combination of both. Hyperactivity, anxiety, palpitations and insomnia are possible side effects.
Others may have difficulty completing work, managing time or falling asleep at night due to mental restlessness. When you try to dig a little deeper in your thoughts, you realize that restlessness has a lot to do with mental tensions and confusion.
When you can’t manage to stay fully in the present moment and enjoy moments of daydreaming, this indicates that your mind is disturbed by something. When you feel restless, whether you realize it or not, you are transported into a different world where you are dealing with these mental debates.
More often, when you can’t resolve a situation, take action or make decisions on your own, that’s when you start to feel restless.
Feeling restless is not only about physical conditions and burnout. It also has to do with a lack of purpose or self-confidence. You need to direct your energy and efforts towards pinpointing the source.
Causes of Feeling Restless
- Suppression of True Passion
Everyone has two little voices in their head. One voice is your inner self and the other is your inner critic.
Your inner self is the voice of your imagination, your confidence and your sense of purpose. When you were a child, you behaved the way you wanted to behave. If you wanted to play you played, if you wanted to sleep you slept. But as you got older, you were conditioned to believe that following your purpose made you selfish or irresponsible. Your inner critic started to take control and told you why playing it safe was the best option. As a result, you began to feel restless because you had to suppress your desires to please others.
This inner battle will be very tiring. Therefore, you should always be honest with yourself. Let your inner self guide you and accept the fact that you cannot please everyone.
- Fighting on Too Many Fronts
When they say you can have anything you want, they don’t mean everything at once. You may feel uneasy because you are setting yourself up for failure.
For example, you may find it difficult to cut your spending when you are trying to eat healthily. Eating healthy requires you to spend more money. Since your goals are opposite of each other, you should prioritize your goals.
The same will be true if your goal is to win a promotion and be with your family more. Promotions often require you to take on more projects while maintaining your current workload. Naturally, you will increase your productivity as you familiarize yourself with new tasks, but you may also have to work overtime on more than one occasion.
- Negative outlook on life
Failure makes you re-evaluate your life. It is natural to feel uneasy when you wonder whether you have spent the last few years chasing an unrealistic dream.
Negative perspectives are hard to overcome. In reality, it can show you that you can always do better. This is why many people never give up on the analysis phase of changing their lives. Just before they take action, they realize how things could improve and end up doing nothing.
Instead of constantly accepting everything that is wrong in the world, start training yourself to identify what is right in your life.
- Lack of Confidence
Somewhere along this journey we call life, you stopped believing that you were good enough, which made you feel restless.
A quick fix for this is to think of something that makes you feel incredibly secure. When you achieve a goal, doubt disappears from your consciousness.
- Overdependence on others
Depending on other people is not always a bad thing. As an African proverb says, “If you want to go fast, go alone. But if you want to go far, go together.”
When you work with others, you have an accountability partner who motivates you to keep going. However, the problem arises when you depend too much on others. The more you depend on others, the more you lose control of parts of your life.
- Experience Burnout
Burnout is the result of trying to do too much too fast. You feel like you have lost time; you want to make up the last five years in a short time.
Similarly, imagine someone has been wanting to start a business for the last few years. He has always procrastinated, but now he feels a sense of urgency.
Eventually he becomes exhausted and feels restless. Therefore, you need to keep a realistic timeline for your goals. Remember, if you are developing a life-changing habit, it takes time.
- Becoming a One Man Army
While it may be hard for you to trust others, if you are trying to hide your setbacks, isolating yourself is a recipe for disaster.
There’s a reason why the best among us have coaches and mentors. It helps to look at things from a different perspective.
Too often, when you isolate yourself, your perception can become skewed by your own preconceptions. One of the numerous studies on diversity highlights the increased returns generated by a diverse board compared to a non-diverse board.
Sometimes the one thing you miss is the ability to execute an idea by someone else. Not that you even need them to build the concept, but there is a benefit to talking things through with others. Don’t take the burden on yourself. Apart from feeling restless and overwhelmed, your results can suffer.
